Crossroads Divination: Standard Fatehold Preview

Note: This article was translated from Chinese by AI and may contain errors. Read the original Chinese version.

Introduction

Fatehold, the inverse of Lorehold, no longer chases historical legacies but is keen on observing the future, with its eyes on the very card you are about to draw. In the past, cards that interact with both scry and surveil were released as individual cards. This time Fatehold turns them into a system. Does it have a chance in Standard?

Deck Analysis

Decklist

• Fatehold Campus: Denzilore, Fatehold; Proctor of Potential; Diviner of Victory

Denzilore, Fatehold: The founding sphinx of Fatehold, a four-mana 3/4 flying flash beater. Whenever you scry or surveil, it triggers and puts +1/+1 counters on your whole team. In situations where you trigger scry/surveil multiple times in a single turn, it can quickly pump everyone up and decide the game.

Proctor of Potential: The core engine for surveil. Every creature of yours, itself included, triggers a surveil as it enters, and it can also crawl back from the graveyard. Whether paired with Denzilore, Fatehold or Matoya, Archon Elder, it can snowball into an explosive advantage.

Diviner of Victory: A one-mana beater for scry/surveil strategies. It temporarily grows every time you scry or surveil, and it comes with a soft removal spell that also surveils, letting you gain a tempo advantage in creature matchups.

• Divination Mirror: Matoya, Archon Elder; Political Triumph; The Legend of Kuruk

Matoya, Archon Elder: An honorary professor of Fatehold from FINAL FANTASY. Every scry/surveil draws a card directly. Once it gets going, your hand stays full, and the massive resource advantage helps you crush the opponent with ease.

Political Triumph: A supporting scry engine. Like Proctor of Potential, it triggers off creatures entering. A one-mana enchantment is light, easy to cast, and hard to remove. After triggering four times, it sacrifices itself to draw a card and put +1/+1 counters on your whole team. It is a match made in heaven with Voice of Victory.

The Legend of Kuruk // Avatar Kuruk: The Waterbending king’s saga. It guarantees two scry-and-draws on entering, and once transformed it is a powerful board-developing engine. It goes into the deck as a backup way to win the game.

• Removal & Support: Erode, Fatehold Charm, Voice of Victory, Yuriko, Hope from the Shadows

Erode: The most efficient one-mana instant-speed removal in current Standard. Its drawback of fetching a land for the opponent diminishes as the game goes on, so unless you spend it early on an opponent’s cheap creature, it is basically never a loss.

Fatehold Charm: A very flexible white-blue charm. It can bounce a creature or a spell to stop the opponent’s key play, pump your whole team to make the opponent miscalculate damage, and when you lack a surveil source, it can make a Jace token without losing card advantage to help trigger the related effects.

Voice of Victory: A powerful token engine. When attacking, mobilize triggers scry/surveil-on-enter effects such as Political Triumph and Proctor of Potential, while passively stopping the opponent from doing things on your turn, letting you safely trigger the related effects in large numbers on your main turn and snowball your advantage.

Yuriko, Hope from the Shadows: A one-mana creature to fill out the curve. It surveils 2 on entering to adjust your draws and trigger effects, and its power reduction can work wonders in certain situations.

Gameplay Demo

Since triggering scry/surveil effects multiple times in one turn isn’t hard, as long as the key engines aren’t removed, it’s easy to instantly snowball into an enormous body or resource advantage, but that is also this deck’s weakness. Why do I say that? Because neither Denzilore, Fatehold nor Matoya, Archon Elder can run on its own, so if they get disrupted, it’s easy to end up in an awkward board state where you’re stuck in the middle. But that also means that as long as you can effectively protect your core engine or quickly filter into the next replacement, a single success often decides the game. The gap between the floor and ceiling of the experience is huge, and it plays surprisingly un-Azorius.

Conclusion

When designing sets, Wizards of the Coast has a habit of releasing support cards for certain individual cards several sets later, and Matoya, Archon Elder from FINAL FANTASY is an obvious case this time. When building decks for a new set, going back to look at older sets often yields unexpected rewards. Happy deckbuilding with the new set, everyone!