Timberland Ruins MTG Card

Rarity	Common
Type	Land
Released	2001-10-01
Set symbol
Set name	Odyssey
Set code	ODY
Number	330
Frame	1997
Layout	Normal
Border	Black
Illustred by	Alan Pollack

Key Takeaways

Enhances card advantage by retrieving lands from the graveyard, vital for sustained play.
Provides rapid resource acceleration, crucial for decks that prioritize faster, larger plays.
Offers unexpected instant-speed interactions, empowering decks with landfall synergies.

Text of card

Timberland Ruins comes into play tapped. oc T: Add o G to your mana pool. oc T, Sacrifice Timberland Ruins: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Timberland Ruins can subtly boost your card advantage by ensuring a land drop from your graveyard, thus effectively increasing the number of cards at your disposal over the course of a game.

Resource Acceleration: This card serves as an engine of resource acceleration, potentially transforming lands in the graveyard into immediate utility on the battlefield, key for ramp strategies that aim to outpace the opponent with larger threats or more complex spells.

Instant Speed: Although lands are typically not associated with instant speed actions, the interplay between Timberland Ruins and other cards can facilitate unexpected instant-speed interactions, such as landfall triggers or surprising your opponents with an additional mana source during pivotal turns.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: Timberland Ruins presents a challenging requirement for players by necessitating the discard of a card to harness its full potential. This could deplete a player’s hand at critical moments, potentially impacting their long-term strategy and board presence.

Specific Mana Cost: Restricting deck-building flexibility, the land supplies colorless mana which might not align with mana needs of a multicolor deck craving diverse color combinations. While a mono-green deck might welcome the addition, others could find it less harmonious.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: To unlock its full capabilities, this land carries a higher-manacost threshold, demanding a substantial investment which might not synergize well with decks designed for nimbleness and lower curves. Within the pantheon of utility lands available, alternatives may offer similar benefits without such a steep entry point.

Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Timberland Ruins offers unique flexibility, easily integrating into decks that capitalize on landfall mechanics or require a diverse mana base. Its ability to tap for colorless or for green mana when destined for a creature spell makes it a smart utility choice.

Combo Potential: This land card can be integral in orchestrating combos, particularly in decks that focus on creatures with activated abilities. It supports strategies where mana acceleration or color fixing is crucial to executing your game plan seamlessly.

Meta-Relevance: With the shifting landscape of competitive play, the adaptability of Timberland Ruins keeps it relevant. In a creature-centric meta, this land could provide the edge needed to outpace opponents by streamlining the casting of pivotal creatures.

How to Beat

Timberland Ruins is an intriguing land card in Magic: The Gathering, offering a unique mana ramping ability at the cost of land sacrifice. Understanding its dynamics is essential when facing an opponent who utilizes this card to advance their mana production.

To effectively counter Timberland Ruins, consider accelerating your own resource development to keep pace or disrupting your opponent’s land base. Land destruction spells or effects that limit land plays can significantly hinder the benefits of Timberland Ruins. Prioritize maintaining a robust land count and deploying strategies to reduce your reliance on a single land source. Cards that restrict land searching, like Ashiok, Dream Render, or Leonin Arbiter, can be particularly useful in this regard.

Overall, by adopting a proactive approach to resource management and incorporating tools to limit your opponent’s use of Timberland Ruins, you can tilt the scales in your favor, making it challenging for your opponent to fully capitalize on its ramping potential.

Cards like Timberland Ruins

Timberland Ruins offers MTG deck builders an interesting option for land utilization. When compared with other nonbasic lands like Temple of the False God, Timberland Ruins stands out due to its ability to provide color-specific mana without any conditions. Temple of the False God requires you to control at least five lands to tap for mana, imposing a restriction absent in Timberland Ruins.

In the realm of color-fixing, lands such as Evolving Wilds or Terramorphic Expanse offer deck thinning by searching your library for a basic land, which enters the battlefield tapped. While these lands ensure the right mana is available, they don’t add mana to your mana pool immediately like Timberland Ruins can. Other similar cards might be the Ravnica bouncelands such as Gruul Turf. These lands return another land to your hand when they come into play, potentially setting back your tempo, where Timberland Ruins does not.

Each of these lands caters to different strategies and stages of the game. For decks that need an early advantage with no strings attached, Timberland Ruins provides a simple yet valuable role, fitting seamlessly into strategies that demand consistent mana production from the get-go.

Temple of the False God - MTG Card versions

Terramorphic Expanse - MTG Card versions

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

Havenwood Battleground - MTG Card versions

Boseiju, Who Endures - MTG Card versions

Oran-Rief, the Vastwood - MTG Card versions

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Timberland Ruins MTG card by a specific set like Odyssey, 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 Timberland Ruins and other MTG cards: