Control 101

Features

KrazyCaley

6 October 2013

5518 views

(Caley's note - This article was originally published on December 13, 2010, but I thought I'd bring it back for new readers while we wait for the next Daily Draft Debate to be ready. Enjoy!)

Control in MTG

The Holy Texts of Magic: The Gathering generally attempt to divide all decks into one of three categories- Aggro (emphasis on quick damage, usually creature based), Combo (crazy trick based on card interaction that often does nothing useful until the combo "goes off," winning quickly after that), and Control (prevent your opponent from carrying out their strategy until you enter the late game, then start dropping bombs).

These three deck types traditionally form a rock-paper-scissors arrangement; Aggro beats Control because control's tools usually aren't sufficient to keep up with the quick rushes of Aggro decks, Control beats Combo because it can selectively pick apart the pieces of the key combo, and Combo beats Aggro because Aggro, while it may inflict damage, will not be able to stop the killer combo.

Now, certainly, not all decks fit cleanly into these clean definitions. Reanimator decks, for instance, often lay somewhere between aggro and combo (depending on exactly which deck we're talking about), and often in standard we see hybrid decks that could really be any combination of the archetypes.

Still, the archetypes are known for a reason, and they are a pretty useful way to think about different MTG decks. Today, I'm here to talk to you about my personal favorite deck archetype, the Control deck, and hopefully hand over some of the knowledge I have on building/playing this kind of deck to those that need it. Let's begin!

Who should play control?

Control is easily the most difficult of the three basic archetypes to play, primarily because the Control player is required to have more information and to make more decisions about more different in-game issues relative to the other archetypes. The other two primary archetypes are concerned with only one thing: throttling up into their main game- for aggro, get down maximum damage/creatures ASAP, for combo, get the combo to go off. The exception is of course when these decks face a control deck, when they must also worry about how best to dodge the control cards.

Unlike the other two decks, control decks invariably rely on disrupting the enemy deck. This is the reason behind control players needing more information and needing to make more decisions per game than players of other archetypes. Control players MUST make their cards count in order to survive, and to make their cards count, they have to know what to counter and what not to counter, when to wrath, when to try to attempt a defense, how much life to sacrifice, etc.

From a broader perspective, control decks give the game a bit more depth than it would have otherwise. Control decks mandate more interaction between the players and a bit more complexity in strategy even from non-control decks. Without control, many games would essentially come down to a shallow race between the players; with control, the game is much more thought-intensive.

I'm going to now take you on a tour of proper control deckbuilding and gameplay. Let's start with some deckbuilding basics.

Deckbuilding: Basic Summary

Generally, every good control deck is going to need three things:

1- A mana base.

2- Control tools.

3- A win condition.

Mana bases are another animal in and of themselves, and are adequately discussed elsewhere in the archives of TappedOut. Today I'm going to talk to you about the other two parts of most every decent control deck.

Deckbuilding: Control Tools

There are many, many ways to "control" opponents in Magic. You can lockdown your opponent's resources through land destruction. You can tap out their attackers. You can prevent or reduce damage. You can bounce permanents back to hand. The two most common control tools are removal (directly destroy permanents, usually creatures) and counterspells (counter spells on the stack).

In selecting your control tools, you have to be wary of the metagame of whatever format you're building the deck for, whether that be standard, legacy, extended, or perhaps your local casual table. You'll obviously want to adjust accordingly. If everyone runs Aether Vial goblins, well, you'll probably want that 4x Wrath of God more than 4x Counterspell. So what control tools do you want?

Generally:

Removal, especially mass-removal, works best against creature-based aggro decks. Keep in mind that if you rely heavily on removal, you'll need to have a good variety of it. Decks with lots of removal need to be flexible; part of the reason Maelstrom Pulse was such a good/expensive card in standard (and continues to be good/expensive in Extended) is that it is so flexible- it is spot removal for ANYTHING, and gets a huge bonus against tokens and the like. Just because I can't emphasize it enough, flexibility IS key- your giant amounts of creature destruction are going to be completely useless against some decks.

Likewise, counterspells generally work, for obvious reasons, against decks that rely on a few cards as their win condition (aka, many combo decks), and against most late-game decks, including other control decks. Counterspells are less-effective against creature-heavy decks, especially if those decks are fast. Especially in the formats that use newer cards, you can't rely on counterspells to do all or even most of the work anymore, not since the disappearance of Counterspell itself from those formats. Creatures are going to come down, and you'll need to have answers to ensure survival to the mid-game, when your counterspells can take over.

