Why Ruination is my least favorite card

[Wallycaine]

So basically tldr is that we need more ruination.

As explained, that's the world where nonbasics that aren't Gaea's Cradle become basically untenable. Maybe you run fetches with one triome. But all the budget fixing, guildgates up to temples and painlands become pretty risky and not worth playing. Everyone's fixing becomes much worse and the viable card pool becomes smaller. Fun?

I think the counterargument to that is that a wide variety of creature wraths exist, and yet creatures have not yet been pushed out of the format. So there presumably exists a range where they could print Ruination effects without completely destroying utility and fixing. Wizards has obviously chosen not to go that route, but it was one that was open to them.

[brainface]

So basically tldr is that we need more ruination.

As explained, that's the world where nonbasics that aren't Gaea's Cradle become basically untenable. Maybe you run fetches with one triome. But all the budget fixing, guildgates up to temples and painlands become pretty risky and not worth playing. Everyone's fixing becomes much worse and the viable card pool becomes smaller. Fun?

This feels exaggerated to me. You really, really don't need lots of nonbasics for fixing. I've run 5 color decks with heavy basic land count forever. (Because when I play ruination, I do it from a 5 color deck!) Evolving wilds/Terramorphic/Panoramas are cheap and combined with green ramp I rarely have issue getting WUBRG. Multiple pips of the same color would be an issue, mind, but... at some point you need to pay some tradeoff in deckbuilding multiple colors?

[TheAmericanSpirit]

This extreme punishment, combined with the rare use of the card, makes deckbuilding decisions around it miserable.

So basically tldr is that we need more ruination.

This feels like really bad faith engagement with the topic at hand. Dirk isn't saying the card should be banned and he isn't calling nonbasic hate in general unwarranted. The point seems to be that ruination is possibly the most heavy-handed, indiscriminate means of dealing with nonbasics and as such, the card makes him (and likely many others) miserable.

Now I dunno about you, but I never sit down for a game with the intent to make my opponents miserable. It defeats the purpose of recreation itself imho and adds unnecessary negativity to my free time. So why do we need more ruination exactly (assuming we're not striving to the highest caliber of competition possible, in which case, have fun dying with your uncastable irrelevant 4 drop in hand to t3 throacle I guess)?

EDIT: the aforementioned parenthetical made me think yet again: ruination is no good in cedh, not in my experience. Games end too fast, and even when they do run long, there's enough alternative sources of mana in damn near every deck to prevent ruination from really doing its thing effectively. Thus ruination can only prey on casual edh, and %$#%, casual edh has enough problems with pubstompers, unrealistic mana curves, and the general relativity of the number 7. Why add ruination to that laundry list?

DOUBLE FEATURE EDIT: This all being said, I do think everyone should run more basics and drink more water in my humble opinion. There's so many good landscapes in the various basics over time that never see daylight and staying hydrated is critical to maintaining good health.

[pokken]

I think the counterargument to that is that a wide variety of creature wraths exist, and yet creatures have not yet been pushed out of the format. So there presumably exists a range where they could print Ruination effects without completely destroying utility and fixing. Wizards has obviously chosen not to go that route, but it was one that was open to them.

I think you could probably pretty easily counter-argue why that "counterargument" is not great without me doing it for you, but suffice it to say there are some substantial differences in how lands and creatures are played and what they do and the characteristics they have

[BeneTleilax]

This feels like really bad faith engagement with the topic at hand.

I am at least 90% sure Ilakunsa is just a troll. They post weak bait like this pretty regularly.

Anyway, more targeted, modal land destruction, less trying to enforce one's preferences on your table with brutal hate cards. It's a bad time, and comes from people preferring to arms race rather than talking to and respecting their fellow players.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

@BeneTleilax 90% sure is good enough for me. Advance thanks for the future unwasted effort 👍

EDIT: In my defense, weak bait does look delicious, hook be damned.

[DirkGently]

I think the counterargument to that is that a wide variety of creature wraths exist, and yet creatures have not yet been pushed out of the format. So there presumably exists a range where they could print Ruination effects without completely destroying utility and fixing. Wizards has obviously chosen not to go that route, but it was one that was open to them.

