Quote Originally Posted by Ronald Deuce View Post
No, it isn't; it's a free card that flashback Firebolts your opponent every turn if you control a Desert once you reach turn 5 if you found the card in the top 12–13 cards in your deck and you've found Deserts enough to expend them on each of those turns. But explain to me how that's the card that's torpedoing the format and why the deck's competitors should exist, either, if they die to that.
So, the thing with Ruins - and Hazoret, while we're on the subject - is not the efficiency of the cards themselves, it what they do to the play pattern of RDW vs. Durdle Control. Normally, historically, the way these matchups work is that RDW is on a timer, and that timer is the first sweeper control can resolve. Once control resolves a sweeper, chances are pretty good you don't have enough cards to force the remaining damage through control's one-for-ones, and you just kind of lose from there.

Pre-ban RDW was actually about as resilient against Durdle Control as you can get. Hazoret and Ruins both meant that even if you're ripping lands, you're still able to convert them into damage, so control can't just automatically assume that X% of your deck doesn't dome them and decide whether to make risky plays to consolidate their position. Because you're mono-color, there's little opportunity cost to running a small pile of colorless deserts to fuel Ruins, and one of those deserts (Sunscorched Desert) is a damage source itself. This is also on top of the haste guys the deck runs and the Eternalize bear that domes the opponent as an ETB effect. All of those together means the first sweeper very often doesn't stabilize you, unless it exiles (Settle the Wreckage), because there still so many ways to convert lackluster topdecks into damage.

I think Hazoret would have been a better ban than Ruins if that was actually their logic, but there's also more ways in Standard right now to exile a creature than get rid of a land, so...