Just like the Reserved List and discussions of future bannings and unbannings, control decks are a polarizing topic in the Magic community. Some people absolutely hate playing them, especially hate playing against them, and, oftentimes it seems, wished that everyone played a creature based aggro or midrange strategy. Others, such as Corey Burkhart and Shota Yasooka, never get enough of the archetype and seem to play it in every tournament, regardless of format. I will first explore the reasons why players have such strong feelings on this subject, and then move on to a general theory of constructing and playing control MTG across all formats.
There’s a lot of discussion in the community about what a “normal” game of magic looks like; common parlance is players summoning creatures, attacking and blocking, and using spells, especially pump spells, removal, and artifacts, to affect the machinations of combat. Consider, for instance, a Jund deck that uses removal and targeted discard to disrupt their opponent long enough for their meat sticks to seal the deal. This, some might say, is “Magic as Richard Garfield intended.” However, I contend that Magic is a great game because of its immense capability to deviate, either slightly or drastically, from this “normal” case. The fact that a game can be ended with a 1-turn storm combo kill via Tendrils of Agony or dragged out almost indefinitely with a Lantern of Insight lockdown adds depth to the game. This complexity forces players to adapt and adjust their strategies to be able to handle all sorts of situations, regardless of the specific deck type that they choose.
Control falls somewhere in between the poles of Jund and Storm on the normalcy scale. Jund just plays the game as it is, whereas Storm decides to play an almost entirely different game altogether. Control by necessity operates on both axes, because the control deck’s game plan is to prevent any given deck from implementing its game plan. Control is an inherently defensive strategy, and so it must be able to defend itself from both the most common and the most absurd scenarios.
This preventative plan is the reason that some players love and others hate control decks; many people become frustrated when they are unable to effectively execute their strategy, sometimes leading to the feeling that they are hardly even playing the game. On the other hand, control players love their decks because, in order to win, they must constantly overcome the game. In contrast to a deck like storm or burn, a control deck cannot ever win if they ignore their opponent’s plays. That is not to say that these aggressive linear decks cannot or do not interact; I believe that the best players of these decks are the ones who optimally interact, however, not all games with these decks require interaction, and, in some cases, a pilot may interact poorly but still win simply because of their proactive strategy. For the control player, this is not an option.
The control player must first understand what makes their opponent’s deck work and then must apply that knowledge to interact at precisely the right moment. For this reason, these decks often have very slim margins of error and require a great deal of both practice and off table study to play anywhere close to optimally.
The saying goes that nothing worth acquiring is easily acquired, which aptly applies to control decks, because, if a player is willing and capable of putting in the required time and effort, they can put themselves in a more favorable position than if they played any other deck, given that there is no obscenely busted deck in the format (Eye of Ugin in modern, for instance). Instead of having inherently good and bad match-ups, most control decks, if adequately teched to a metagame, are 50-50 against the majority of the field based solely on card choices alone. Because the control deck has game against the entire field, player decisions matter more, and so skill-derived edge becomes more apparent in a player’s overall win-rate.
This fact brings us to the true allure of a control deck: the ability to control one’s fate. In life, nothing is certain; in cards, even less is certain. Nonetheless, control decks nullify an extent of that variance, and allow a player to feel more in charge of their own win-rate. Psychologically, this may shed light on a person’s inner machinations, their desire for control, and conversely we gain insight into the psychology of those who despise control decks.
This is an abstraction of the basic joy of playing a control deck. A control player sets out to control the game because they enjoy being in control—period. Sure, they may care about affecting overall win-rate, they may enjoy the challenge of learning and deconstructing opponent strategies, but at the end of the day there is a very real satisfaction that comes from dictating the pace of the game such that one can win “at one’s leisure.” I invite the reader to contemplate possible psychological causes of this pleasure here.
Some of you may be thinking here: “because they’re a bad person, that’s why,” and, to that I say: control decks are a polarizing subject, aren’t they?
For the record, I do not only play control decks, and I enjoy playing against them regardless of the deck that I’m playing. The games are often interesting and interactive, and, to me, that’s what I enjoy most about Magic. I especially love blue control mirrors or pseudo-mirrors, because forethought and manuvering are important, and it truly feels like a battle of wits. It’s about as close to mental wrestling as the game allows.
How to Build a Control Deck
The general theory of a control decks begins by assessing the objective of the deck, that is, to dominant the game-state such that the opposing player’s cards lose all or most of their value. Basically, we’re playing defense here; we answer our opponent’s threats while simultaneously making card-advantageous plays that allow us to continue to indefinitely find relevant answers. The game eventually ends via our win-condition, but it is important to remember that our objective is locking up the game, that is, making our opponent unable to win the game—at least, this is the case in most scenarios (burn, looking at you).
