Pass every turn of the game. (suggest shortcutting)
Play all lands from your "hand."
Play one creature, attack until it dies, repeat this step.
If playing against Tron, use Karn Liberated to exile all shared fates in play... or restart the game with all permanents under your control.
If playing against Ad Nauseum combo, tell your opponent you will not be winning the game and neither will they, intentionally draw, swap out fate combo for planeswalkers and other threats, win game 2.
If playing against Scapeshift combo, hope they don't play more Shared Fates and use Cryptic to bounce Shared Fate.
If playing against Amulet Bloom, abuse the fact you can make multiple plant tokens using bounce-lands.
If playing against Storm, just combo off.
If playing against Lantern Control, pray you draw their Aether Grid.
EDIT: Step 3 is important otherwise you will run out of time and your opponent will be confused by your deck.
Zac, do you stream? Or do any video content? Because I'd love to see you mess around with this and your Seance brew on stream or just on video. Might have to use your Cheon connections to see if you can do some content for CFB. =P
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Well, I can saw a woman in two, but you won't wanna look in the box when I'm through.
I would love to. I need to get things setup. This Shared Fate deck plays differently on MTGO than it does IRL... which is really strange. The fact your opponent can lose the match (or game) because he happened to have less time on his clock than you is absurd.
Right now I'm running an Esper list, primarily blue/black control shell abusing Jace, spot removal, and the full four leaks. I'm splashing white only for 4 Path to Exile and 3 Supreme Verdict. This deck NEEDS board wipes, otherwise you can't clean-up a board of creature and just die when Shared Fate hits play.
What I want to explore is would it be worth to swap to red instead of white. Red gets us access to Pyroclasm to handle the more hyper-aggressive decks, makes us less harmed by opposing Blood Moon. Changes our sideboard options to maybe better handle tron (which is hard).
So the question I want to ask is: What does red offer that seriously helps out a UB control shell?
Noxious Revival (I was looking for redundancy angainst counters/discard since the deck can't use tutors. Revival is interesting because is useful before the lock and useless afterwards.)
Pithing Needle (We need answers for PW and manlands, and we can't use vindicate effects to deal with PWs because it removes the Shared Fate)
Hero's Downfall (Answer for PWs that don't remove Shared Fate)
Rest in Peace (It's bad with Jace, but it's good against a LOT of decks)
Obs: You can win against Ad Nauseam if you have the combo, a Lightning storm and a Pentad prism to generate red mana before the opponent draws your entire deck. Just cast the combo to put all cards from your deck in your hand and then win with lightning storm discarding the lands from your own deck.
So Someone walked into my LGS with this pile yesterday.
While the deck looked overall terrible, Shared Fate seemed to have a lot of potential once you get in the right game state and can protect it with counter magic etc.
Here's some of the ideas I've mulled over since watching it in action.
1) Pairing Shared Fate up with Hivemind, Slaughter Pact, and Pact of Negation. This gives you (and your opponent) a nice way to do a bad Bloom Titan Imitation.
2) Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver were both lightly discussed as neither one can be used against the deck very effectively while still giving you great value when you're still trying to get to a Shared Fate lock. Jace should probably be an auto include since he's already blue and so easy to play in the deck.
3) Red seems really good in this deck. Things like Anger of the Gods are obviously good, but you also gain access to Manamorphose as well as Faithless looting and Desperate Ravings, which both have flashback, making them useful for you both before and after Fate is online. This aspect gives Serum Visions a hilarious application as it allows you to fateseal your opponent once Fate is online... not that there is anything useful left in the deck anyway.
Red also gives access to Ritual spells, allowing you to get Shared Fate online sooner, but I think this is a lot less important than getting to that point in a functional state. You also gain access to things like Izzet Charm, -Think Twice also benefits from having Flashback, but isn't nearly as good as the red draw spells.
4) You probably want to be at least 3 colors since that benefits you with regards to your opponent's fetch lands etc.
5) Raven's Crime sounds like it would be good here, allowing you to play more lands than usual and still gaining value out of them, as does Life from the Loam if playing green. Dredge is a great mechanic in general, so great Dredge cards like Darkblast and even Dakmor Salvage should have application in this deck since it helps you to further gain shrink your library while under your opponent's control and helps you control the game when trying to get there.
