You can play this to give yourself protection from the best creature on their board, but it really is a mediocre removal spell since it allows them to continue to block and interact on the board. You might side this in if you see multiples of a particular threat or play it main deck ...
1) Your opponent does not have 2 basics to fetch; 2) Your opponent does not have cards that abuse a higher land count. -The presence of decks affected by board wipes in your metagame, namely Deed. There is no equivalent to Pernicious Deed against decks that don't use permanents ...