Fated Return from Born of the Gods - A Magic the Gathering (MTG) Card Review

by Phoenix A. Desertsong, Staff Writer, Healer & Advocate

The Fated cycle from Born of the Gods are all pretty interesting cards. All have seen at least some fringe Constructed play. The Black card in the Fated cycle, Fated Return, has similarly seen minimal Constructed play, mostly in some Blue/Black control builds. It costs 4BBB (4 colorless, 3 Black) to cast for an instant. That's a pretty absurd casting cost to begin with for an instant. So what does it do to deserve such an investment?

Fated Return's effect is interesting: Put target creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. It gains indestructible. If it’s your turn, you get to scry 2 (look at the top 2 cards of your deck, then put any number of them on the bottom of your library and the rest of top in any order.) Scry helps you to set up your draws, and this particular effect appears on all five of the Fated cards.

This is definitely a card that worked well in Limited, as it can grab an opponent’s creature and make it indestructible. There are big enough creatures in the Theros block which made casting this card sometimes worth it. The scry 2 can be quite relevant, and although you ordinarily wouldn’t want to cast this during one of your own Main Phases, in Limited it’s certainly possible that you could. The main problem with this card is that massive mana cost. Gaining an indestructible bomb back from any graveyard is kind of nice, and could win you the game. But it’s a pricey trick.

This card does see some fringe Commander play, due to the fact that reanimation is so common and highly useful in that format. While it’s such a costly card to cast, Fated Return’s 7 mana cost is far easier to absorb in the very mana-hungry Commander meta-game. If Fated Return were 5 mana, perhaps 3BB, and didn’t add indestructibility, I think it would be more playable. Really no decks outside of the aforementioned Commander decks and Blue/Black Control Standard lists have included it. It’s one of those “bomb” cards that otherwise just has limited usability in Constructed.

---