Cruel Control and Mislabeling
TappedOut forum
Posted on June 21, 2014, 5:25 p.m. by OpenFire
I was looking for Cruel Control decks using (what else) the hub, and I found that probably only <10% of all decks in the hub were actually Cruel Control decks. Here's what is a Cruel Control deck: Any Grixis (U/B/R) control deck that runs Cruel Ultimatum as a finisher. Here's what isn't a Cruel Control deck: Any control deck that makes your opponent mad, or keeps them from playing. So if you mislabeled your deck, fix it so it is easier for those of us who want to see the decks to actually find them.
Mines labelled as cruel control because I'm hunting for some Cruel Ultimatum . In the mean time I think Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker should count for something :(
June 21, 2014 6:16 p.m.
Having a Grixis Control deck that will eventually get Cruel Ultimatum in it is fine being in the hub. Standard Esper Control lists are not Cruel Control, and I have seen several. However, since the definition of Cruel Control does not include Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker , he doesn't make a deck into Cruel Control. Any deck that is not in Grixis colors should not be in the hub.
June 21, 2014 6:23 p.m.
Oh, and this is just as bad on the Hive Mind and 12-Post hubs
June 21, 2014 6:35 p.m.
The thing is though that a lot of Grixis decks that operate under the same philosophy as cruel ultimatum have become something that's colloquially referred to as cruel control. Why is it that we have pox deck that don't run it labeled as such? The simple answer is that language and nomenclature exist to serve us and help us communicate something. If that happens to be 'This deck aims to win by making you sack a bunch of stuff, lose some life, discard cards, etc' then I think that's fine.
June 21, 2014 6:37 p.m.
That is a marginal answer, however no non-Grixis deck should be labeled as this.
June 21, 2014 6:38 p.m.
Unforgivn_II says... #10
12-Post is a different issue. Something with the interface makes it so that 12-Post gets chosen whenever you try to remove a hub from a mobile device. I've had my share of fun with that one...
June 21, 2014 6:56 p.m.
Did not know that. Apparently people take Hive Mind to mean Sliver decks.
June 21, 2014 6:57 p.m.
What do you mean marginal? If the community takes it upon itself to drift away from what cruel control originally stood for, there's very little people can do about it. It's the same with words like peruse. The use of the word as skimming or going over something quickly is slowly becoming more accepted. Hate to break it to you, but if only 10% of the decks actually run the card, the community is either grossly misinformed or considers the card Cruel Ultimatum itself as something not entirely required for a deck to fall into the hub.
June 21, 2014 7:04 p.m.
The original cruel control deck had five colors, but I see where you're coming from.
June 21, 2014 7:06 p.m.
TheDevicer - just because people use words or tags in the wrong way doesn't change the definition......
Definition isn't based on majority consensus. Like when people say Birds of Paradise ramps etc. They technically don't it's just easy to describe something as such, when it's not REALLY true. Kind of like a metaphor I guess.
June 21, 2014 7:23 p.m.
But, but.... but.... it does. Language is a continually evolving entity. Decimation used to mean killing one in ten. Abandon used to mean to subjugate. Bully stood for darling. Change like this doesn't occur just because a room full of men sit together and shake hands on it. No, people have to misuse those terms over a long period of time until they become acceptable. How we use words changes constantly. Their misuse shapes language and labels all the time. Why should the way we label magic decks be any different?
June 21, 2014 7:34 p.m.
Rasta_Viking29 says... #16
It is annoying to see players continually calling their Grixis control, Rakdos control, and mono-black control decks cruel control. When I was new I did the same. I was informed of what it meant and then stopped mislabeling my decks. The word cruel doesn't make your deck cool. Your Slaughter Games is no more cruel than Supreme Verdict ... Quit acting like rubes.
June 21, 2014 7:37 p.m.
No, colloquialism and slang change all the time but actual definition doesn't. The dictionary is decided by men that sit together and shake hands on it.
Obviously magic doesn't have that level of authenticity but we still have phrases that have a set meaning and get misused.
June 21, 2014 7:38 p.m.
So according to TexasDice, the original "Cruel Control" wasn't Grixis and when I do a google search using keywords "Cruel Control" and archetype, I do not get something that is strictly Grixis either.
I feel like it might be fine in standard to define an entire archetype by a single individual card, but for something like EDH, I think that is very problematic unless that one card is the general because in my Grixis that runs Cruel Ultimatum , the idea is really more "Controlled Chaos" which lets go of the reigns of power just a wee bit more than what I think of as "Cruel Control", the probability of drawing that one card after not having it in the open hand is just 1/92 - how is that supposed to define the whole deck? It makes little sense to me, but if people want to make an issue out of it, it is not very hard to say:
Grixis + Cruel Ultimatum : check -> click hub ... no biggie
June 21, 2014 7:39 p.m.
Sometimes the men sit in the room and change the defintion of somethign though.
June 21, 2014 7:40 p.m.
MindAblaze says... #20
I would argue that people using the word differently does change the definition. Language is about understanding, and people changing/adapting the terms to serve their purpose is how it evolves.
That doesn't change the origin of the word/phrase, or the need for a baseline. There still needs to be a standard so people can categorize.
June 21, 2014 7:52 p.m.
So, basically, what I'm getting is that, of the people who care, half are willing to just let the definition change to "a control deck that is cruel in its control", and half are seeking for clarity when it comes to definition of the archetype (it's Grixis, runs Cruel Ultimatum , is a control deck).
I'm assuming a good chunk of the players misuse the hub because they are unaware of the card Cruel Ultimatum/the archetype that ensued from that card, but do know what the word "cruel" means. Cruel Control isn't a majorly winning archetype in Modern, and the Ultimatum is well out of Standard, so a lot of newer players (people playing for fewer than 5 years, basically) won't have heard of the deck.
There's no good way to make sure that the hub isn't used "incorrectly", save for going to every deck that uses it "incorrectly" one by one and defining the archetype for them (followed by them removing the hub). Or, you know, playing a lot of Cruel Control, win a major Modern event, and get the deck back into the public eye that way so people know what it actually means. Alternatively, you could just not get mad about it, refine deck searches a bit more, and go on with your life. One of those three.
June 21, 2014 9:21 p.m.
you could sort by total score although the deck index is slowly being rebuilt right now.
ideally, higher scoring ones would be more accurate?
June 21, 2014 9:31 p.m.
Rasta_Viking29 says... #24
Clarifying that I don't really care, just a little on tilt today.
June 21, 2014 10:03 p.m.
I'd actually like if the hub was used for solely decks that ran Cruel Ultimatum . I've just been trying to explain that the way we use language doesn't always follow the most intuitive path. Also, I think it's a mistake to assume newer players don't know stuff like this. I've been playing for a year and I've gotten to be pretty darn knowledgeable fast.
June 21, 2014 10:09 p.m.
The problem with sorting them based on score is that people might like decks that are labeled as Cruel Control (despite not being it) such as a RBW Standard list I remember with >20 points.
Servo_Token says... #2
Search the "Cruel Control" Hub, adding in "Cruel Ultimatum" in the "card search" option.
Seems a lot easier than trying to change +/- 2000 decks.
June 21, 2014 5:44 p.m.