6) Tron might be hilarious. Expedition Map, Sylvan Scrying, and Ancient Stirrings will give you lots of ways to keep the mana flowing while also giving your opponent basically nothing useful out of it. You can team tron mana up with things like Skull of Orm to pull discarded/destroyed copies of Fate out of the GY or just pair it up with any spell that pays X for a big effect like Sphinx's Revelation or even Black Sun's Zenith
7) This might be a great excuse to play Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded even if only to see the look on your opponent's face when they draw it.
8) Big disruption plays like Reforge the Soul and Day's Undoing can also disrupt your opponent's game plan and have no effect once the lock is in play, they can even be used to pull whatever useful cards are left out of your opponent's hand once Shared Fate is in play.
The goal is to play like a combination of Grixis Control and BGx strats, trading away cards 1-for-1 with your opponent. The Smallpox package looked fun, so I threw that in there as well. Liliana is deceivingly brilliant in the deck as she can never actually do anything relevant to what you're doing. At worst, your opponent could make you sacrifice everything BUT shared fate, and it is almost always worth it to just go back to a regular game since you actually have good cards in your deck. I want to fit more draw and counters in the deck, but not sure what to pull out to do so. I might actually have to put this together and take it for a spin...
Once you resolve Shared Fate, how do you win if they get ahold of a Lily and start making you sac permanents. Like, 1 fate vs everything else. If you only keep fate, you wont be able to actually kill them as they will draw more answers to the threats you draw from their deck.
You sac fate and use their creatures to kill them since you now have a ton of protection. Or you sac everything else and eventually move to a draw. The point is, if you make it to the deck swap state without them already having a way to kill you, you can't lose. You might not win, but you won't lose.
One of the funniest interactions with the deck has got to be jace though, he's literally unplayable as anything but a 0/2 wall for your opponent.
If they ever manage to actually flip him, he just comes back over to your side of the board since he returns "under his owner's control"
The more I tweak it, the more it devolves into loam pox, I am now calling it Shared Pox, which sounds disgusting but beautiful.
The strategy is even more-so to just kill everything, including yours and your opponent's lands. Nicol Bolas, Flame Jab, Molten Vortex are added as MD wincons. Nobody should be able to cast Nicol Bolas until the board is firmly locked up and Molten Vortex can be handled by lots of stuff in your deck, not the least of which is the fact that there are only 19 land, your opponent will rarely draw them. Flame Jab can only be cast once for 1 damage, then you can recur it as much as you'd like with loam.
Shared Fate is down to a 2-of since it comes out so late when the deck does what it does anyway, but it's still nice to be able to steal your opponent's wincon. Half their spells move to your GY once cast and your deck still functions just fine without ever having to draw one of their cards.
I don't know where this is leading me, just wanted to share where I'm at with you guys.
So I spent all day yesterday brewing different versions of the deck and at the end of it I think I just have to put Shared Fate away as a bad wincon.
If you put it in a heavy attrition style deck like I posted, you end up in a scenario where your opponent can very realistically deny you from doing anything if you ever get it online and the alternate situation is that you win without ever wanting to cast it, so the card just ends up dead in your hand/GY.
If you put it in a ramp/storm style deck, the best case scenario has you swapping decks with your opponent on turn 2. While that itself is quite nice, I can't seem to do it consistently and swapping decks on turn 3+ just make me feel like I'd rather be killing my opponent outright with something like Emrakul or Grapeshot.
The card is cute, but I think it ultimately is too hard to get on the table quickly and doesn't do enough when it hits the table late. If you could reliably cast it on turn 2, I think the deck could be playable, and possibly even good in Modern.
I think you're misunderstanding how shared fate works, or at least the purpose I see in it. It doesn't do special things or straight up win the game. It deletes your opponent's deck assuming you construct yours appropriately. They can't draw cards anymore.
"My blade slices the air, sakura petals scatter, crimson blossoms appear on the ground..."
Autumn, the season of the Harvest and Falling Leaves... Song of an unreachable dream...