So here we ask the most obvious question: what cards do I play to optimally execute that strategy? It is apparent that the specific answer to this question can only be answered by the cards available in the card pool and the metagame that you wish to control, and yet we seek to outline the paradigm of what constitutes a control deck in the general case.
The first place to look is quadrant theory, which is a useful piece of theoretical knowledge applied to card assessment; it asks us: when is this card good? Is it in the developmental stage of the game? When at parity? When ahead? When behind? These are the four geneses into which moments of the game can be categorized, and the answer to how any given card performs generally in the quadrants may then be used to influence our decisions in deck building, both to balance our deck and it maximize its effectiveness.
But what does this have to do with control decks? Well, control decks operate primarily from behind and when at parity. Sure, we may play some developmental stage cards in certain formats, such as blockers in draft, but, for the most part, our cards should be designed to stabilize the board when we are ahead or allow us to maintain stability when at parity.
Card Types:
1) Removal
This brings us to the one thing that absolutely every control deck has in common: removal. It doesn’t matter what colors or format you’re playing, you must be able to kill creatures and other pesky permanents, because, no matter how many discard spells and counters you play, threats will land on the board and they must be answered. As mentioned earlier, a large portion of the game consists of coming back from behind, and nothing does that quite as nicely as removing threats. The goal is not necessarily to answer everything, but rather to answer the most important things at the most opportune times. We do, however, want our removal to be as cheap and general as possible unless we have a good reason to play something more specific. This gives us maximum versality for timing and targeting our removal spells.
Removal comes in two basic forms, targeted and global, and, in most control decks, a mixture of the two is optimal. Global effects, such as Wrath of God, Shatterstorm, and Toxic Deluge, are often able to immediately put us at parity or ahead because the ability to wipe out multiple cards that altogether had more mana invested in them than the sweeper is an immediate way to gain both card and tempo advantage. While great in these situations, these types of cards take more time and mana to fire off, can leave us without mana to adequately respond on the coming turn cycle, can cause splash damage to our own boardstate, as well as sometimes be expertly played around by a savvy opponent. Boardwipes fill their role in a control deck, and, in conjunction with spot removal, form the core of many control deck’s strategies.
Targeted removal usually only affects a single permanent (Lightning Bolt, Fatal Push, Path to Exile), though sometimes it can be reusable (Punishing Fire, Karn Liberated) and other times it can have multiple targets (Kolaghan’s Command, Forked Bolt). These spells give us early interactions for tempo and life total control, and their presence can force opponents to commit more creatures in front of our sweepers. It is especially important to consider what conditions need to be met in order for your targeted removal to be effective, and to choose spells that can have the broadest applications.
As a rule of thumb, you probably want somewhere around 15-35% removal in your control deck, which correlates to 10 to 20 cards in a 60 card deck. Your exact number will vary based both on the type of decks you expect to play against and what amount of card draw and filtering is available to you. A legacy deck full of Brainstorms and Ponders, for instance, does not need as many removal spells as one of its standard counterparts because it does not rely on its draw step as heavily. And, of course, you will often increase or decrease your removal percentage post-board depending on how necessary it is in the matchup.
2) Counterspells
While not absolutely essential to the control archetype because not every control deck plays blue, counterspells are ubiquitous with control, and, honestly, I’d almost never want to play a control deck without them. There are many variations on counterspells, including various mana costs, restrictions, and additional effects, but they all share the defining characteristic of preventing the resolution of a spell while on the stack. For this reason, counters answer a wider range of threats than removal, with the drawback that they must be used at exactly the right moment.
Counterspells allow us to lock up the game once we come to parity by giving us the option to deal with cards that we could not otherwise answer given the restrictions in our hand. We must let certain spells resolve in order to save our counters for the cards that matter—herein lies one of the greatest tests when playing the control deck. Knowing exactly what spell to counter and when to do so is difficult and getting it wrong is punishing. Practice, patience, and forethought make all the difference here.
3) Targeted Discard
A favorite of black mages and tap-out control fans, targeted discard removes threats before they hit the battlefield or even the stack. They come in two forms: revealed and non-revealed. The first, which includes cards like Thoughtseize, Inquistion of Kozilek, and Duress, is more powerful for disrupting synergies and sculpting a game plan after peeking at an opponent’s hand, whereas the second, featuring cards like Hymn to Tourach and Mind Rot, is capable of generating sheer card advantage. As such, each of these spells has their unique uses that make them better in certain situations and in certain decks.
