How good will Ruinous Path be?
Standard forum
Posted on Sept. 14, 2015, 8:46 a.m. by capriom85
Hero's Downfall was a 4 of all star last standard season. How will Ruinous Path measure up at sorcery speed?
Downfall was far from a 4-of all star. It was at best 2-3 of even in dedicated control decks, as 3 mana is a lot. This being a sorcery is already very limiting.
Highly depends on whether Kiora/Ob/Sarkhan become a thing. I abstain from opinionating right now.
September 14, 2015 8:55 a.m.
Only thing that worries me about Celestial Flare is that I don't get to target. If they ramp into an indestructible Ulamog in guessing there is something else on the board already. I'm running Foul-Tongue Invocation with the same worry.
To deal with that kind of stuff I am planning to work with hedron network or the Oblivion Ring with flash that was spoiled.
September 14, 2015 8:58 a.m.
it is the only thing we had currently that will outright get rid of a PW. I think even that is great at sorcery speed. The biggest PW pain was Elspeth, and she isn't really going anywhere since Gideon is similar to a downgraded version of here. I see him being a thing outside of Ally decks. That said, Dreadbore was around with Elspeth and still didn't see much play so who knows
September 14, 2015 9:02 a.m.
Tyrant-Thanatos says... #6
I don't know much about standard meta, but Sorcery speed is generally just too slow for removal. I could see this finding a home in certain EDH decks, maybe, but I doubt it will see much play in Standard, not unless Awaken somehow becomes huge.
September 14, 2015 9:34 a.m.
The Sorcery speed of Roast certainly didn't stop it seeing regular play in Standard.
September 14, 2015 9:47 a.m.
Tyrant-Thanatos says... #8
No, but Roast doesn't cost 
, and also isn't sitting in a color with plenty of other removal options.
Again, I'm not a Standard player, so don't take my opinions at face value where Standard is regarded, but I have doubts it will see heavy play.
September 14, 2015 10:21 a.m.
Was just play testing it then in an Allies deck and it performed favourably.
I think there are other cards as good as it, but a lot of them are more situational.
With all the purported mana ramp in BFZ the second ability will probably also be useful.
September 14, 2015 10:27 a.m.
Me and a friend played with it in 2 pretty different deck. One was control and one was more tempo creature oriented that can become control. In both decks ruinous path was always worse than downfall and we ended up cutting 1 or 2 to play other removal spells. The instant speed from downfall really matters and ruinous path will see play because its necessary but it is significantly worse than downfall.
September 14, 2015 12:06 p.m.
PhyrexianScience says... #11
Instant-speed matters a lot.
On the flip side, assuming that there's no Instant-speed way to deal with planeswalkers in this set, maybe my stockpile of Silumgar's Command will actually be worth something by the end of this year.
September 14, 2015 12:28 p.m.
PhyrexianScience, I was thinking about the same thing.
UpperDeckerTaco, Doom is nice but in an Esper deck. That is the least splashable way to deal with stuff andi have to be using Foul-Tongue Invocation for my sac effect.
September 14, 2015 12:36 p.m.
UpperDeckerTaco says... #14
Red is easily splashable in Esper. Just use Nomad Outpost and Bloodstained Mire especially with the new dual lands coming out, you can have the easiest time splashing colors. Crackling Doom will probably be the best "spot" removal spell in the format. Also, don't forget Deflecting Palm could be a monster this upcoming format because of all the big Eldrazi creatures. I personally don't think esper will be very good because Blue has not been good for years. I think if you tune Mardu the correct way, it can be the best "control" deck because it will be able to kill the opponent's faster.
September 14, 2015 12:47 p.m.
asasinater13 says... #15
awaken has been ignored in this discussion, and while not always relevant, when it's getting to the late game and an opponent gets to play a planeswalker and get an activation, killing it and getting a creature seems like a good response. the land you create trades with an ahaya token from Nissa, Vastwood Seer Flip
September 14, 2015 12:47 p.m.
For Standard, it will see play. It's the best way to remove a planeswalker currently in Standard. Yes, the sorcery speed is suboptimal, but the Awaken potential makes up for it. Hero's Downfall was played widely in any deck with Swamps, whereas I feel that Ruinous Path is more of a control card. The Awaken 4 for 
is pretty big game if cast late.
September 14, 2015 1:02 p.m.
UpperDeckerTaco, you may be onto something there but I'm playing blue for use with Silungar and Ojutai.