So I wanted to comment on my experiences with this deck as I've played quite a few matches over the past month. First things first, this deck is powerful. It's consistant, resiliant, and anyone writing this off as some fringe, recreational deck is making a mistake. I've played a lot of tier 1 decks lately and it holds its own and thats without even being tuned or even really knowing what is the best shell/colors.
Second, this deck is even more powerful on MTGO for weird reasons. As a Lantern Control player, I found that this deck functions mostly in the same way. Zac pointed out earlier in this thread that people generally get the wrong perception of how the deck should function. It isn't a combo deck in the traditional sense, the same way Lantern isn't, you are working with a soft lock for awhile, and just dropping Fate doesn't win you the game and dropping it at the wrong time will actually guarantee that you lose the game. You need complete board control as well as complete hand knowledge before dropping Fate.
The reason it's stronger on MTGO is based on the online game clock. Unlike paper, both players have a total of 25 minutes each to complete all games. And if you run out of time, you auto lose the MATCH not the current game. Since this is basically an unknown deck, no one believes that you have no win con until they have exhausted your entire library.(I think also they don't really understand how shared fate works and believe that one of you will deck and it looks like it will be you) Given that, if in game 1 you drop shared fate at a time which basically guarantees you can't lose, your opponent will waste time drawing your entire deck looking for a way to win or hoping you'll deck, while you will be just passing the turn for the rest of the game, knowing that it's impossible for you to lose. When piloting Lantern control, your opponent refusing to concede is pretty annoying because you run the serious risk of losing on time, given that you have a certain amount of actions that you have to do every turn in order to win. With Shared Fate on MTGO, your opponent refusing to concede while in the lock will actually cause them to lose on time and therefore you can win the match just by winning game 1. If you have the lead on time, you are not forced to beat your opponent to win. There has been many games when game 1 I dropped the Fate lock at around 20 minutes and my opponent drew my entire deck trying to find a way to win and didnt concede until they have 2-3 minutes remaining, thereby actually losing them the whole match. This may sound like kind of a cheap way to win, but the fact is my opponent is the one refusing to concede and is being punished for it and I will take a 1-0 match win as opposed to having to play 2-3 games to achieve the same result.
On paper, as Zac said, you should never have time problems as you can speed up your actions by verbally declaring that you pass every turn until all cards are drawn, and then just put your entire deck in your "hand". The deck should be played with a singular purpose, you don't need other win cons or fancy tricks like Leveler, if you drop Shared Fate with board control and hand knowledge, you win, simple as that and all your efforts should be about making that happen as soon as possible.
All that being said, it's now just a question of what shell works best. The current build I've been playing is an esper build, and while it works very well, I'm seriously looking into changing it to U/B/R. Red provides sweepers like pyro and anger, and black provides damnation to replace supreme verdict. I think with red we get more control over creatures which is crucial since like Lantern, the biggest problem the deck has is against super aggro decks. Adding red also allows us to run dreadbore which I think is pretty important. Other than discard and counters, we don't have any way to answer a PW that hits the board and dreadbore allows us an answer. Also we can now play Izzet cham to give us a few more options, as well as playing cards like slaughter games in the sideboard.
The biggest hit we take from not running white is in the sideboard, since before I was running both Leyline and Stony Silence. Also I will have to rethink my sideboard plan if I switch to red, because my original board was transformative, after winning the first game, all the shared fate pieces came out and were replaced with gideon and sorin, and the deck basically became esper superfriends control, to avoid the enchantment hate that they're going to side in and take atvantage of the creature removal that they side out. However, with gideon and sorin not being an option I may have to rethink that. It may be the best choice is to just fill the sideboard with the normal answers and just try to push through Fate and then defend it as best as possible. Any suggestions would be great, I really want to get this deck as solid as possible, I think it has a great chance in the current meta to really turn things upside down.
If playing against Scapeshift combo, hope they don't play more Shared Fates and use Cryptic to bounce Shared Fate.
Why do you care if they play more Shared Fates? They don't do anything...
Also the black version plays Phage, the Untouchable as a 1-of, just in case your opponent tries to cast it...
Consider every possible board state you run into against scapeshift after shared fate lands. Consider how you win. Consider how you lose. You'll see the easiest way to win against/as scapeshift is to deck them. If more than one shared fate is in play then you have to bounce all of them.