The analogy is bad because there are no such thing as "basic" creatures that don't get killed by board wipes. I.e. there's no alterative to play creatures which aren't effected, as there are with lands. But the common use of board wipes has definitely pushed people towards creatures with high immediate impacts, which would be somewhat analogous to your gaea's cradles etc, which is exactly my point. If playing a card type is a risk, you're incentivized to only play the ones that pay off as quickly as possible.

Of course it's used as a slightly more accurate analogy for indiscriminate MLD like geddon, but that's also a bad analogy because (1) you need a lot of lands to function in a normal deck - most commander decks probably want at minimum 6 lands available and most want a lot more than that, so "don't overextend" isn't really an option (2) creatures can have much more impact in a short span of time - if your con sphinx lasts a turn cycle before it gets killed, you easily won that exchange and (3) rebuilding after a creature wipe can be done quickly if planned ahead, whereas rebuilding from MLD is usually very slow outside of niche situations. There's probably other reasons why it's a bad analogy too, but those three alone are enough to make it completely useless in my view.

I think it would be fine if wotc had more soft-punish cards that made nonbasics worse without being as gross as ruination. As I said I'm pretty ok with blood moon.

This feels exaggerated to me. You really, really don't need lots of nonbasics for fixing. I've run 5 color decks with heavy basic land count forever. (Because when I play ruination, I do it from a 5 color deck!) Evolving wilds/Terramorphic/Panoramas are cheap and combined with green ramp I rarely have issue getting WUBRG. Multiple pips of the same color would be an issue, mind, but... at some point you need to pay some tradeoff in deckbuilding multiple colors?

Objectively you're making your decks much weaker by playing a manabase like that. Play in whatever way makes you happy, but that's a fact. There's a reason high-tier decklists in every format run a ton of nonbasics.

I do think there should be downsides to multicolor, but the current system kinda sucks. I think in an ideal world either one of the following would be true:

(1) the best fixing lands ever printed would be guildgate-tier
or
(2) there would be many commonly-played cards which nerf nonbasics in a relatively weak way (weaker than BM, B2B, and Ruination). Probably with other upsides so they're not totally dead versus decks without many nonbasics.

Either of those situations is much better in my mind since they punish multicolor in a way that's more spread out and consistent, unlike the current system where it's feast or famine - you get reliable mana across as many colors as you like, and then 1% of games you insta-lose to one card. That's basically the worst possible way to handle it, imo. Unfortunately since ruination and ABU duals already exist, it'd too late to pick either of those options and we're left with the current crappy one.

[Jemolk]

Either of those situations is much better in my mind since they punish multicolor in a way that's more spread out and consistent, unlike the current system where it's feast or famine - you get reliable mana across as many colors as you like, and then 1% of games you insta-lose to one card. That's basically the worst possible way to handle it, imo. Unfortunately since ruination and ABU duals already exist, it'd too late to pick either of those options and we're left with the current crappy one.

What if, instead, they print a whole bunch of variants of things like From the Ashes and Tsabo's Web? Blood Sun is also strong. And Damping Sphere hoses lands that produce multiple mana pretty hard. Something like those would be way more reasonable nonbasic hate. Also, Blood Sun in specific does have an effect on fixing, in that it shuts off fetch lands, and From the Ashes demands you play a decent quota of basics, but not nearly so many as Ruination, and as long as they're in your deck at all, it's improbable for it to just lock you out of the game. I'd favor this approach to nonbasic hosing, myself.

[BeneTleilax]

What if, instead, they print a whole bunch of variants of things like From the Ashes and Tsabo's Web? Blood Sun is also strong. And Damping Sphere hoses lands that produce multiple mana pretty hard. Something like those would be way more reasonable nonbasic hate. Also, Blood Sun in specific does have an effect on fixing, in that it shuts off fetch lands, and From the Ashes demands you play a decent quota of basics, but not nearly so many as Ruination, and as long as they're in your deck at all, it's improbable for it to just lock you out of the game. I'd favor this approach to nonbasic hosing, myself.