Revealed discard is particularly useful for blue mages who need to plan ahead with both their cards and mana in order to optimize their responses accordingly; these cards play excellently with counterspells. The second type is generally used alongside the first by decks lacking other ways of gaining card advantage, such as 8-rack.
The obvious downside of cards like this is that they offer no protection against the top of your opponent’s deck.
4) “Cards”
The value of cards as such is an important consideration for control decks because the way that we ultimately win is by amassing an overwhelming amount of card advantage. The early stages of the game are defined by trading card for card with our opponent, and we take over the game by repeatedly creating advantageous situations, such as trading one of our cards for two of our opponents or using one card to draw more of our own. However, before we reach the point in which we can comfortably begin accumulating advantage, we often must play catch up by answering our opponent’s threats. In order to find the right answer to the current situation, we employ our first type of draw spell, card selection.
a) Card Selection
These cards almost always take the form of blue cantrips, preferably at the one mana slot, and their relevance is directly correlated to the power level of the format that you’re in. For instance, draft is so low power and many of the cards are interchangeable, so a limited control deck has no real need for this effect and would be better off just drawing its removal naturally or with advantage spells such as Divination. On the other end of the spectrum, Legacy control decks are defined by their utilization of the best instances of this type, Brainstorm and Ponder, which they must use to optimize their hand strength against the wide array of strategies that they must combat.
The most important thing to keep in mind when playing these spells is to always take a moment before you decide to put it on the stack and ask yourself, “What am I looking for?” If you cannot answer this question by thinking of a good reason to cast it, you are almost always better off holding onto it for later. These spells can help you dig your way out of the toughest situations, and their value is maximized by utilizing them to this purpose.
The better your card selection is, the leaner you can go on spell redundancy and land count. Everyone knows that hitting land drops is important for control decks, and so it is not uncommon to see people play well over 1/3 land density, sometimes up to 26 lands in a 60-card deck. However, when we add better, cheaper selection spells, we can reduce our land count because these spells will naturally enable us to hit our lands with greater consistency—this is the main reason why this type of effect is said to reduce variance in the game. Additionally, these spells allow us to not rely on playing full sets of our other spells, because we are more likely to find them when we need them. This enables us to tweak our list more precisely to our expected meta by including a variety of singletons.
b) Card Advantage
Card advantage is an absolute necessity for any control deck, and, I’d argue, that the ability to exponentially generate card advantage as the game progresses is the signature of a control deck. Sure, midrange decks also care about card advantage, but their game plan is to generate advantage while they kill, whereas control seeks to generate advantage and then kill: a subtle yet important distinction, indeed. It is not uncommon to win a game with 5 to 8 cards in hand against an opponent with slim holdings.
This aspect of our strategy forms the foundation for the transition that we must make from parity to ahead. Our removal and counterspells can answer their threats one by one, keeping us from falling too far behind, but, without card advantage, they will often outdraw us simply by drawing more threats than we can answer from out draw-step alone. To break this parity, we need to increase the average value of each of our cards above the average value of our opponent’s cards.
Consider the following turn sequence: on our first turn, we play a land and pass the turn. Our opponent plays a land and a 1 mana creature. We untap, play another land, and use a single target removal spell on our opponent’s creature. At this moment, our card value is 1:1. Our opponent untap, plays another land and another creature. We then make our third land drop and play Divination.
Now, we have each played two cards, but, because one our cards drew us two, our card value is higher overall unless our opponent was able to play a value creature, such as Elvish Visionary. Given that our opponent’s creature has not generated any card value, our current value ratio is 3:2, or 1.5:1. Notice that our Divination gave us an immediate advantage in cards, but this number does not tell us the whole story about where we stand in the game, because, when we take the time and mana to cast our Divination, that mana spent correlates directly into a loss of tempo. We need time to cast our extra cards.
Hopefully this concept is becoming illuminated at this point, but nonetheless let us continue our example. On our opponent’s third turn, they attack us with their creature, play a land, and then play another creature. We then untap, play our land, and cast Wrath of God, destroying all creatures. Since this interaction gives us another two-for-one, our card value ratio again increases in our favor, to 5:3, and, because this time our card advantageous play came in the form of removal, we regained the tempo that we lost on turn three when we cast Divination.
