Buried Ruin MTG Card


Card setsReleased in 12 setsSee all
RarityUncommon
TypeLand

Key Takeaways

  1. Buried Ruin transcends basic land function by recovering artifacts, ensuring card advantage and resource balance.
  2. It accelerates play by reviving cost-efficient artifacts, leading to early game-changing spells and abilities.
  3. Despite its benefits, the need for colorless mana and land sacrifice can significantly impact its strategic utility.

Text of card

: Add to your mana pool. , , Sacrifice Buried Ruin: Return target artifact card from your graveyard to your hand.

History has buried its treasures deep.


Card Pros

Card Advantage: Buried Ruin offers utility beyond being just a mana source. It enables you to retrieve an important artifact from your graveyard, essentially replacing itself with another card from your deck and maintaining your hand resources.

Resource Acceleration: By bringing back artifacts that generate or cost less mana than they are worth, Buried Ruin can lead to significant mana efficiency, enabling you to play more costly spells ahead of curve or activate potent abilities earlier than expected.

Instant Speed: Although Buried Ruin’s ability isn’t at instant speed itself, it interacts well with artifacts that have instant-speed capabilities, giving you the flexibility to adapt your plays according to the state of the game while keeping up the pressure or defenses as needed.


Card Cons

Discard Requirement: With Buried Ruin, you’re faced with the sacrifice of the land itself. This can put you at a notable disadvantage, especially if you are tight on land resources or require a specific land count for other cards in your strategy.

Specific Mana Cost: The activation cost of Buried Ruin requires colorless mana, which may not be as easily accessible for decks that heavily rely on colored mana sources or those that are more focused on multicolored strategies.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: Weighing the cost and benefit, although the two mana activation of Buried Ruin might seem manageable, the requisition for an additional land sacrifice makes the total cost steeper, especially when considering other cards that might retrieve artifacts without such a steep land investment.


Reasons to Include Buried Ruin in Your Collection

Versatility: Buried Ruin offers a unique flexibility as a land card – it taps for colorless mana, and it can also recover an important artifact from your graveyard. This makes it a seamless inclusion in decks reliant on artifacts or those that need a way to recoup vital pieces after they’ve been destroyed.

Combo Potential: This card can be a linchpin in artifact-centric combos, offering a way to return key artifacts to your hand, thus enabling recurring interactions or simply retrieving a central combo piece that has been disrupted by your opponent.

Meta-Relevance: With constantly evolving metagames that occasionally favor artifact strategies, having Buried Ruin can give players an upper hand. In formats like Commander, where artifacts often play a significant role, the ability to bring them back from the graveyard can be game-defining.


How to beat

Buried Ruin offers a strategic advantage in Magic: The Gathering due to its ability to return an artifact from a player’s graveyard to their hand. This can tip the scales in a game, especially in artifact-heavy decks that lean on powerful artifact synergies to dominate the board. Nonetheless, defeating a strategy centered around Buried Ruin involves a few thoughtful tactics.

To mitigate the impact of Buried Ruin, consider using land destruction or graveyard disruption spells. Cards like Ghost Quarter can target and eliminate Buried Ruin, preventing the retrieval of key artifacts. Alternatively, graveyard manipulation spells like Tormod’s Crypt can exile artifacts from the graveyard before Buried Ruin has a chance to act. Ensuring you have answers like these in your deck will increase your resilience against decks utilizing Buried Ruin and similar strategies. Always be aware of your opponent’s graveyard and the potential for an artifact’s return when Buried Ruin is in play.

Counteracting Buried Ruin requires not only the right cards but also a keen sense of timing. Keep pressure on your opponent and maintain control over the graveyard to successfully neutralize Buried Ruin’s influence in the game.


Cards like Buried Ruin

Buried Ruin is an interesting utility land in the landscape of Magic: The Gathering. It shares its fundamental purpose with other lands that also retrieve cards from the graveyard, such as Academy Ruins. While Academy Ruins focuses on retrieving only artifacts at the upkeep stage for a blue mana, Buried Ruin offers a more immediate advantage, though it sacrifices itself in the process.

Another card that resonates with Buried Ruin’s functionality is Inventors’ Fair. This land has the added bonus of gaining life and an ability to search for an artifact card. However, it’s tied to having a substantial number of artifacts on the battlefield. Hall of Heliod’s Generosity also shows a resemblance in utility by returning enchantments from the graveyard, showing how cards like Buried Ruin have tailored effects specific to card types.