I'm in favor of all of those. I also want more targeted land hate cards to deal with things like Field of the Dead and Kessig Wolf Run that aren't just dead or spiteful if no-one has a scary nonbasic. Particularly in red, as green now has the best single-target land destruction of any color, imo, in Bosiju.

[kraus911]

My quick two cents. There was a time when Ruination fit the format and that time has passed. Not only does it actually hurt cheap manabases but it sends the green player wayyy ahead.

Also, yes, more targeted land removal, but EXILE, not destroy. It's so frustrating to waste a removal spell on Field of the Dead when that player has multiple ways to get it back. Give us a 2-3 mana exile target land card in red that has split second and it would go in every red deck.

Another great option would be an effect that turns off all abilities of lands except for mana abilities. Or all lands can only produce 1 mana of the type they're able to. Or even fix everyone and have an artifact that says "All nonbasic lands lose all abilities and have "tap for one mana of any of your commander's colors". Basically tablewide chromatic lantern that turns off fancy land things.

[DirkGently]

What if, instead, they print a whole bunch of variants of things like From the Ashes and Tsabo's Web? Blood Sun is also strong. And Damping Sphere hoses lands that produce multiple mana pretty hard. Something like those would be way more reasonable nonbasic hate. Also, Blood Sun in specific does have an effect on fixing, in that it shuts off fetch lands, and From the Ashes demands you play a decent quota of basics, but not nearly so many as Ruination, and as long as they're in your deck at all, it's improbable for it to just lock you out of the game. I'd favor this approach to nonbasic hosing, myself.

I think a lot of people tend not to play the soft-hate cards while hard-hate cards exist. I can get the logic - if you're dedicating a slot to hate on something, you probably want it to be as effective as possible. Cantripping is nice but it still feels kinda wasted. I think Scavenging Ooze is a good example of a hate card that people actually like to play because it does something meaningful even against non-grave decks. Plus I think it's good gameplay that you can direct it towards the player you need to stop - stuff like ruination can easily create collateral damage. I'm not a big custom card designer but stuff like scooze but for nonbasics seems like a good direction to go, whatever that might look like. I definitely think being permanent-based is important for hate cards since it means more colors can interact meaningfully.

From the Ashes I think is great design - reasonable to build around, only punishes greedy manabases, precons largely unaffected...but nobody plays it lol. 1117 decks is really low for a precon exclusive.

[brainface]

Objectively you're making your decks much weaker by playing a manabase like that. Play in whatever way makes you happy, but that's a fact. There's a reason high-tier decklists in every format run a ton of nonbasics.

I don't think it really does. At certain tiers of play where every card in your decklist is the _best_ card regardless of mana values, sure. But if a 5 color deck is trying to play every 2 color nontap land they can and dies to ruination they earned it. If they're playing the tapped 3-color lands and city of brass and doing their best, yeah, that sucks and it's no fun.

I just really think you can and should without much difficulty ration your nonbasic slots in order to avoid getting blown out by ruination or a blood moon. That means your mana base isn't the hypothetical best it could be but the best lands are the ones you have in play, tapping for the color they're supposed to.

[TheGildedGoose]

Objectively you're making your decks much weaker by playing a manabase like that. Play in whatever way makes you happy, but that's a fact. There's a reason high-tier decklists in every format run a ton of nonbasics.

I don't think it really does. At certain tiers of play where every card in your decklist is the _best_ card regardless of mana values, sure. But if a 5 color deck is trying to play every 2 color nontap land they can and dies to ruination they earned it. If they're playing the tapped 3-color lands and city of brass and doing their best, yeah, that sucks and it's no fun.

I just really think you can and should without much difficulty ration your nonbasic slots in order to avoid getting blown out by ruination or a blood moon. That means your mana base isn't the hypothetical best it could be but the best lands are the ones you have in play, tapping for the color they're supposed to.