Notice how as the game progresses and we pull further ahead, our card value number increases as a faster rate than our opponent’s. As long as we work towards this goal without sacrificing too much tempo, our victory is almost inevitable. Next time you are playing a control deck, try keeping track of this ratio, and you will notice that your control over the game tightens as your cards gain more and more value than your opponents.
Next, we should acknowledge the various ways that we can gain advantage:
1) Spells that draw more cards. This is the most obvious way of gaining card advantage, because we are immediately translation a single card into multiple. This way of gaining advantage is entirely self-contained, and, if the spell resolves, we are guaranteed advantage (barring nuisances such as Leovold and Notion Thief…)
2) Multiple permanent removal. This type of advantage takes more set-up than the former, because it necessitates our opponent’s play meeting prior conditions. In the above described play, our Wrath of God made advantage because our opponent had two creatures in play, but, if our opponent has one or no creatures, then our card does not meet the necessary conditions for generating advantage. Although these situations may be harder to set up than simply drawing cards, they have the added bonus of winning us tempo, making them even more impactful when they do work out.
3) Multiple card discard. Mind Rot and Hymn to Tourach effects are classic ways for black decks to generate advantage, especially when they don’t have access to blue cards. These cards have the downside of relying on our opponent to actually have cards to discard, but, when they do turn out well, they can earn us both card and tempo advantage. Some authors may refer to this type of card advantage as negative card advantage.
4) Planeswalkers. From the first big bad blue boy of Magic, Jace The Mind Sculptor, to more subdued modern iterations like Ashiok, Dovan Baan, and recently Teferi, Planeswalkers have remained a tried and true way to generate card advantage because, basically, each walker gets to cast a free spell each turn. So long as your planeswalker sticks around for a few turns, you should be a few cards ahead by the end of it.
5) Opportunely timed interaction. Any situation in which we can turn a single target spell into card advantage, we are very, very happy: not only do we go up on cards, but we usually also gain on tempo. This can happen when an opponent tries to play either a trick or an aura on a creature, to which we respond with removal, or they sacrifice a permanent/discard a card as an added cost to a spell that we counter. In limited especially, always be on the lookout for ways to use your removal when your opponent has a spell on the stack that targets one of their creatures and try to use your blockers in such a way that your opponent is enticed into doing so.
6) Chain advantage. This type of card advantage has the most potential for generating more advantage, because it involves making advantageous plays that consequently and directly lead to more advantageous play. A classic example is Snapcaster Mage and Kolaghan’s Command: both of these cards are standalone advantage spells, but, when combined, they form chain advantage that creates even more cards than either of them could alone. Kolaghan’s Command can eliminate an opponent’s card while buying back Snapcaster; Snap can then use the Command to remove another opponent’s card while buying back another creature, perhaps even another Snapcaster. This sequence generates immense value, and is a hallmark sequencing in both modern and legacy Grixis decks. Another example, this time from limited, is playing Recover on a creature than has an effect that generates card advantage, something even as minor as Elvish Visionary. This method of generating advantage is a technique that control players should constantly be looking to execute.
5) Blockers
Not all control decks rely on blockers, though many do, and, in lower powered formats, they are one of the primary ways that we establish parity and regain tempo, especially in the early game. Many of constructed’s best blockers, such as Wall of Omens, Baleful Strix, and Augur of Bolas, gain value by doubling as card advantage, but in limited we often resort to various 0/4s and 2/5s to keep our opponent’s creatures at bay. In these scenarios, blockers increase the value of our removal because they narrow the range of threats that we need to remove. When our blockers effectively blank their attackers, we only need to worry about certain cards, and so we can save our removal to answer those specific threats.
6) Win Conditions
“So how does your deck win, exactly?” As explicated earlier, the control deck wins via amassing an overwhelming amount of card advantage, thereby taking control of the boardstate and preventing the opponent from making meaningful play. Nonetheless, the rules of the game require us to have a way to “win the game” in the colloquial sense, and so we are obliged to commit some amount of deck space, however small, to cards that can end a game of Magic.
The best win-cons for a control deck serve a double purpose by also playing the role of one of the above card types. Snapcaster Mage is such a ubiquitous control card because, not only can he attack and win the game, but he acts as immediate card advantage and can even block, sometimes profitably. Similarly, Jace The Mind Sculptor can end the game with his ultimate ability, but the card also serves the purpose of generating cards and is even capable of temporary removal. Vendilion Clique triples up at win-con, card filtering, and hand disruption.
