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
Blue-x Control
The classic control deck, blue/x control utilizes Counterspell and its like to counter threats while increasing its land base in order to use its own limited number of threats. While pure U (MUC) decks are rare in standard, UW and UB control are almost always present in standard formats, white offering board sweepers like Wrath of God and stall cards like Moat, Humility, and more recently Timely Reinforcements, and Black offering creature removal like doom blade and discard/disruption in the form of cards like Duress.
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. Classic spells include sinkhole, Armageddon, and Strip Mine. Small-creature decks, 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. Land destruction has not been particularly viable as of late.
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.