Other control ideas usually don't work well competitively on their own; land destruction, bounce, and various lockdown ideas almost invariably work better when paired with something else. Sure, you can build a decent casual theme deck out of some of these ideas, but if you want to win games, you'll usually need to pair these mechanics with either removal or counterspells.

Essentially, what you're looking for in a good set of control tools is, again, flexibility. You don't need to have answers for every card in Magic, but you do need to have answers for most of the cards you're likely to come up against. In the more recent formats, strong control decks achieve flexibility through a good mixture of cards; either flexible removal like Maelstrom Pulse, Oblivion Ring, and so forth, or a mixture of early game removal to stop rushes with counterspells to hold on in the late game, or similar options. In legacy formats, the usual solution is massive omni-removal like Chalice of the Void and its ilk, though such decks do tend to pack more targeted removal and/or counterspells as well.

In closing, I would add that you should be sure that your control tools make sense given the other two facets of your deck, namely your mana base and your win condition. If your win condition is a huge awful creature and you rely exclusively on Wrath of God effects, you might have some problems. If you run lots of counterspells that cost four mana, and you have 22 lands, you might have some problems. Make sure your deck is internally logically consistent.

Deckbuilding: Win Condition

Despite my fondest dreams, a player can't really win the game with nothing but control tools. Eventually you have to have a separate way to win the game. Control decks generally use many of the same kinds of win conditions as other decks, only theirs tend to be bigger, more expensive, and more powerful (otherwise, what was the point of all that control?)

The ideal win condition for a control deck would be cheap and so powerful as to end the game upon its activation, but in reality a control player must make trade-offs between how certain his game-ender is, and how long it takes to get it out.

A very common mistake for beginning deckbuilders is to err on the side of cheapness in this debate. Many are the mono-blue decks that are composed half of counterspells and half of slow, gradual mill mechanics. The problem here is not with the counterspells, but the mill mechanics. Gradual mill (like the namesake Millstone and spell-based milling) is, of course, a win condition, and one with many advantages (often dodges most answers the opponent has, interferes with the draws of the opponent), but it has one massive disadvantage to the control player- it is, when balanced out with control tools for the rest of the deck, much too slow. Control decks can't afford to prolong the game FOREVER; the counterspells will eventually run out, and if the win condition doesn't operate quickly enough, the enemy will get back on their feet and get their deck back into the game. Thus, I would say that it is usually proper for the control player to err on the side of certainty and speed when it comes to a win condition. For that mill deck, why not a Keening Stone or two? Sure, it costs 6, but even with a pretty paltry number of cards in your opponent's graveyard, you're going to win in just a few turns at most. Make your win condition very fearful. The options really are limitless, from Door to Nothingness to Emrakul, the Aeons Torn to Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker; one of the fun things you get to do as a control player is use giant fun cards that no one else can use because they're too slow. Just make sure that your win condition, again, makes sense with the rest of your deck. Realistically, if you use Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, for instance, you're likely going to need support to get him out, as you're unlikely to last to turn 15 (at best!) using just your control tools. You might need ramp, or a few blockers, etc. etc. And you're certainly going to need a lot of lands. Plan accordingly.

On to gameplay advice!

Playing Control- What does it take?

Consider the following traits that, in my opinion, typify a good control player before you tread down the dark path:

1- Patience

2- Empathy

3- Knowledge

4- Deception

5- Nerve

6- Attention to detail

7- Endurance

8- Sadism

Gameplay - Patience

Patience is absolutely the most important trait and skill that a control player needs. Even a completely inattentive and non-calculating control player can play well if they have patience.

Patience is so important because it is required to maximize the value of the cards used by the control player. The more patient you can be, the greater will be the efficiency of your plays. Efficiency just means getting the most bang for your buck- a Counterspell against that Grizzly Bears may stop you from taking damage early, but you're really going to wish you had it later when the same player casts Primeval Titan. Likewise, sure, you can Wrath of God on three soldier tokens and a Daru Warchief, but if you can wait, you might get five soldier tokens, a Daru Warchief, a Captain of the Watch, and a Soul Warden for the same cost of one card. You have to be patient when playing control. You have to be willing to wait for the right spot to deploy your cards and not necessarily jump on any and all opportunities to do so. When you are thinking of deploying a control tool especially, you should always be considering whether, in the long run, your resources could be better spent at another time.