In smaller formats, control decks have less options for finishers, and so some stand out clearly above the rest. In recent memory, Torrential Gearhulk has played a dominant role as a control finisher in standard because it is able to provide more card advantage than any other finisher available. Sure, it’s big, blue, and has flash, but the ability to “snap” your instants is what sets Gearhulk apart from other standard finishers. On the other hand, as your card pool expands, so too does the availability of quality finishers, giving you more options.
It is in these situations that I am a big fan of diversifying your win conditions, because some finishers are better in certain situations than others. Vendilion Clique is amazing against a combo deck because it disrupts their hand and allows us to hold counters up on their main phase, whereas against a Delver of Secrets deck it is often little more than an expensive Lightning Bolt. The superior card selection available makes it more likely you will find a more optimal finisher for any given situation, and, in legacy at least, Brainstorm allows you to shuffle away excess and situationally subpar finishers.
As you can tell, many cards do not break down into one distinct category, and in fact most of the best cards that we have available can slot into multiple categories. It is always good to try to find cards that fill many roles, but still be conscious of how much of each section our deck contains. We need to find a good balance so that our deck runs smoothly and efficiently. I encourage you to try difficult configurations often, because, more important than a theoretical understanding of how and why these things work the way they do, is just playing with them and learning by application. With enough games, you will develop an intuitive “feel” for building and playing control.
Tips, Tricks, and Advice
Whenever possible, always be reactive. By this I mean that, if you have an option to make a proactive play, you may be able to maximize that play’s effectiveness or play around something your opponent could do by waiting for your opponent and then reacting. For example, say you are holding a Surgical Extraction and your opponent has a Punishing Fire in their graveyard. They don’t have a Grove of the Burnwillows in play to respond with, so you decide to fire off the Surgical during your main phase; your opponent then plays Crop Rotation, gets the Grove, returns the Fire, and blows you out. However, if you had waited for them to Crop Rotate or activate their Grove, you could have responded by casting Surgical and thus blowing them out. Be patient, even when it seems like nothing could go wrong— trust me, it can.
Hold up mana for counterspells on your opponent’s turn as much as possible, even if you do not have the counterspell. First, by tapping out in the face of an opponent capable of making a dangerous resolution, we telegraph to them that we do not have the counter and that they can do whatever they please, which will have consequences not only on this turn sequence but also on future ones. Moreover, opponent’s will often play around your counters when you have mana for them, meaning that your bluff gains value by reducing the optimization of their lines of play. You may have to take damage from a creature if you wait until their end step to use your removal spell, but it is often worth it to maintain counter magic during both main phases.
Think ahead. Every deck requires some amount of foresight, but for many that horizon only extends a few turns—not so with control. You need to envision yourself five to ten turns in the future. Picture the board state as it is when you are in control of it and sculpt your hand and actions to make that vision into a reality. You always need a plan.
Another factor to consider when playing control is beating the clock. Control decks are infamous for drawing out, and, if you want to win, you have to do it quickly enough that you can finish three games. This means that, even though you need time to think ahead, craft your plan, and optimize your lines, you must play at a quick pace. To achieve this goal, constantly assess the board state, your hand, your opponent’s hand, your potential draws, and your opponent’s potential draws, especially when your opponent goes into the tank. Your brain can never rest when playing control because you need to focus very intently on gaining and maintaining control over the game.
Pack some snacks. If you’re not playing tournaments longer than 3 or 4 rounds you probably don’t have to worry about this, but, because of the length of our average games, control players often don’t get a lot of times in between rounds to grab a meal. Keep the gears turning by packing healthy snacks to munch on in the moments that you have in between games and rounds.
Be gracious. Sportsmanship is always important in gaming, but it is especially important from control players because control tends to be such a sore subject. Don’t make the salty loser saltier by rubbing your victory in their face, cackling maniacally when you counter their only card in hand, or telling them how they should have played with the game is over. Likewise, if you lose, don’t blame your draw or make some other excuse. Just say good game, smile, and later review what you could have done better.
And always remember that it’s a game. We always play to win, but even more-so, we play to have fun. The best way to know that a deck is right for you, whether its control or anything else, is if you enjoy playing it.
With that thought, I’ll leave you with a quote from Corey Burkhart that he wrote in his Modern Grixis Control primer: “As for deck choice, find something that is uniquely you. I personally love the tricky nature of the blue cards. They’re less powerful than the cards in most the other colors in terms of raw power, but the synergies between them and the cards of other colors are high. I love the hopeless feeling this deck can invoke from my opponents as I cast a second or third copy of Kolaghan’s Command in their draw step.”