Magic is Moneyball. For the typical FLGS optimized meta, you're losing more games due to mana screw than winning games by sticking to basics to duck nonbasic hate. Personally I strongly dislike that fetches and basic typed nonbasics have rendered manabase crafting obsolete and think there should be ways to punish 3+ colored decks that don't also affect Little Billy's 2 color pile, but Ruination ain't it. Ruination doesn't create interesting play or design space, which is the whole point of the thread.

[DirkGently]

I don't think it really does. At certain tiers of play where every card in your decklist is the _best_ card regardless of mana values, sure. But if a 5 color deck is trying to play every 2 color nontap land they can and dies to ruination they earned it. If they're playing the tapped 3-color lands and city of brass and doing their best, yeah, that sucks and it's no fun.

I just really think you can and should without much difficulty ration your nonbasic slots in order to avoid getting blown out by ruination or a blood moon. That means your mana base isn't the hypothetical best it could be but the best lands are the ones you have in play, tapping for the color they're supposed to.

I'm a little confused because your response doesn't seem to correspond to the part of my post you quoted. "Don't think it really does" what, exactly? And more powerful tiers care the most about mana value, they aren't "regardless" of them. Do you mean high color requirements cards? But there are plenty of good/fun cards that are heavily pipped at all tiers of play, besides which a basics-only manabase is going to suffer consistency issues even in 3c even without any 3+ pip requirements - especially in a format where you always have access to a card that requires each of your colors to cast and is probably crucial to your strategy.

The number of times I've been blown out by nonbasic hate is quite small relative to the total number of games I've played - as the low usage rate for those cards suggests. I can absolutely guarantee beyond a shadow of a doubt that the consistency I've had from a strong manabase has won me more games than I've lost from nonbasic hate, by several orders of magnitude. Blood moon sees far more play in 60-card than it does in EDH, but people still play heavily nonbasic manabases because it's still worth it. cEDH decklists run heavily nonbasic manabases as well, lest you think it's format-specific to 60-card. Your intuition of "I just really think you can and should[...]ration your nonbasic slots" is opposed by mountains of evidence over decades of competitive play in environments far more willing to run nonbasic hate. Justify your deckbuilding decisions however you like, but there is no debate to be had here. You haven't discovered the secret to cheap reliable manabases, you've just gotten used to a bad manabase.

Magic is Moneyball. For the typical FLGS optimized meta, you're losing more games due to mana screw than winning games by sticking to basics to duck nonbasic hate. Personally I strongly dislike that fetches and basic typed nonbasics have rendered manabase crafting obsolete and think there should be ways to punish 3+ colored decks that don't also affect Little Billy's 2 color pile, but Ruination ain't it. Ruination doesn't create interesting play or design space, which is the whole point of the thread.

This is all true, although even if ruination left guildgates unaffected it would still be bad gameplay imo. Expensive manabases should have ways to hate on them that aren't "looks like you lose the game". Unfortunately magic mostly works on hard counters, though, which is probably less of a problem in 60 card than it is here since each 60-card game is short compared to an EDH game.

[hyalopterouslemur]

I'm not sure "It only interacts with the stack" is a valid argument either. Two whole card types only interact with the stack, and if you're playing, e.g., extra turns, you're definitely doing something more unfun than land destruction.

And again, this strikes me as 100% a variant of "control is UNFAIR!" Like, I'll say control decks are often overpowered, especially in eternal formats where they're the only defense against combo, but I also understand they play a critical role in the game.

[DirkGently]

I'm not sure "It only interacts with the stack" is a valid argument either. Two whole card types only interact with the stack, and if you're playing, e.g., extra turns, you're definitely doing something more unfun than land destruction.

I don't agree with that. I don't like extra turns either, but one extra turn doesn't necessarily make the game miserable. One MLD (ruination or otherwise), almost certainly.

And again, this strikes me as 100% a variant of "control is UNFAIR!" Like, I'll say control decks are often overpowered, especially in eternal formats where they're the only defense against combo, but I also understand they play a critical role in the game.

When did I say anything bad about control? I love control. Besides, there are control decks that aren't blue. Most combos can be broken without access to counterspells. The issue isn't the control decks answering mld, the issue is the MLD (and one facet of that is non-blue control decks and non-control decks being unable to answer those cards).

