Riot Gear MTG Card

Mana cost
Converted mana cost	2
Rarity	Common
Type	Artifact — Equipment
Abilities	Equip
Released	2013-02-01
Set symbol
Set name	Gatecrash
Set code	GTC
Number	236
Frame	2003
Layout	Normal
Border	Black
Illustred by	Jack Wang

Key Takeaways

Riot Gear enhances creatures, providing card advantage and boosting board presence for strategic dominance.
The card’s instant speed allows reactive play, but its discard requirement can hinder hand strategy.
While mana-intensive, Riot Gear’s toughness and vigilance make it a formidable addition to decks.

Text of card

Equipped creature gets +1/+2. Equip (: Attach to target creature you control. Equip only as a sorcery.)

Any meeting between guilds requires proper equipment.

Card Pros

Card Advantage: Riot Gear offers synergistic capabilities that can provide a significant boost to your hand. By equipping creatures efficiently, you create opportunities to outpace your opponent in terms of accessible resources and strategic plays.

Resource Acceleration: Empowering your creatures swiftly with Riot Gear accelerates your board presence. This speedy enhancement can be pivotal, ensuring that your resources are well allocated, leading to a more commanding position in the game.

Instant Speed: The utility of Riot Gear becomes more pronounced due to its availability at instant speed. This aspect allows for reactive play, enabling you to adapt to the current state of the match and make decisions that are both timely and impactful.

Card Cons

Discard Requirement: The Riot Gear card demands a discard from your hand as part of its activation cost. This can detract from your playing strategy, especially if your hand size is already running low and you’re being forced to give up potentially valuable resources. It’s a trade-off that needs careful consideration mid-game when deciding to play Riot Gear.

Specific Mana Cost: Riot Gear requires a particular arrangement of mana types to cast, which might not always align with the color scheme of your deck. If your deck is not tailored to accommodate the specific mana cost, including Riot Gear could disrupt your mana curve and reduce the deck’s overall efficiency.

Comparatively High Mana Cost: Although Riot Gear can be a game-changer, its mana cost is on the higher end for its effects. Other options in MTG might provide similar benefits without requiring as much of a mana investment. This can put players at a disadvantage when quicker, more cost-effective alternatives could be played instead, maximizing mana usage each turn.

Reasons to Include Riot Gear Mtg Card in Your Collection

Versatility: Riot Gear offers a robust suite of defenses in the form of creature equip. This card can provide your creatures with much-needed resilience against a variety of threats, finding its place in defensive and control builds.

Combo Potential: Equipped creatures gain toughness and vigilance, making Riot Gear a significant addition to synergistic strategies that benefit from sturdy blockers and attackers that remain untapped. This can seamlessly integrate into decks focused on keeping a solid defensive front while building up for a powerful offense.

Meta-Relevance: In environments where creature-based strategies reign, Riot Gear can turn the tide by empowering your creatures to withstand opponent’s attacks. Its ability to keep your valuable creatures on the board and ready to react to incoming dangers makes it a relevant choice in diverse match-ups.

How to beat

Riot Gear, in the landscape of Magic: The Gathering, emerges as a formidable equipment card that bestows vigour to your creatures. When you’re up against an opponent who’s using Riot Gear, it’s essential to adapt your strategy to dismantle their advantage. Unlike artifacts that may provide indestructibility, Riot Gear offers none, leaving it vulnerable to direct artifact destruction spells. Naturalize and its contemporaries, which can dispatch an artifact with precision, become indispensable tools in your spell arsenal. A proficient player will keep these answers handy.

Moreover, Riot Gear increases the survivability of creatures in combat, which necessitates a shift towards spells that neutralize without engaging in battles. Methods of unsummoning creatures or reducing toughness come to the forefront. Casting a simple Unsummon forces the opponent to spend mana equipping the Riot Gear again, setting them back and providing you with the tempo advantage. In sum, understanding the intrinsic mechanics and having the right counterspells or artifact destruction at the ready can tip the scales back in your favor when facing a Riot Gear-empowered adversary.

Cards like Riot Gear

Riot Gear is a unique piece in the landscape of Magic: The Gathering artifact equipment. It shares the stage with cards such as Swiftfoot Boots, which similarly offers a protective function to creatures. Nonetheless, Riot Gear stands out by granting its wielder both a power boost and the valuable advantage of vigilance. While the Swiftfoot Boots confer hexproof and haste—distinct abilities—Riot Gear narrows down its focus on combat readiness and resilience.

Another card that echoes the theme of creature enhancements is the Basilisk Collar. This equipment provides a creature with deathtouch and lifelink, qualities that heavily influence battlefield engagements. However, it lacks the direct power increment and vigilance that makes Riot Gear a formidable tool for sustained attacks and defense. Comparatively, Riot Gear’s straightforward power enhancement and the benefits of remaining untapped after an attack cater to more aggressive strategies.

Ultimately, in a game where equipable items shape the tides of combat, Riot Gear finds its niche by emphasizing sustained offensive pressure. Its ability to fortify a creature’s offensive and defensive capabilities simultaneously can turn any creature into a resilient threat, distinguishing Riot Gear in a diverse arsenal of MTG equipment.

Cards similar to Riot Gear by color, type and mana cost

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Where to buy

If you're looking to purchase Riot Gear MTG card by a specific set like Gatecrash, there are several reliable options to consider. One of the primary sources is your local game store, where you can often find booster packs, individual cards, and preconstructed decks from current and some past sets. They often offer the added benefit of a community where you can trade with other players.

For a broader inventory, particularly of older sets, online marketplaces like TCGPlayer, Card Kingdom and Card Market offer extensive selections and allow you to search for cards from specific sets. Larger e-commerce platforms like eBay and Amazon also have listings from various sellers, which can be a good place to look for sealed product and rare finds.

Additionally, Magic’s official site often has a store locator and retailer lists for finding Wizards of the Coast licensed products. Remember to check for authenticity and the condition of the cards when purchasing, especially from individual sellers on larger marketplaces.

Below is a list of some store websites where you can buy the Riot Gear and other MTG cards: