Control deck
A control deck is a term for a deck of (usually sixty) cards that aims to control the opponent's cards and progression with, ideally, the end result where one has full control of everything that is done during the game. Control decks are very powerful and present in virtually every format in the game.
Aspects of control
Control decks are, unlike Aggro decks and Combo decks, defensive and reactive in nature. Because of this, Control has some major flaws in its pure state. These primary downfalls are:
- In order to reach the point of total control, one needs many resources and access to many cards and
- Generally, if one's opponent can play more spells and threats than one can respond to, pure Control decks can have difficulty recovering. Due to this, most control decks have two major things in common:
- Continual card drawing is a major aspect in control decks, as it keeps one's resources consistently available.
- The vast majority of cards that are not win conditions or card drawing spells are spells that react to any threat one's opponent can play, so that you can, ideally, respond to everything.
Control decks intend to collect resources and defend themselves until they gain total control of the game. At this point they play a threat and continue to control the opponent until the threat kills them. The manner in which these control decks defend themselves is most often how they are defined.
Because control decks are defensive in nature, they often need to adopt elements of Aggro decks or Combo decks in some metagames. Some control decks use combos to win rather than the traditional few threats, but not many; the average control deck uses so many control spells that there's little room to support an effective combo. When a Control deck adopts some aggro elements, they usually use efficient creatures or spells that gain tempo early in the game. Most Control decks that need to adopt certain elements of combo or aggro decks are forced to do so in a certain metagame where most other decks win very quickly (due to very powerful combos or extremely effective aggro creatures). Thus, the common long-term plan of winning with Control becomes too elaborate and ineffective early on.
Some examples
Mono-Blue Control
The Mono-Blue Control ("MUC") deck ("Mono" because Blue is the only color being played, U for Blue because B represents Black) is considered one of the strongest. It uses counterspells, which can disrupt the casting of any spell, to interrupt crucial spells and prevent the opponent from doing anything threatening. These counterspells are generally backed up with another of Blue's specialties, card-drawing spells (to refill the player's hand with counters) and a small number of threats. It creates an almost poker-like game environment: Blue's most classic counterspell, the card called Counterspell, costs only two blue mana to cast, and by keeping two Islands untapped and one card—any card—in his hand, a MUC player can reduce his opponent to a state of extreme anxiety. In recent years, due to its unpopularity among some players (counterspells are very difficult to stop with anything other than another counterspell), Wizards of the Coast has been trying to reduce the power of such decks, by printing less capable counter and card-draw spells.
White-Blue Control
White-Blue Control decks are, in essence, Mono-Blue Control decks with White added in order to be more offensive towards Aggro decks with cards like Wrath of God. Some White-Blue Control decks have developed because they were in metagames where Aggro decks ran rampant, so white's array of creature destruction spells were necessary. Also, in the past, white has brought MUC many powerful creatures like Exalted Angel.
Land Destruction
There are two basic types of cards in Magic: lands, and spells. Land destruction decks focus on depriving the opponent of this critical resource. It hits lower on the food chain than Counterspell decks, and is thus easier to play; without lands, after all, your opponent can't cast anything, rendering counterspells unnecessary. Red has, by far, the most land-destruction cards, with Green and Black tied for second (many of Black's land-destruction spells are over ten years old and illegal in some tournaments, whereas Green started only recently). Blue and White have extremely limited resources in this area, but White's spell, Armageddon, is the most powerful land-destruction spell in the game. MUC is particularly susceptible to other land destruction control decks, as it needs many resources to be able to counter other spells. Small-creature decks, on the other hand, particularly White Weenie, are designed to be most effective in the early parts of the game, and therefore can run successfully on only a few lands and are thus less threatened.
Black Discard
One of Black's specialities are cards that allow the player to force his opponent to discard cards from his hand, or occasionally from his deck. Sometimes these cards even allow the black player to choose which card the opponent discards, ie Duress. This is a very practical ability as, without cards to play, the player is powerless, even more so than when attacked by land destruction: discard, again, attacks lower on the food chain, taking the opponent's lands and spells from his hand before he can play them. Black even has creatures that force the player to repeatedly discard cards with creature like Hypnotic Specter. This, combined with Black's limited ability to draw cards for itself, can leave the opponent twiddling his thumbs for lack of anything else to do with his empty hands.