• Find your combo. No combo is good if you can't find it. Tutors and/or card drawing should find your combo fast.
• Protect your combo. You need to make certain that once you play Shared Fate you can also keep it in table. Countermagic or cards like Priviledged Position that make your Fate untargetable work fine. Discard works fine as well.
• Accelerate to your combo. It is often good idea to play Shared Fate early as your opponent may not have removal for it and it prevents your opponent drawing removal. Also it lets you use your opponent deck earlier, hereby providing you possible answers to his hand and threats he have already played.
• Protect yourself. Playing Shared Fate doesn't provide an automatic win like some combos do. Thus you need to keep yourself alive even after playing it. Creature removal is often perfect answer.
• You shouldn't play cards that remove or bounce fate. Remember that your opponent has access to your deck as well.
• You shouldn't play bounce at all. Remember that opponent can return his threats to his hand with bounce and it makes you look rather lame if they did it with bounce in your deck.
• Remember that Shared Fate provides a replacement effect for card drawing. Neither you or your opponent can die to milling when Shared Fate is in play
• You can rely on your opponent's win conditions. 99.99% of decks have actual win condition. Remember that threats in your deck may backfire if your opponent has them.
• Having multiple Shared Fates in play doesn't change anything. You don't need to fear your opponent playing Fate, instead you should propably thank them for fortifying your position. You still "draw" from each other's deck.

Those are only guidelines, there are lots of different effective (in casual) Fate decks that break one or more of those rules. In fact, the following deck breaks at least one of them.

Removed Fate

Removed Fate

 

Creatures 4 Arc-Slogger 3 Leveler Other Spells 4 Shared Fate 4 Memory Lapse 4 Thirst for Knowledge 3 Counterspell 3 Careful Consideration 4 Magma Jet 3 Wildfire 4 Chrome Mox 4 Izzet Signet

Lands 4 Island 2 Izzet Boilerworks 3 Mountain 1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea 1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds 3 Steam Vents 2 Wooded Foothills 2 Polluted Delta 2 Gemstone Caverns

This deck tries to remove the library right after playing Shared Fate either by Arc-Slogger (removes most of it anyway) or Leveler. Notice that both of this this creatures survive Wildfire that is here to combat masses of critters. Artifacts in the deck serves two purposes, both accelerating you and to ensure your Wildfire doesn't hurt too much. Artifacts also serve as a decoy for Disenchant cards. Memory Lapse is very effective at protecting Fate. This deck can often just pull a win with Arc-Slogger, likely with help from Wildfire. Notice that while removing library allows me to use cards that bounce or remove artifacts, I've selected not to play them since there is a slight change of your opponent getting them.

Buyback and Flashback spells are also interesting cards you can trick unaware opponent playing. Quicksilver Elemental is one of the threats you could play without big danger to yourself. Remember that you should be wary of playing cards from your opponents deck that could benefit him once they hit graveyard. Also if you pack mass removal in your Fate deck, you shouldn't put more threats into the table than needed to whittle away your opponent's life total. While you may very well not lose after Shared Fate is down and your opponent has no significant threats in play or in hand, the game may still end in draw especially if you're careless.

Enchantress of Fate

Removed Fate

 

Creatures 4 Verduran Enchantress 3 Drift of Phantasms Other Spells 4 Shared Fate 4 Wrath of God 4 Condemn 2 Whip Silk 4 Wild Growth 4 Fertile Ground 4 Utopia Sprawl 4 Enchantress's Presence 2 Privileged Position

Lands 8 Forest 1 Island 1 Plains 4 Temple Garden 4 Windswept Heath 2 Hallowed Fountain 1 Breeding Pool

This deck has followed all the guidelines I presented above. It has fast acceleration in the form of enchant lands. Excellent card draw engine of Enchantress. And enough protection for both you and fate. Though partly that protection comes from you drawing more Fates faster than your opponent can draw answers or your opponent wastes his answers to other enchantments. It neither has any threats, so your opponent can't win with your deck. Neither can your opponent use transmute of Drift since transmute has to be used from hand.

Condemn is excellent removal in this deck, since it returns the threat back to library from where you can draw it later. Whip Silk provides efficient card drawing even when Fate is already down, allowing you to quickly find answers and threats in your opponent's library.

And here ends this article. I hope you have enjoyed reading it.

Best Regards,

Risto Salama (Orlanth)