Really interesting and informative post - thanks. I'm interested in seeing your list, could you share it and anything you come up with in Grixis?
Also, the idea of playing Dreadbore makes sense here, but I am a little confused as to why you feel switching from Esper to Grixis would improve aggro matchups. Losing white means we can't play cards like Rest from the Weary or Stony Silence in our sideboard. While I accept that Lightning Bolt is a more effective card than Path to Exile against aggro decks, in our deck we run the danger of dropping low before achieving the lock, in which case our opponent may be able to kill us with our own bolts. I also do not feel that Fiery Impulse and Izzet Charm are suitable replacements, given that neither can always kill a Wild Nacatl. Also, I really like your superfriends transformational sideboard plan, but wouldn't playing a couple of copies of Dawn to Dusk (or similar effect) be a good answer to enchantment hate as well as allowing us more sideboard bullets?
I'm also confused as to what you mean by Izzet Charm giving us a few more options. What do you mean by that?
I look forward to your response - this deck is a real challenge to think about and build and I fully expect that I have completely misevaluated something!
If we stay in esper, the only sweeper I was running was supreme verdict, with the only target creature removal being path and murderous cut. In the grixis colors, I'm running damnation, pyroclasm, dreadbore, terminate, and cut. My esper board had stony and leyline, but I feel that shatterstorm is a decent replacement for stony, and if I find that I reaaaaly need the stony effect I can run damping matrix for a weaker version of it. I am sad about losing leyline, but that and path feels like the only cards I really hate to lose. I definitely won't be playing lightning bolts or any other direct burn, the risk is just too high, as it's hard enough to stay alive as it is lol. I suggested Izzet Charm because it give us the option to do multiple things, counter spells, kill creatures, or draw cards, which are all good things. I don't know if the card is going to make the cut though.
Here is the current iteration of Shared Fate I've been testing with. It's been functioning well as a pure control deck with a quick finisher (fate). I like the transformat sideboard as well as sideboard options. Will have to actually play it in a few more bigger events to finalize a better board, but for now this is doing fine.
You need a finisher to swap our Shared Fates for. I do not agree 4 Ashiok is the best decision. What other card in the Grixis colors acts as a finisher? Desecration Demon could work for example, but that dies to terminate and path, so not a good finisher for most matchups. Grave Titan is another great selection and what I'm currently running. I believe the Chandra is better than Grave Titan as it acts as a sweeper in addition to being a fast clock that's hard to deal with.
All of those die to path of exile or terminate or cost a lot more than just 6. Remember Grave titan puts 10 power into play and must be answsered. Arcanis doesn't kill them quickly.
I think the only artifacts I'd want in the deck are mana rocks (Fellwar Stone or Mind Stone) or 1-mana card-drawers like Relic of Progenitus. Otherwise, I'm not too interested in artifacts, I don't think. I want as few permanents as possible so that after I land a Shared Fate, my opponent cannot advance his board state in any way.
Has anyone considered Phage the Untouchable as an alternate win condition? I've been playing this deck online some. It hasn't had an incredible win percentage, but I've probably won about 40% of my matches against tiered decks, which I think is respectable. Thing is, I've won several matches where I keep the board clear and grind us both into topdeck mode, then topdeck a Phage. The opponent has exactly 1 turn to draw an answer, or else they lose. Since the goal of the deck is to keep the board clear and grind your opponent into topdeck mode (to clear the way for Shared Fate), it seems like other cards that benefit from that strategy might be useful. Other than the win conditions, the whole deck is draw, discard, counters, and kill spells (especially heavy on the draw and discard, which are, of course, useless after Shared Fate comes down. I'm thinking something like this:
What kind of answers does this deck have for lantern control? I know hat deck isn't very popular either, but i feel like we straight up dont have an answer for it. Seeing as how their main win-con is either milling us or a single pyrite spellbomb. and since we have to use their deck we have no recovery card like they do to get the spellbomb from their grave and with Shared Fate in play neither of us can lose from milling. So what do we do?
If you resolve Shared Fate against Lantern Control, the game is a draw. The only time it's not is if they have an Aether Grid in their deck, you can use that to kill them. All other options do not work. Just go to game 2 and side out fates.
Stupid question, but is Think Twice decent enough to run if I don't own Serum Visions? I'd much rather allow my control staples to carry over than buying new stuff.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Don't believe everything you read on the internet." - Abraham Lincoln
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Zac, do you stream? Or do any video content? Because I'd love to see you mess around with this and your Seance brew on stream or just on video. Might have to use your Cheon connections to see if you can do some content for CFB. =P
The white cards I'm playing with are:
MD: 4 Path to Exile
MD: 3 Supreme Verdict
SB: 3 Leyline of Sanctity (for jund/abzan/various-combo)
SB: 3 Stony Silence (for affinity/tron/lantern)
SB: X Planeswalkers like Gideon, Ally of Zendikar and Sorin, Solemn Visitor to swap out shared fates.
What I want to explore is would it be worth to swap to red instead of white. Red gets us access to Pyroclasm to handle the more hyper-aggressive decks, makes us less harmed by opposing Blood Moon. Changes our sideboard options to maybe better handle tron (which is hard).
So the question I want to ask is: What does red offer that seriously helps out a UB control shell?
And has some transformational SB options (Storm, Twin...).
But I think Esper is the best combination because the deck needs black discard spells and White has the best sweepers and SB options.
The deck also needs a good number of Ghost Quarter, because manlands are a real problem for this deck. I would test something like this:
2x Darkslick Shores
4x Flooded Strand
3x Ghost Quarter
1x Glacial Fortress
1x Godless Shrine
2x Hallowed Fountain
2x Island
1x Marsh Flats
1x Plains
4x Polluted Delta
1x Swamp
1x Watery Grave
4x Inquisition
4x Thoughtseize
4x Serum Visions
2x Spell Snare
4x Path to Exile
4x Mana Leak
3x Think Twice
1x Murderous Cut
3x Supreme Verdict
4x Shared Fate
4x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
SB options:
Obs: You can win against Ad Nauseam if you have the combo, a Lightning storm and a Pentad prism to generate red mana before the opponent draws your entire deck. Just cast the combo to put all cards from your deck in your hand and then win with lightning storm discarding the lands from your own deck.
While the deck looked overall terrible, Shared Fate seemed to have a lot of potential once you get in the right game state and can protect it with counter magic etc.
Here's some of the ideas I've mulled over since watching it in action.
1) Pairing Shared Fate up with Hivemind, Slaughter Pact, and Pact of Negation. This gives you (and your opponent) a nice way to do a bad Bloom Titan Imitation.
2) Jace, Vryn's Prodigy and Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver were both lightly discussed as neither one can be used against the deck very effectively while still giving you great value when you're still trying to get to a Shared Fate lock. Jace should probably be an auto include since he's already blue and so easy to play in the deck.
3) Red seems really good in this deck. Things like Anger of the Gods are obviously good, but you also gain access to Manamorphose as well as Faithless looting and Desperate Ravings, which both have flashback, making them useful for you both before and after Fate is online. This aspect gives Serum Visions a hilarious application as it allows you to fateseal your opponent once Fate is online... not that there is anything useful left in the deck anyway.
Red also gives access to Ritual spells, allowing you to get Shared Fate online sooner, but I think this is a lot less important than getting to that point in a functional state. You also gain access to things like Izzet Charm, -Think Twice also benefits from having Flashback, but isn't nearly as good as the red draw spells.
4) You probably want to be at least 3 colors since that benefits you with regards to your opponent's fetch lands etc.
5) Raven's Crime sounds like it would be good here, allowing you to play more lands than usual and still gaining value out of them, as does Life from the Loam if playing green. Dredge is a great mechanic in general, so great Dredge cards like Darkblast and even Dakmor Salvage should have application in this deck since it helps you to further gain shrink your library while under your opponent's control and helps you control the game when trying to get there.
6) Tron might be hilarious. Expedition Map, Sylvan Scrying, and Ancient Stirrings will give you lots of ways to keep the mana flowing while also giving your opponent basically nothing useful out of it. You can team tron mana up with things like Skull of Orm to pull discarded/destroyed copies of Fate out of the GY or just pair it up with any spell that pays X for a big effect like Sphinx's Revelation or even Black Sun's Zenith
7) This might be a great excuse to play Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded even if only to see the look on your opponent's face when they draw it.