[Mookie]

Hypothesis: the issue isn't necessarily any particular land destruction effect - rather, it's that these effects are too broad, like using a sledgehammer (or perhaps dynamite) to open a jar. We need something more specialized.

From an ideological perspective, I feel that all strategies should have some form of counterplay, and the impact of that counterplay should be proportional to how far a strategy deviates from the norm. The issue with MLD is that every strategy depends on lands to some extent (minus something like manaless dredge), which means that 'deviates from the norm' is more difficult to quantify.

I would say the issue with Ruination is that the presence or absence of nonbasics is a terrible indicator of what a deck is doing. I've seen colorless decks running entirely nonbasics because they can, and 2/3C decks heavy on nonbasics for fixing. I've also seen 5C decks packed full of basics and Cultivate effects. I don't mind someone running nonbasic hate to mess with 4/5C piles, and I also don't mind someone running ways to interact with problematic lands like Gaea's Cradle or Maze of Ith... but if you're running Ruination or nonbasic to mess with one strategy and miss it entirely, while knocking a 2C deck out of the game for having the audacity to try to cast their spells without running green... yeah, that's a problem.

Another issue with land-hate effects is that they tend to be pretty binary - they often either do nothing or they knock a player out of the game entirely, with little in between. It may be better if we had more targeted effects to play against the strategies we dislike, while not catching other decks in the crossfire... or being so severe that they take out a player by themself. I like that Damping Sphere exists as a way to stop Cabal Coffers / Gaea's Cradle, and I suppose Blood Sun and Tsabo's Web exist, as does Hall of Gemstone... but we could certainly use some more variety.

[plushpenguin]

mass land destruction is just... not good these days. Not a good design, nor actually effective at power levels that warrant it.

I do like From the Ashes, but that card actually can be net mana positive when played strategically, which is the only reason why I could consider it any good, but even then, it might not do enough half the time.

I even stopped playing blood moon variants because they become really bad if they have manarocks, treasures, or any ramp before you can get them out.

Mana generation is so good these days that playing Rule of Law is a better way of stopping people from going crazy than trying to blow up their lands in high power settings. And in low power settings, don't bother. The measure is not warranted, nor appropriate. Even in low power settings, rule of law does work if you can work around it.

[Jemolk]

What if, instead, they print a whole bunch of variants of things like From the Ashes and Tsabo's Web? Blood Sun is also strong. And Damping Sphere hoses lands that produce multiple mana pretty hard. Something like those would be way more reasonable nonbasic hate. Also, Blood Sun in specific does have an effect on fixing, in that it shuts off fetch lands, and From the Ashes demands you play a decent quota of basics, but not nearly so many as Ruination, and as long as they're in your deck at all, it's improbable for it to just lock you out of the game. I'd favor this approach to nonbasic hosing, myself.

I'm in favor of all of those. I also want more targeted land hate cards to deal with things like Field of the Dead and Kessig Wolf Run that aren't just dead or spiteful if no-one has a scary nonbasic. Particularly in red, as green now has the best single-target land destruction of any color, imo, in Bosiju.

Good single-target land removal? Well, Strip Mine, Field of Ruin, Tectonic Edge, and Wasteland|Tempest are pretty good, in that they leave your target down the same number of lands relative to the rest of the table as they leave you. Ghost Quarter is also pretty decent, though worse than the others mentioned, while being a reasonable budget option. Bonus -- they're colorless identity and, as lands themselves, have a very low opportunity cost. I usually try to run at least 2 of them in any deck that isn't trying to abuse Crucible of Worlds (I don't want to ever be tempted to lock someone out of the game). Memorial to War is decent as a red land with an even lower opportunity cost since it also produces colored mana, but it costs a lot to activate. That and Gnottvold Slumbermound are what I use for land hate when I do have Crucible. All in all, single-target, one-shot land destruction is pretty well covered IMHO.

They won't cover someone like pokken really trying to abuse Loam and Crucible, but they cover random copies of Field of the Dead or Maze of Ith pretty well in my experience.