September 14, 2015 1:11 p.m.
It's going to be just fine in standard. If you wanted to cast Hero's Downfall you typically had to take a whole turn off to do so. Even if you killed it on your opponents turn, it typically meant you did nothing on your last turn and had the mana available, or you intentionally did nothing on your turn to leave the mana open for when they attacked. Either way, you still took one of your turns off doing nothing in order to play it at instant speed. So I don't really feel like there is going to be a huge difference in the way Ruinous Path plays compared to Hero's Downfall. You'll just play Ruinous Path and pass, instead of leaving all your mana open and passing (broadcasting your next play) so you can downfall at instant speed.
I'm not dumb enough to think instant speed doesn't matter, but for Hero's Downfall in standard, it's been less relevant. They decided to get away from cheap unconditional removal because they thought it made more sense that if your opponent had to spend their whole turn playing a threat, then you should have to spend a whole turn answering it. Because of this, the instant speed of Hero's Downfall isn't as relevant early in the game because it's the only thing you can cast that turn. But the instant speed makes a much bigger impact later in the game when your able to play your own threat and answer your opponents in the same turn. Which is where I think Awaken-4 will help make up for Ruinous Path being sorcery speed.
September 14, 2015 3:11 p.m.
@UpperDeckerTaco I've actually toyed around with different mardu control ideas a few different times now. They always did good at FNM when I played 5 rounds against creature based decks and struggled whenever I had to face multiple control decks.
The hand disruption was always necessary but the numbers were always off because other than Thoughtseize you had just conditional stuff like Duress or Despise. Against traditional control decks your removal is mostly dead so if you mainboard too many Despise that was just more dead draws. But if you mainboarded too many Duress then you had dead draws in a lot of creature based matchups. Basically if you were prepared to face a meta with a lot of creature decks (my local shop) then you were set up very poorly against the handful of control decks that also show up so you had no chance game 1. Which ended up being a long and slow game of land, go, so you had to try and win games 2 and 3 rather quickly after boarding. I also found that the blue based control decks could refill their hands easier after I tore it apart because they had better card draw. Whereas, counterspells were hard prevention against my card draw and the less draw I had the less I could tear apart their hand and stop them.
In other words, when playing it felt like being able to mainboard counterspells prepared your mainboard better for any deck you'd have to face, whereas Mardu control could only prepare themselves for half of the decks they'd face (either mainboard control hate, or creature deck hate). Having both just spread the deck thin and didn't really give you enough answers to deal with either.
September 14, 2015 3:34 p.m.
UpperDeckerTaco says... #22
Basically, abenz419, look at what Abzan Control does...Mardu can do the same thing. The only thing it virtually doesn't have is Abzan Charm. But you can use other spells in it's place. Read the Bones for example. It doesn't have Siege Rhino but it can have other threats. It also can support some of the best cards in my opinion, for a control deck not running Blue, Deflecting Palm and Crackling Doom. Talk about hitting your opponent hard.
September 14, 2015 7:54 p.m.
Butcher of the Horde is a nice sub for Siege Rhino in a Mardu control deck.
September 15, 2015 3:14 a.m.
Except like I mentioned before, your still lacking against traditional control decks because those cards will basically be dead in those match ups. You end up punting game 1 against them and become totally reliant on your sideboard to win games 2 and 3 in those matchups. And with the high potential for a long first game there was no guarantee you had time for a 3rd game.
September 15, 2015 4:18 a.m.
There are only 2 control decks at my LGS. Mine (UB) and another guy's Bant control. We have yet to ever finish game 2 when facing each other. Control vs control is NOT for those that are not ready to dig in for some serious Magic.
Thanks to ALL of you I am seriously considering playing 4 color control for the BFZ season. The right fetches are present for UBWR. Mores, Strands, and Deltas will seriously help, especially grabbing those new tango lands. Crackling Doom seems better than Foul-Tongue Invocation and Deflecting Palm is always a b*tch to play against so might as well use it. I'll test a bit and see if red will be worth it. I'm too invested in blue to drop it and go Mardu strictly.
Argy says... #2
I've been wondering the same thing.
It will still be good due to the fact that it can slug Planeswalkers unless countered.
With so many Indestructible and Hexproof Creatures running around Celestial Flare is a better option for a lot of decks without Planeswalkers, IMO.
September 14, 2015 8:52 a.m.