8) Big disruption plays like Reforge the Soul and Day's Undoing can also disrupt your opponent's game plan and have no effect once the lock is in play, they can even be used to pull whatever useful cards are left out of your opponent's hand once Shared Fate is in play.
Let me brew something up and I'll be back.
4x Serum Visions
Discard (6)
4x Thoughtseize
2x Raven's Crime
Clean up (11)
3x Abrupt Decay
1x Darkblast
4x Smallpox
3x Terminate
Counters (4)
2x Mana Leak
1x Spell Snare
1x Izzet Charm
4x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
4x Liliana of the Veil
2x Life from the Loam
4x Shared Fate
Lands (21)
1x Forest
2x Island
2x Misty Rainforest
1x Mountain
1x Overgrown Tomb
4x Polluted Delta
3x Scalding Tarn
1x Stomping Ground
1x Blood Crypt
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x Dakmor Salvage
1x Steam Vents
1x Swamp
1x Watery Grave
The goal is to play like a combination of Grixis Control and BGx strats, trading away cards 1-for-1 with your opponent. The Smallpox package looked fun, so I threw that in there as well. Liliana is deceivingly brilliant in the deck as she can never actually do anything relevant to what you're doing. At worst, your opponent could make you sacrifice everything BUT shared fate, and it is almost always worth it to just go back to a regular game since you actually have good cards in your deck. I want to fit more draw and counters in the deck, but not sure what to pull out to do so. I might actually have to put this together and take it for a spin...
One of the funniest interactions with the deck has got to be jace though, he's literally unplayable as anything but a 0/2 wall for your opponent.
If they ever manage to actually flip him, he just comes back over to your side of the board since he returns "under his owner's control"
1x Blood Crypt
2x Bloodstained Mire
1x Forest
3x Ghost Quarter
1x Island
2x Misty Rainforest
1x Mountain
1x Overgrown Tomb
2x Polluted Delta
1x Scalding Tarn
1x Steam Vents
1x Stomping Ground
1x Swamp
1x Watery Grave
Sorcery (17)
4x Faithless Looting
1x Flame Jab
4x Life from the Loam
1x Raven's Crime
1x Recollect
4x Smallpox
2x Thoughtseize
2x Molten Vortex
2x Shared Fate
Planeswalker (5)
4x Liliana of the Veil
1x Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
Creature (4)
4x Jace, Vryn's Prodigy
Instant (11)
3x Abrupt Decay
1x Darkblast
1x Izzet Charm
2x Muddle the Mixture
1x Spell Snare
3x Terminate
4x Ancient Grudge
4x Leyline of the Void
3x Illness in the Ranks
4x Rending Volley
The more I tweak it, the more it devolves into loam pox, I am now calling it Shared Pox, which sounds disgusting but beautiful.
The strategy is even more-so to just kill everything, including yours and your opponent's lands. Nicol Bolas, Flame Jab, Molten Vortex are added as MD wincons. Nobody should be able to cast Nicol Bolas until the board is firmly locked up and Molten Vortex can be handled by lots of stuff in your deck, not the least of which is the fact that there are only 19 land, your opponent will rarely draw them. Flame Jab can only be cast once for 1 damage, then you can recur it as much as you'd like with loam.
Shared Fate is down to a 2-of since it comes out so late when the deck does what it does anyway, but it's still nice to be able to steal your opponent's wincon. Half their spells move to your GY once cast and your deck still functions just fine without ever having to draw one of their cards.
I don't know where this is leading me, just wanted to share where I'm at with you guys.
If you put it in a heavy attrition style deck like I posted, you end up in a scenario where your opponent can very realistically deny you from doing anything if you ever get it online and the alternate situation is that you win without ever wanting to cast it, so the card just ends up dead in your hand/GY.
If you put it in a ramp/storm style deck, the best case scenario has you swapping decks with your opponent on turn 2. While that itself is quite nice, I can't seem to do it consistently and swapping decks on turn 3+ just make me feel like I'd rather be killing my opponent outright with something like Emrakul or Grapeshot.
The card is cute, but I think it ultimately is too hard to get on the table quickly and doesn't do enough when it hits the table late. If you could reliably cast it on turn 2, I think the deck could be playable, and possibly even good in Modern.
