Academy Ruins MTG Card


Card setsReleased in 7 setsSee all
RarityRare
TypeLegendary Land

Key Takeaways

  1. Provides consistent artifact recovery, solidifying longer-term strategies in both casual and competitive MTG decks.
  2. Lands such as Academy Ruins amplify artifact-based plays, bolstering deck resilience and enabling combos.
  3. Opponents can counter Academy Ruins with targeted land destruction or graveyard hate strategies in MTG.

Text of card

: Add to your mana pool. , : Put target artifact card in your graveyard on top of your library.

Its secrets once wrought the greatest artifice ever known. Now crabs loot the rubble to decorate their shells.


Card Pros

Card Advantage: Academy Ruins offers a strategic upper hand by enabling you to bring back key artifacts from your graveyard to your deck, ensuring your resources are consistently replenished and making the most of your card pool.

Resource Acceleration: By returning an artifact to the top of your deck each turn, Academy Ruins effectively accelerates your resources. This constant recycling of powerful artifacts can quickly swing the game in your favor.

Instant Speed: The utility of Academy Ruins lies in its ability to operate at instant speed. You can end your turn without expending any mana and decide at the last moment, right before your draw, if you want to utilize the Ruins’ ability, keeping your options flexible.


Card Cons

Discard Requirement: While Academy Ruins doesn’t have a discard requirement in its traditional sense, it does require you to put a card from your hand on top of your library to activate its ability. This can impede hand development, especially when you’re in need of more options or looking to maintain card advantage.

Specific Mana Cost: Academy Ruins’ activation cost necessitates at least one blue mana. This specificity can pose a constraint to decks that run multiple colors or those that do not have a reliable source of blue mana, limiting its versatility within the wider range of MTG strategies.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: The land’s ability to return an artifact from your graveyard to the top of your library comes with a combined mana cost, including both generic and blue mana. This cost can be considered steep when compared to other cards that might recover artifacts from the graveyard for less, potentially hindering your turn’s mana efficiency.


Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Academy Ruins offers a level of flexibility not found in many locations within your deck. This land seamlessly integrates into artifact-heavy builds and can recur critical pieces, ensuring your key strategies are always within reach.

Combo Potential: This card’s ability to place an artifact from your graveyard on top of your library each turn sets the stage for potent combinations. It works exceptionally well with cards designed for repeated use or with self-sacrificing artifacts, thus fueling complex and powerful interactions.

Meta-Relevance: Given its utility in retrieving high-impact artifacts, Academy Ruins maintains its significance in varied metagame landscapes, providing resilience against discard strategies and enabling recurrent engines that many opponents find challenging to disrupt.


How to beat

Academy Ruins stands out in the MTG universe as a powerful land, known for its ability to recurrently bring artifacts from the graveyard back to the owner’s deck. Disrupting an opponent’s strategy that relies on Academy Ruins can be challenging, but there are several methods to effectively counter this capability. Land destruction cards, such as Ghost Quarter or Field of Ruin, can target and eliminate Academy Ruins, putting a halt to the reusability of artifacts. Graveyard hate, through spells like Relic of Progenitus or Rest in Peace, can exile artifacts before they can be targeted by the Ruins’ ability. Additionally, instant-speed removal, like Nature’s Claim or Krosan Grip, can dismantle key artifacts in response to the trigger of Academy Ruins, preventing the intended recursion from accumulating value.

Controlling an opponent’s land base and being preemptive about graveyard strategies can turn the tide of the game. Applying consistent pressure and restricting the player’s access to their graveyard disrupts the synergy that Academy Ruins creates with artifacts, ultimately granting you an upper hand. Therefore, understanding and utilizing cards that can directly confront and neutralize Academy Ruins will be crucial in maintaining dominance on the battlefield.


Cards like Academy Ruins

Academy Ruins is a unique land card within the MTG universe that taps into the strategic depth of artifact recovery. Like Buried Ruin, Academy Ruins allows players to bring back artifacts from their graveyard. However, Academy Ruins bears the advantage of repeatability, letting you return an artifact to the top of your library during each of your upkeeps if you choose. Buried Ruin, in contrast, requires sacrificing the land for a one-time effect.