Gameplay - Empathy

I don't mean you should feel sorry for your opponent as you crush him/her into dust and share his pain, indeed, that would be counterproductive (see Sadism, below). What I mean by empathy is thinking/feeling out your opponent's state of mind. Have you played this opponent before? Do you know their tendencies? How has this opponent behaved so far? Have they done anything suspicious, like look through their graveyard, or almost play a spell and then pull it back? You need to feel what your opponent is likely to do in any given situation, partially so that you can know when the time has come to deploy your cards, and which cards to deploy. If you feel like your opponent is just going all-out and casting every creature he has, and now he's down to 2 cards and has stopped casting anything, then, yeah, now may be the time for that Wrath. If you try to get inside his head and think that instead he's holding out on you, instead you may wish to deploy a few pieces of spot removal to try and get him to overcommit before you drop that Wrath. Think! Getting inside your opponent's head is key as a control player.

Gameplay - Knowledge

Playing Red Deck Wins requires essentially no knowledge of anything about the game except how to cast a spell that targets the opponent, and perhaps how to summon and attack with creatures. With RDW, it almost never matters what the opponent is running, what they've played so far, what they might have in hand; none of it matters. You just aim your missiles at your opponent's face and hope you have the gas to get them to zero before their deck can stop you. This isn't an insult against RDW or its players; RDW is a pure, simple archetype that has many advantages, not the least of which are that it is so easy to use, takes so much less mental energy to manage, and requires less knowledge about the game.

As a control player, these are not advantages which you share. Control players need all sorts of information about the game, which is why I don't recommend control decks for new players. Even if you're a new player with otherwise absolutely perfect gameplay skills, you just may not know enough about the different cards that are out there, about the different opponents you might run into, etc. Control play requires knowledge and experience with the game in general, and with the format/particular decks you'll run into, and ideally, with that particular opponent, or at least his type. The way this knowledge is used should be fairly clear- knowing what cards even exist in a format is obviously useful, knowing what's popular in the format helps you build your own deck, knowing what exact deck you're up against is supremely useful in deciding what to use your resources to interfere with, as is knowing your individual opponent's tendencies.

Knowledge is what I suppose you could call a force multiplier for the control players- it greatly increases the effectiveness of almost every other aspect of your game. It's a bit like artillery in an actual war, upgrades for the Starcraft player, killstreak rewards for the MW2 player. This is one of control's primary advantages- the more knowledge you gain, the more powerful you become, while players of other archetypes essentially have their performance levels capped. A new control player will lose to new players of other archetypes frequently, but will gain a relative advantage as he and his compatriots both gain knowledge and experience.

As an example, I personally have my greatest control success stories against my longtime friend Dave ( miinor_threat ) in games where I am running a control deck and he is running a non-control deck. This is not because Dave is bad at Magic or because he's a weak player; indeed, the opposite is true. The problem is, when he runs a deck like his Elves deck against one of my control decks, I have a relative advantage, because even though we both know each other and each others' decks very well, such information is far more useful to my control deck than it is to his non-control . There are only so many ways he can change up his game when running an aggro deck; with a control deck at my disposal, I can change my game to fit his style and his cards. Our mutual knowledge and experience favors the person running the control deck.

Gameplay - Deception

A control player has many more opportunities relative to other archetypes to fool his opponent, and you must take advantage of these opportunities to maximize your chances of winning. On turn 7, if an aggro deck is topdecking, they're generally going to play anything and everything they topdeck. On turn 7, if a control deck is topdecking, they're generally going to NOT play most of the things they topdeck. This is itself an opportunity for deception. Consider the following:

You have 10 Islands out. Your opponent has 10 mountains out. You are topdecking. You draw an island and play it. (If that sentence made you twitch, congratulations, you're on the right track!) Then, on their turn, your opponent draws some horrible monster that will kill you and plays it. You just messed up, big time. A pro plays that situation by drawing the island, reading it carefully for a second, then passing the turn. Now when your opponent draws their awful monster, they might think twice about trying to cast it right away. "Maybe," they think to themselves, "I'll wait until I draw a smaller threat to draw out the counter before I play my big monster." Remember- every island is a counterspell. On the flip side of this situation, suppose you actually DO draw a counterspell. In that situation, you want to draw, see that you have a counterspell, and perhaps INSTANTLY pass the turn. You want to sell your opponent on the idea that you're faking him out with an island so that he'll try to push through his nasty monster, thus leading to it being safely countered by you.

And land/counter faking is only a very basic element. Sometimes I like to ask to see my opponent's graveyard for no reason. When I am playing a deck with discard mechanics (like for instance during the last two standard cycles with Blightning ), I will frequently ask early on in the game for "cards in hand," ESPECIALLY if I didn't have a Blightning. Why? If I asked for cards in hand, my opponent always assumes I have a Blightning. They will then rush to cast their best cards first when they should be leading with their weak cards to draw out my answers.