Why do you care if they play more Shared Fates? They don't do anything...
Also the black version plays Phage, the Untouchable as a 1-of, just in case your opponent tries to cast it...
Standard:
BWB/R Eldrazi AggroBR
Modern:
UMerfolkU
"My blade slices the air, sakura petals scatter, crimson blossoms appear on the ground..."
Autumn, the season of the Harvest and Falling Leaves...
Song of an unreachable dream...
Second, this deck is even more powerful on MTGO for weird reasons. As a Lantern Control player, I found that this deck functions mostly in the same way. Zac pointed out earlier in this thread that people generally get the wrong perception of how the deck should function. It isn't a combo deck in the traditional sense, the same way Lantern isn't, you are working with a soft lock for awhile, and just dropping Fate doesn't win you the game and dropping it at the wrong time will actually guarantee that you lose the game. You need complete board control as well as complete hand knowledge before dropping Fate.
The reason it's stronger on MTGO is based on the online game clock. Unlike paper, both players have a total of 25 minutes each to complete all games. And if you run out of time, you auto lose the MATCH not the current game. Since this is basically an unknown deck, no one believes that you have no win con until they have exhausted your entire library.(I think also they don't really understand how shared fate works and believe that one of you will deck and it looks like it will be you) Given that, if in game 1 you drop shared fate at a time which basically guarantees you can't lose, your opponent will waste time drawing your entire deck looking for a way to win or hoping you'll deck, while you will be just passing the turn for the rest of the game, knowing that it's impossible for you to lose. When piloting Lantern control, your opponent refusing to concede is pretty annoying because you run the serious risk of losing on time, given that you have a certain amount of actions that you have to do every turn in order to win. With Shared Fate on MTGO, your opponent refusing to concede while in the lock will actually cause them to lose on time and therefore you can win the match just by winning game 1. If you have the lead on time, you are not forced to beat your opponent to win. There has been many games when game 1 I dropped the Fate lock at around 20 minutes and my opponent drew my entire deck trying to find a way to win and didnt concede until they have 2-3 minutes remaining, thereby actually losing them the whole match. This may sound like kind of a cheap way to win, but the fact is my opponent is the one refusing to concede and is being punished for it and I will take a 1-0 match win as opposed to having to play 2-3 games to achieve the same result.
On paper, as Zac said, you should never have time problems as you can speed up your actions by verbally declaring that you pass every turn until all cards are drawn, and then just put your entire deck in your "hand". The deck should be played with a singular purpose, you don't need other win cons or fancy tricks like Leveler, if you drop Shared Fate with board control and hand knowledge, you win, simple as that and all your efforts should be about making that happen as soon as possible.
All that being said, it's now just a question of what shell works best. The current build I've been playing is an esper build, and while it works very well, I'm seriously looking into changing it to U/B/R. Red provides sweepers like pyro and anger, and black provides damnation to replace supreme verdict. I think with red we get more control over creatures which is crucial since like Lantern, the biggest problem the deck has is against super aggro decks. Adding red also allows us to run dreadbore which I think is pretty important. Other than discard and counters, we don't have any way to answer a PW that hits the board and dreadbore allows us an answer. Also we can now play Izzet cham to give us a few more options, as well as playing cards like slaughter games in the sideboard.
The biggest hit we take from not running white is in the sideboard, since before I was running both Leyline and Stony Silence. Also I will have to rethink my sideboard plan if I switch to red, because my original board was transformative, after winning the first game, all the shared fate pieces came out and were replaced with gideon and sorin, and the deck basically became esper superfriends control, to avoid the enchantment hate that they're going to side in and take atvantage of the creature removal that they side out. However, with gideon and sorin not being an option I may have to rethink that. It may be the best choice is to just fill the sideboard with the normal answers and just try to push through Fate and then defend it as best as possible. Any suggestions would be great, I really want to get this deck as solid as possible, I think it has a great chance in the current meta to really turn things upside down.
Consider every possible board state you run into against scapeshift after shared fate lands. Consider how you win. Consider how you lose. You'll see the easiest way to win against/as scapeshift is to deck them. If more than one shared fate is in play then you have to bounce all of them.