Volrath’s Stronghold serves a similar purpose but for creature cards instead, a subtle but pivotal difference for deck themes focusing on creatures. While the Ruins and the Stronghold both place their targets on top of the library, this design feature ensures a continual resource stream, elevating Academy Ruins to staple status in artifact-centric decks.

In surveying comparable options, Academy Ruins showcases itself as a formidable choice for its consistent artifact retrieval mechanism. Its presence on the battlefield poses a standing threat, as it can turn an arsenal of artifacts into an unending wellspring, thus planting it firmly among the top land cards for resilience and strategic depth in Magic: The Gathering decks adept at leveraging the power of artifacts.

Buried Ruin - MTG Card versions
Volrath's Stronghold - MTG Card versions
Buried Ruin - Magic 2012 (M12)
Volrath's Stronghold - Stronghold (STH)

Cards similar to Academy Ruins by color, type and mana cost

Island - MTG Card versions
Cephalid Coliseum - MTG Card versions
Magosi, the Waterveil - MTG Card versions
Faerie Conclave - MTG Card versions
Halimar Depths - MTG Card versions
Lonely Sandbar - MTG Card versions
Tolaria West - MTG Card versions
Snow-Covered Island - MTG Card versions
Jasconian Isle - MTG Card versions
Thriving Isle - MTG Card versions
Glasspool Mimic // Glasspool Shore - MTG Card versions
Sea Gate Restoration // Sea Gate, Reborn - MTG Card versions
Beyeen Veil // Beyeen Coast - MTG Card versions
Memorial to Genius - MTG Card versions
Otawara, Soaring City - MTG Card versions
Rivendell - MTG Card versions
Island - Murders at Karlov Manor (MKM)
Cephalid Coliseum - Odyssey (ODY)
Magosi, the Waterveil - Zendikar (ZEN)
Faerie Conclave - Commander 2013 (C13)
Halimar Depths - Duel Decks: Jace vs. Vraska (DDM)
Lonely Sandbar - Commander 2021 (C21)
Tolaria West - From the Vault: Lore (V16)
Snow-Covered Island - MTG Arena Promos (PANA)
Jasconian Isle - Mystery Booster Playtest Cards 2019 (CMB1)
Thriving Isle - Jumpstart 2022 (J22)
Glasspool Mimic // Glasspool Shore - Zendikar Rising (ZNR)
Sea Gate Restoration // Sea Gate, Reborn - Zendikar Rising Promos (PZNR)
Beyeen Veil // Beyeen Coast - Zendikar Rising (ZNR)
Memorial to Genius - Commander 2021 (C21)
Otawara, Soaring City - Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Promos (PNEO)
Rivendell - The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth (LTR)

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Academy Ruins MTG card by a specific set like Magic Online Promos and Time Spiral, there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.

For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.

Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.

Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Academy Ruins and other MTG cards:

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Printings

The Academy Ruins Magic the Gathering card was released in 6 different sets between 2006-10-06 and 2020-08-07. Illustrated by 7 different artists.

#ReleaseNameCodeSymbolNumberFrameLayoutBorderArtist
12002-06-24Magic Online PromosPRM 828182015normalblackJohn Avon
22006-10-06Time SpiralTSP 2692003normalblackZoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai
32013-06-07Modern MastersMMA 2192003normalblackZoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai
42019-12-02Secret Lair DropSLD 15062015normalborderlessEliz Roxs
52020-08-07Double Masters2XM 3092015normalblackZoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai
62020-08-07Double Masters2XM 3692015normalborderlessJohn Avon
72020-09-26The ListPLST 2XM-3092015normalblackZoltan Boros & Gabor Szikszai

Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Academy Ruins has restrictions

FormatLegality
CommanderLegal
LegacyLegal
ModernLegal
OathbreakerLegal
VintageLegal
DuelLegal
PredhLegal
PennyLegal

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