Opportunities for deception are everywhere. I actually wrote an earlier article dealing with it, my Top 10 Tips for Intermediate Players. Check it out!

Gameplay - Nerve

Something which I am almost certain is true: control decks take more damage in a game on average than other types of decks. I've won more games with less than 10 life than I have with more than 10 life, big time. I've won LOTS of games from 1-5 life. As a control player, you will be constantly staring defeat in the face. This can be a problem, because a control player has constant access to a room full of panic buttons, and the temptation to hit them is nearly always great because your opponent will be hitting you in the face and/or threatening to kill you on the quickfast.

You've gotta have nerve. You have to be willing to look your opponent in the face and say "Yeah, I take three," over and over, and over again, until you are at 3 or less or the moment is right, whichever comes first. It's tough. No one likes to feel unprotected and constantly take damage in this game, but you have to have discipline.

If it seems tempting to use your control tools inefficiently so that you can stop the bleeding, remember this: If you use your control tools inefficiently, you will lose, even if you feel more comfortable in the short term. No one ever won Day of Judgmenting a vanilla 3/3 to death and nothing else on a regular basis. You have to hold back. Use your cards at the right times. Be willing to sacrifice life, time, any resource in the game that you have, so long as you maximize the efficiency of your play.

Gameplay - Attention to detail

This goes along with knowledge a bit, but here I mean more particularly the details/knowledge relating to the current game state. Control players HAVE to pay attention. All players have to pay attention, but control players especially need to pay attention, and they have to do so in greater detail than other players.

You MUST know what the cards on the field do, and what the cards in your opponent's deck (and certainly in your own deck!) do. You must not find yourself saying "Oh, I forgot that (cardname) did that." When your modus operandi is to interfere with your opponent's play, you must know what both you and your opponent are PLAYING. This means reading every card you can see very carefully and making sure you know what the cards do. Be aware of combinations you might not see at first; like chess, sometimes you need to sit on your hands and analyze a little bit to see if there are any card interactions you've missed.

Further, you must pay attention to your opponent. He will be unintentionally giving you information- what is he doing with his body? How is he handling his cards? Did he tap his land one way, then undo it and tap it another way? Why might he have done that? Be attentive.

Gameplay - Endurance

I teach chess for money. Many of my clients are kids. Many of these kids' parents tell me that their child is "a prodigy" and is doubtless the next Bobby Fischer. The best way I have of deflecting this kind of overenthusiasm is to ask "Well, at your kid's age, Bobby Fischer would sit still at the chessboard for hours at a time doing nothing but sitting still, staring at the board, analyzing games, and he never got tired of it." Meanwhile, little Johnny is off pulling out his Nintendo DS every time I take a breath in my lecture.

As with my minor students, so with you. Are you willing to keep up the mental strain of analyzing, thinking about interactions, observing your opponent, keeping your deception shields up, and carefully considering all your plays for games with lengths of 20 turns, 30 turns, and beyond? It really is rough. If you're tired, hungry, thirsty, have to pee, just got into an argument with your significant other, or have any number of other distractions to deal with, your game will suffer, and it will suffer more relatively than if you were playing a less challenging archetype. Even if you're concentrating, it is difficult to learn to maintain focus in a long game. It's a bit like playing tight, aggressive poker; if you've got good mental endurance and can continue to focus for long periods of time, you can succeed.

Gameplay - Sadism

Last, but not least, you have to enjoy playing Control. This means that you have to have a certain degree of sociopathy. If you HATE being mean to other people in any context, then you should probably play something that's a bit more fun to play against. Control decks are notorious for being frustrating and soul-crushing to play against. And if you can't, at least a little bit, like having your opponent squirm in their seat, then either you are going to pull your punches out of sympathy, or you are going to take more mental strain than you should from playing the game. Remember, this game is supposed to be fun, and you should do what's fun for you. Control is fun when you can get into some good old-fashioned schadenfreude.

And besides, look at your opponent over there, thinking he's so great. He's got you at 4 life, he's got a board full of creatures and a Comet Storm in hand. You have what to him looks like a board consisting of just 16 Islands and nothing else, but which you know is the best board possible, one that will shortly end in his utter subjugation. A few minutes later, he'll be cursing and screaming about how blue is "so cheap" and whether you came here to play magic or be a jerk. And you'll smile quietly to yourself and think "wait, those options are not mutually exclusive." Welcome to Control.