If we stay in esper, the only sweeper I was running was supreme verdict, with the only target creature removal being path and murderous cut. In the grixis colors, I'm running damnation, pyroclasm, dreadbore, terminate, and cut. My esper board had stony and leyline, but I feel that shatterstorm is a decent replacement for stony, and if I find that I reaaaaly need the stony effect I can run damping matrix for a weaker version of it. I am sad about losing leyline, but that and path feels like the only cards I really hate to lose. I definitely won't be playing lightning bolts or any other direct burn, the risk is just too high, as it's hard enough to stay alive as it is lol. I suggested Izzet Charm because it give us the option to do multiple things, counter spells, kill creatures, or draw cards, which are all good things. I don't know if the card is going to make the cut though.
This is the current Esper list:
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Serum Visions
4 Mana Leak
4 Shared Fate
4 Path to Exile
3 Supreme Verdict
2 Murderous Cut
2 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
2 Thoughtseize
1 Condescend
1 Go for the Throat
3 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
2 Dispel
2 Spreading Seas
1 Elspeth, the Sun's Champion
1 Supreme Verdict
This is the current Grixis list:
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Serum Visions
4 Mana Leak
4 Shared Fate
3 Damnnation
2 Pyroclasm
2 Dreadbore
2 Thoughtseize
2 Terminate
2 Think Twice
1 Condescend
1 Murderous Cut
1 Painful Truths
3 Pithing Needle
2 Spreading Seas
2 Dispel
2 Slaughter Games
1 Duress
1 Terminate
1 Crumble to Dust
1 Keranos, God of Storms
2 Pithing Needle
4 Serum Visions
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
4 Mana Leak
2 Think Twice
4 Shared Fate
1 Fiery Impulse
1 Murderous Cut
3 Terminate
3 Pyroclasm
2 Damnation
3 Scalding Tarn
1 Bloodstained Mire
2 Watery Grave
1 Steam Vents
1 Blood Crypt
2 Darkslick Shores
2 Exotic Orchard
2 Desolate Lighthouse
3 Island
2 Swamp
1 Mountain
2 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
2 Chandra, Flamecaller
2 Slaughter Games
2 Blood Moon
2 Fulminator Mage
1 Pithing Needle
1 Vandalblast
1 Negate
1 Night of Souls' Betrayal
1 Anger of the Gods
What else is a better finisher?
Has anyone considered Phage the Untouchable as an alternate win condition? I've been playing this deck online some. It hasn't had an incredible win percentage, but I've probably won about 40% of my matches against tiered decks, which I think is respectable. Thing is, I've won several matches where I keep the board clear and grind us both into topdeck mode, then topdeck a Phage. The opponent has exactly 1 turn to draw an answer, or else they lose. Since the goal of the deck is to keep the board clear and grind your opponent into topdeck mode (to clear the way for Shared Fate), it seems like other cards that benefit from that strategy might be useful. Other than the win conditions, the whole deck is draw, discard, counters, and kill spells (especially heavy on the draw and discard, which are, of course, useless after Shared Fate comes down. I'm thinking something like this:
4 Serum Visions
4 Gitaxian Probe
1 See Beyond
Discard (9)
3 Thoughtseize
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Raven's Crime
Counters (4)
4 Mana Leak
2 Dismember
2 Devour Flesh
2 Damnation
Win Conditions (7)
4 Shared Fate
2 Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
1 Phage, the Untouchable
Lands (25)
4 Island
4 Swamp
4 Exotic Orchard
4 Polluted Delta
4 Temple of Deceit
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Watery Grave
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
The See Beyond is for putting away excess Shared Fates mainly. Sideboard to taste (transformative, more pinpoint control, different win-cons, etc.)
Modern - UG Mana Denial GU
. . . . . . .
WBG Melira Pod GBWCommander - BR Olivia Voldaren RB Vampire Tribal
. . . . . . . . . WUB Sharuum the Hegemon BUW Not-Broken Artifact Midrange
. . . . . . . . . WUG Rafiq of the Many GUW Voltron
. . . . . . . . . . .UB Oona, Queen of the Fae BU No-combo Tempo-Mill
. . . . . . . . . WUB Oloro, Ageless Ascetic BUW Pillow Fort