Varchild's War Riders!

Generally, you can find as many copies of Varchild's War Riders as you want, for around $1 apiece. Most people think its a crap card. I don't.



This is one of my all time favorite Magic cards, and I've played with it in a Red/Green deck, Red/White, Red/Blue and Red/Black. Pretty much any combo you can think of, I've done. MTG Salvations Magic the Gathering Wiki has an article about General Varchild, which can be found here.

I actually pulled three Varchild's War Riders from Alliances packs back in the day. I was a classic Magic Pauper at the time, and really only played Red and Green decks, so that was what I built.

Now, here are some of the cards I used:

  

 



Let us not forget cheap creature boosting (Giant Growth, Blood Lust), and other Fog variations (Spore Cloud, Fog, etc). To be honest, I don't remember exactly what was in this deck, it was a long time ago. I'm sure you get the gist of it though from the cards above. Ways to wipe out Survivor Tokens or protect against them and creature boosting. Later additions would include:

  

  

You get the idea. Lets look at the War Riders at the Meta level. Most people see the card as a good creature with a horrible drawback. But note, the Rampage ability allows the Riders to trample over any number of Survivor tokens. At the Meta level, the War Riders can make an ally: by giving a player tokens and the fighting someone else. The Riders are also fantastic at disrupting creatureless or creature limited decks. Furthermore, killing off the Riders is not a great option, as they can easily be brought back from the graveyard. Returning the Riders to someone's hand is about as useful as doing the same thing to a Tarmagoyf, as they can be easily recast. Best of all, countering the Riders is difficult, as they cast so cheap and require only one colored mana. In any event, I've toughted the benefits of the War Riders. I think they're great in multiplayer, because they shake things up and can make allies or turning on a common enemy easier. Now, on with the decks.

Red and White was my next attempt, using cards like:

  

  

Lets just say that White was one of the worse pairings. The deck still had most of the Red cards noted above, and still had the same disrupting effect in multiplayer, but wasn't quite as good as the Green pairing.

Next, I tried Black, which worked best of all:

  

  

  

There were other black cards, but these three were the game changers. Thanks to the Hissing Miasma, not only did people not attack me with the Survivor Tokens, they used them against the rest fo the players. And Sadistic Glee made the War Riders huge fast.

I'm not even going to talk about the Red/Blue attempt. It was a disaster, and the only reason I did it, was since I'd tried all the other color pairings. I figured I'd try the last one, whcih will forever be enshrined in my Worst Decks Ever Hall of Fame (WDE HoF).

Here are a few last suggestions for the War Riders:

  



There are others of course, this is just what came immediately to mind. To summize, if you get the chance, make a Varchild's War-Riders deck. Its fun above everything else. Cheers.