Note Yes this looks like an essay, but trust me, it’s necessary. I’ve been trying to build around Shared Fate for a while now, but nothing seems to work. Shared Fate essentially allows you to trade decks with the opponent, which could be a toss-up. After Shared Fate hits the board it’s a question of who will draw gas first or if the opponent has removal. First I tried just building a bad deck around it and soon realized that Shared Fate required a little bit more skill than that. Let me explain: Shared Fate is a seemingly janky and clunky card with very few outlets. At first glance one might exclaim, “Where the hell could that card be useful”? Well, I’ll tell you exactly where once I finish with my constraints. First off is the lack of tutors. Most decks with Shared Fate are intentionally bad to sabotage the opponent once it hits the board, but until Shared Fate is online you sort of flounder around for a while. Using tutors seems like it would streamline the deck, but if you can use a tutor, your opponent can too. This means tutors are out of the picture in a “combo” deck. It’s also important to consider a lack of removal and more board wipes because removal allows the opponent to kill creatures you get out. We still can run a little removal, but not enough to really alter the game. Instead, we want to run hand picking, like thoughtseize. In doing this, we are preventing early and late threats and once Shared Fate comes out, our hand becomes less important. So basically, we want a deck that can get a specific card out without tutors and survive without removal or alternate win conditions like creatures, burn, or storm. Sounds impossible, right? Well, yes, it probably is impossible to make a decent deck with these constraints, but I want a challenge! We begin with our method of getting Shared Fate into our hand quickly: Wheel. It’s a shared effect that fills everyone’s hands with something different, and can cycle through decks pretty quickly. If I use this, I can find my key card without tutoring. Even better, if my opponent uses the wheel effect they can only draw cards from my deck! We can use cards like Faithless Looting, too. Now we have card draw, but how about removal and ways to survive? Well, board wipes are great. Things like Damnation are godsend, mostly because they don’t effect my board but kill a ton of stuff, including things with hexproof and shroud. So now we have removal, ways to get good stuff in our hand, and even better: Wheel is awesome! I can run stuff like Waste Not to profit from my mass discard and focused discard, things like Liliana’s Caress to deal tons of damage, and best of all: After Shared Fate hits the board and I wheel, I am no longer effected by my win conditions. This Shared Fate deck is no longer specifically focused on the card Shared Fate, but now adds great synergy. One unfortunate aspect of this deck, however, is the lack of spot removal, creatures and it’s vulnerability to fast decks. I hope the stuff I’ve done here work, because I haven’t really tested it! Please give criticism, but don’t hate on Shared Fate. It is my child and I want to nurture it. Optimizing Shared Fate is a personal dream, so help me!
