(http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/images/d/d1/Ritual.jpg)
"you get a curse afterwards, but, as we've learned from centuries of ghost stories, it's that curses are fine as long as they make you successful"
a pretty important drawback of many bishopy strategies is that they often want to have some big junko card to trash, often gold, and you have to draw them together, which is hard because you have to both have the gold and play the thing that gains it. ritual, uh, alleviates that, kinda? you don't have to draw them specifically but you do get that curse sitting around. that being said, if you don't feel like comparing it to anything, ritual seems pretty good. 1 for 1 money to vp is good, except ritual shifts that down 1 unit and 4 to the right. and also you have to have that extra card that you maybe don't get to use but if it's a victory card or something then who cares. if there is some painless way to trash curses then one could also make the comparison to island—ritual a province, pay an action later to trash the curse and now you have a province out of your deck and 2 extra vp. neat.
-is there an element of ritual that makes it defy comparison to other cards? hopefully yes, free me from this demon of western culture
-what's the deal with this ritual being green? i thought all of the ramping green had were tied to creatures or maybe the weird lands
-how much does ritual's goodness hinge on being able to trash the curse