Controlling the Field

Let's start with an analogy. You and a fellow student are each given an essay assignment. There are a number of topics to choose from, and the best essay will be given a prize.

How do you ensure that you win the prize? There are broadly two methods you can follow. Either you can spend a lot of time researching your chosen topic, then write a fantastic essay that you revise, edit and tune until it's perfect. Or you can spend your time sabotaging your opponent, hiding the reference books they need for their research, spilling ink over their paper/keyboard and generally making a nusiance of yourself. Your essay isn't particularly good - but it's better than what your opponent can manage...

This second strategy is the control strategy. Your own victory condition is secondary to your objective of stopping your opponent succeeding. While you need to have a way to win, you don't need to get there particularly quickly. The aim is not to write the best essay, it's to write a better essay than your opponent.

Some people equate Control with personality kill (p-kill). However, to extend the analogy, if you simply destroy your rival's writing equipment and don't prevent them doing their research, they may still manage to write the essay - whether with new equipment, or by getting permission to present it orally. It's not a complete solution. Similarly, a deck that runs a bunch of ways to make your opponent lose honour isn't necessarily a control deck: removing all the reference books on Early Medieval Medicine doesn't stop a fan of the Uses of Turbine Engines from writing their treatise.

Alert readers will realise that it's possible to pursue a control strategy towards one victory condition while building your deck to be fast enough to destroy others. The typical example of this would be the honour deck that packs honour meta to stop any other honour deck from reaching 40 faster than them. However, these decks are still focused on gaining honour - not on controlling their opponent. Such hybrid decks are common - it's rare to find a deck that doesn't include some sort of control strategy.

Building and playing a true control deck requires a thorough understanding of the game. At deck construction, you need to know what sort of decks other people might be playing - and make sure you can stop any of them. While playing, you need to be aware of which cards to keep and which to discard - driven mainly by an understanding of what the other player is trying to do. Sometimes your opponent's strategy is obvious. Other times, you have to wait several turns before they reveal what they are up to. If you've already discarded the key cards you need in that matchup before you discover this, you're in trouble.

Board control is achieved when your opponent is unable to win before you. Maybe they're completely unable to win: an honour runner who is left unable to gain honour, a military deck with no personalities in play or in their deck. More likely you've slowed them down enough that your deck will reach a victory condition first. That's a very satisfying position, when you know that almost nothing your opponent can do will threaten your victory.

In the current environment, there are broadly five "victory conditions" that a deck can pursue. These are honour, military, enlightenment, Doom of the Dark Lord, and dishonour. A true control deck will need ways of stopping each of these. The chief weapons are:

• P-kill. Killing your opponent's personalities makes it tougher for them to attack you, defend themselves, do things to you (like dishonour) or enlighten. However, it's not sufficient: a deck can reach 40 honour even if every personality it puts in play dies immediately, while you can stil lose to Doom of the Dark Lord even if your opponent ran out of personalities in their deck seven turns ago.

• Dishonour. The ability to inflict honour losses directly slows down an honour runner. It's also strong against other decks if you can lower someone below the honour requirements of their personalities - a bit like pre-emptive p-kill. Finally, dishonour can be a killing blow against a corrupt deck, either by making them hit -20 or by stopping them from playing any cards that cause honour losses. This is a form of resource denial.

• Resource denial. Anything that removes your opponent's resources from them before they get to use them interferes with their strategy. this works for both Fate and Dynasty: clearly, Fate discard is going to hit Enlightenment hardest, while Dynasty denial (e.g. holding destruction is going to hurt decks that rely on big, expensive personalities.

• Specific meta. Send-home, anti-Shadowlands cards, spell-destroying cards and other specific meta can be an important part of a control deck. If you know that one class of opponents will be reliant on specific cards, meta might be worth playing. Meta against Summon Earth Kami, for example, will be very powerful against Enlightenment decks.

• Card search. With cards in your deck that do many different things, often part of 2 or 3 card combos, running card search is essential. You need to get the right cards at the right time.

Playing control isn't easy, but it is fun. Your deck always includes a lot of options - you will have many more decisions to make than most other players. You really are playing the game, not just robotically doing the same thing every game!