Fault Riders MTG Card

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Fault Riders can potentially create significant card advantage with its ability to repeatedly return lands to its owner’s hand, setting up powerful landfall triggers or recurring lands with valuable enter-the-battlefield effects.

Resource Acceleration: By enabling the reuse of lands that produce more than one mana, Fault Riders can contribute to resource acceleration. In decks built around land synergies, this can be a substantial boost.

Instant Speed: Although Fault Riders itself is not an instant, it can capitalize on instant-speed interactions. It allows players to adapt their strategy at a moment’s notice, reacting to opponents’ moves by utilizing lands with instant-speed abilities that have been returned to hand.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: One notable drawback of the Fault Riders in your MTG deck is the discard requirement. To activate its ability, you must sacrifice a land, which could potentially set you back in terms of resource availability. This cost is especially heavy in the early game or in land-light situations, often forcing players to choose between developing their board or utilizing the Fault Riders’ ability.

Specific Mana Cost: The Fault Riders card demands specific mana colors to cast—two red mana as part of its cost. This requirement can complicate your game plan, as it necessitates a commitment to red mana sources. For players running multicolored decks, especially those where red is not a primary color, fitting Fault Riders into the deck might impact its mana base consistency.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: While Fault Riders can be a useful tool in certain MTG strategies, its comparatively high mana cost for its body and effect should not be overlooked. With a myriad of creatures and spells available, many players might find that there are more cost-effective options that provide similar or better advantages without the need to sacrifice crucial lands.

Reasons to Include in Your Collection

Versatility: Fault Riders proves to be a flexible card, seamlessly integrating into decks that are designed to manipulate land resources for strategic advantages.

Combo Potential: This card can be a key piece in land-sacrifice combos, allowing players to reap benefits from effects that are triggered when lands hit the graveyard.

Meta-Relevance: In a gameplay environment that values land interaction strategies, Fault Riders offers a way to gain an edge over opponents by utilizing lands as a resource beyond mana production.

How to beat

Fault Riders is a unique card that can pose quite a challenge in the right deck. With its ability to essentially sacrifice a land to deal 2 damage to each creature without flying, it’s a formidable card to play against, particularly when facing an opponent who is building up a strong ground force. To effectively counter Fault Riders, players should consider a strategy that incorporates flying creatures or those with indestructibility to withstand the land-sacrifice-triggered ability.

Furthermore, land destruction prevention can also be an effective method. Cards like Terra Eternal or strategies that quickly rebuild your mana base, such as Rampant Growth or Cultivate, may help mitigate the loss of lands if faced with the Fault Riders’ ability. Having instant speed removal or sacrifice outlets can also give you an edge, enabling you to respond efficiently to the activation of the Fault Rider’s power. Maintaining a flexible and resilient board state is key to outmaneuvering this potent MTG card.