Ruin in Their Wake MTG Card

Ruin in Their Wake - Oath of the Gatewatch (OGW)

Oath of the Gatewatch (OGW)
2016-01-22 - Number 122

Ruin in Their Wake - Jumpstart 2022 (J22)

Jumpstart 2022 (J22)
2022-12-02 - Number 132

Card sets	Released in 2 setsSee all
Mana cost
Converted mana cost	2
Rarity	Uncommon
Type	Sorcery
Abilities	Devoid

Key Takeaways

Ruin in Their Wake improves deck performance by thinning, ensuring better draws later.
Its conditional land ramp offers strategic advantages for landfall and Eldrazi decks.
Ramp potency hinges on controlling a Wastes or Desert, challenging deck construction.

Text of card

Devoid (This card has no color.) Search your library for a basic land card and reveal it. You may put that card onto the battlefield tapped if you control a land named Wastes. Otherwise, put that card into your hand. Then shuffle your library.

Card Pros

Card Advantage: While Ruin in Their Wake doesn’t directly let you draw cards, it does streamline your deck by effectively thinning it as you search for a basic land card or Wastes. This method polishes your chances of drawing into more impactful cards later in the game, allowing for better deck performance and maintaining card quality in your hand.

Resource Acceleration: One of the key benefits of using Ruin in Their Wake lies in its potential for resource acceleration. By enabling you to search for a Wastes card, it guarantees a land drop that can provide the colorless mana needed for various Eldrazi spells or abilities. If you control a Wastes as you cast this spell, you get an additional bonus by placing that land card onto the battlefield untapped, propelling your mana curve ahead and giving you a significant lead.

Instant Speed: Although Ruin in Their Wake is a sorcery, it opportunistically sets the stage for instant-speed plays. The rapid mana development this card promotes grants a strategic advantage, allowing players to deploy threats or hold up mana for interaction quicker than usual, which can be a game-changer in fast-paced matches.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: One downside of Ruin in Their Wake is the necessity to have a Wastes or a land with a subtype Desert in play to achieve its ramping potential. Without this condition met, it becomes severely less effective, almost acting as a dead draw especially in the early game where establishing your mana base is crucial.

Specific Mana Cost: This spell requires one colorless and one green mana, which necessitates a dual-colored mana base. This can be restrictive for decks that do not consistently have access to both types of mana or those that need to maintain a flexible mana base for a variety of spell costs.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: While two mana for potential land ramp is reasonable, the conditional nature of Ruin in Their Wake’s benefit often compares unfavorably to other ramp cards with a guaranteed outcome. Cards such as Rampant Growth provide a similar effect without the stringent land type requirement, offering more reliability for the same mana investment.

Reasons to Include Ruin in Their Wake in Your Collection

Versatility: Ruin in Their Wake offers a ramping option that can slip into color-specific or multicolored decks that have a focus on land synergies. Its requirement of a Wastes card enables interesting deck building around the colorless mana symbol.

Combo Potential: This card pairs well with landfall decks or strategies that benefit from having multiple lands entering the battlefield, as it accelerates your mana availability and can lead to powerful plays earlier in the game.

Meta-Relevance: In environments where fast mana acceleration is king, Ruin in Their Wake stands out. It’s a boon for decks that need to outpace opponents and establish board control quickly, adapting to various meta scenarios with ease.

How to beat

Ruin in Their Wake is an intriguing sorcery card that rewards players for controlling a Wastes, Magic: The Gathering’s colorless land. This card is adept at ramping up a player’s mana base, allowing for quicker deployment of high-cost spells. To effectively counter this strategy, disruption is key. Denying the player’s access to Wastes or any land card through land destruction or counter spells stymies their mana acceleration and can give you a critical advantage.

Consider cards like Ghost Quarter and Field of Ruin that can target and remove Wastes from play, hindering the Ruin in Their Wake’s secondary effect. Additionally, employing counter spells like Negate when Ruin in Their Wake is cast can ensure that your opponent’s mana development is suppressed. This approach requires precise timing and a good understanding of when to hold back your disruption to maximize its impact.

Maintaining pressure on an opponent’s resources can greatly reduce the efficacy of Ruin in Their Wake. By keeping their land count low and their resources under control, you can mitigate the benefits they might gain from this powerful ramp card.

Cards like Ruin in Their Wake

Ruin in Their Wake is an intriguing ramp spell in Magic: The Gathering, sharing a functional resemblance to the well-known card Rampant Growth. Both cards enable a player to search their library for a land and put it onto the battlefield. Ruin in Their Wake, however, has the added requirement of controlling a Wastes or a land with a basic land type to unlock its full potential, accelerating mana resources significantly. Unlike Rampant Growth, if this condition is not met, you’re merely placing the land in your hand instead of on the battlefield.

Another card to consider in this realm is Explore. Both Ruin in Their Wake and Explore allow for potential acceleration but in different ways. Explore provides an extra land drop and an additional card draw for the turn, but doesn’t thin the deck by searching for a land. Consequently, while Explore offers immediate value, Ruin in Their Wake presents a condition-dependent but potentially more impactful gain in the long term.

Ruin in Their Wake’s niche requirement and effect place it in a unique position within ramp spells in Magic: The Gathering. For those decks embracing the Wastes or already flush with basic land types, this card can become a powerful tool to outpace an opponent.

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Ruin in Their Wake MTG card by a specific set like Oath of the Gatewatch and Jumpstart 2022, 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 Ruin in Their Wake and other MTG cards:

Continue exploring other sealed products in Amazon
See MTG Products

Printings

The Ruin in Their Wake Magic the Gathering card was released in 2 different sets between 2016-01-22 and 2022-12-02. Illustrated by 2 different artists.