Amidst the spectrum of land cards with reanimating capabilities, Buried Ruin stands out due to its simplicity and low activation cost. It is a testament to the card’s utility and flexibility within artifact-centric decks where immediate access to key components can be game-changing.

Academy Ruins - MTG Card versions
Inventors' Fair - MTG Card versions
Hall of Heliod's Generosity - MTG Card versions
Academy Ruins - Time Spiral (TSP)
Inventors' Fair - Kaladesh Promos (PKLD)
Hall of Heliod's Generosity - Modern Horizons (MH1)

Cards similar to Buried Ruin by color, type and mana cost

Cathedral of Serra - MTG Card versions
Mishra's Factory - MTG Card versions
Griffin Canyon - MTG Card versions
Ice Floe - MTG Card versions
Ghost Town - MTG Card versions
City of Brass - MTG Card versions
Bloodstained Mire - MTG Card versions
Zoetic Cavern - MTG Card versions
Grixis Panorama - MTG Card versions
Rupture Spire - MTG Card versions
Terramorphic Expanse - MTG Card versions
Tectonic Edge - MTG Card versions
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx - MTG Card versions
Wasteland - MTG Card versions
Eldrazi Temple - MTG Card versions
Maze of Ith - MTG Card versions
Homeward Path - MTG Card versions
Arid Mesa - MTG Card versions
Field of Ruin - MTG Card versions
Arcane Lighthouse - MTG Card versions
Cathedral of Serra - Legends (LEG)
Mishra's Factory - Dominaria Remastered (DMR)
Griffin Canyon - Visions (VIS)
Ice Floe - Fifth Edition (5ED)
Ghost Town - Tempest (TMP)
City of Brass - World Championship Decks 2002 (WC02)
Bloodstained Mire - World Championship Decks 2003 (WC03)
Zoetic Cavern - Future Sight (FUT)
Grixis Panorama - Commander 2013 (C13)
Rupture Spire - Magic Online Theme Decks (TD0)
Terramorphic Expanse - Commander 2018 (C18)
Tectonic Edge - Zendikar Expeditions (EXP)
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx - Theros (THS)
Wasteland - Zendikar Rising Expeditions (ZNE)
Eldrazi Temple - Duel Decks: Zendikar vs. Eldrazi (DDP)
Maze of Ith - Eternal Masters (EMA)
Homeward Path - Judge Gift Cards 2017 (J17)
Arid Mesa - Modern Masters 2017 (MM3)
Field of Ruin - Innistrad: Midnight Hunt (MID)
Arcane Lighthouse - Commander Anthology Volume II (CM2)

Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Buried Ruin MTG card by a specific set like Magic 2012 and Commander 2014, 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 Buried Ruin and other MTG cards:

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Printings

The Buried Ruin Magic the Gathering card was released in 11 different sets between 2011-07-15 and 2024-03-08. Illustrated by 2 different artists.

#ReleaseNameCodeSymbolNumberFrameLayoutBorderArtist
12011-07-15Magic 2012M12 2242003normalblackFranz Vohwinkel
22014-11-07Commander 2014C14 2862015normalblackFranz Vohwinkel
32016-11-11Commander 2016C16 2842015normalblackFranz Vohwinkel
42018-06-08Commander Anthology Volume IICM2 2412015normalblackFranz Vohwinkel
52018-08-09Commander 2018C18 2392015normalblackFranz Vohwinkel
62020-07-17JumpstartJMP 4912015normalblackFranz Vohwinkel
72020-08-07Double Masters2XM 3122015normalblackFranz Vohwinkel
82020-09-26The ListPLST 2XM-3122015normalblackFranz Vohwinkel
92022-11-18The Brothers' War CommanderBRC 1771997normalblackFranz Vohwinkel
102023-02-03Phyrexia: All Will Be One CommanderONC 1472015normalblackFranz Vohwinkel
112024-03-08FalloutPIP 7822015normalblackArthur Yuan
122024-03-08FalloutPIP 2542015normalblackArthur Yuan

Legalities

Magic the Gathering formats where Buried Ruin has restrictions

FormatLegality
CommanderLegal
HistoricLegal
LegacyLegal
ModernLegal
OathbreakerLegal
VintageLegal
DuelLegal
GladiatorLegal
BrawlLegal
TimelessLegal

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