Control Decks, Basic Knowledge, And Pokémon

Question Of The Day: I hear a lot about Control decks. What kinds of Control are out there, and how do I protect myself?

Trading Card Game Referenced:

POKÉMON

The idea of a Control deck is one that sounds complex, but is actually very simple. So to answer this question, we turn to a game that many think is simple, but actually does have complexity to it: The Pokémon TCG. It would seem pretty straightforward. Send your little slave creature out to fight for you, make sure there are others in line to replace them, and try to be the first to either run the opponent out of usable fighters, or knock out six of them and draw all of your prize cards. It gets more complex than that, though, with one thing being that the prize cards come from your own deck, are unusable until you win them, and are placed at random so you don't know what lies underneath. That's not even getting started with the concept of switching out, status effects, and dual battles, but I will get into that in its own, separate article. For now, we will focus on the aspect you asked about, Control.

Put simply, a Control deck sacrifices having large and powerful creatures to back it up, and instead relies on the ability to manipulate your opponent in such a way as to leave them with no options, and you with quite a few. These decks typically employ many creatures with effects on the card that change up an opponent's cards or discard them entirely, even going so far as to remove them completely from the game!

Control decks typically have three forms of control. Some focus on one or the other, a few focus on two or so, and a significant number try to control all three! Since i'm more like the Riddler than I care to admit publicly and enjoy following themes, this explanation will be Pokémon-flavored. The three forms of control are:

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- Field Control. This is the most common, as it is the most easily manipulated. This is often seen in cards like Electabuzz, which has the ability to paralyze an opponent's Pokémon and render them useless for a turn, in addition to doing damage. More often, however, field control comes in the form of manipulating when and where certain battles with certain Pokémon happen, in this case using Gust of Wind, which sends the one currently in battle to the bench, and brings out another Pokémon, usually a smaller, weaker one, or one with a high retreat cost and no energy to use any attacks. Field Control decks pick and choose which fights they get into by making sure the odds are in their favor. Another thing to watch out for is their ability to rob you of YOUR energy to keep you powerless and unable to fight back on your turn, accomplishing this with Energy Removals and Super Energy Removals, and giving themselves plenty of energy. The most notorious example of this was the Rain Dance deck, which used the Pokémon Breeder card to turn Squirtles directly into Blastoise, whose Rain Dance ability allowed you to equip multiple Water energy to any of your Water Pokémon from your hand, when normally you are restricted to equipping one energy per turn.

HOW TO COUNTER THIS: Field Control decks rely on the ability to consistently have the energy necessary to play the cards that will give them what they seek. They often have multiple drawing cards like Bill, Professor Oak, and Computer Search (I'm showing my age now, the original base sets are banned for tournament play these days). Your solution is to deny them their drawing ability by any means necessary. In the case of the Rain Dance deck, Blastoise's effect did not work if he was Asleep, Confused or Paralyzed, which at the time were the only status effects really. Electabuzz had a cheap paralysis attack, as I stated earlier, that would not only keep Blastoise from using his ability, but leaving him stranded there useless for an entire turn. As for the Trainer cards (this game's version of Spell cards), at the time you could play as many as you wanted per turn, which made them popular in many decks. Strangely enough, the best counter for this kind of field control is...well...below.

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- Hand Control. These crafty individuals know that, while the field is ever-changing, the one thing that remains constant is your hand. They know your best cards are up there, lying in wait, and their deck is built around keeping your hand constantly shifting, or being discarded to keep you from using your good cards. Absol from the Secret Wonders expansion is a good example of this. For one energy of any kind, his attack lets him pick a card from his opponent's hand and discard it. If it's a Trainer, Supporter (Like Trainer, only you can only play one per turn) or Stadium (persistent, has different effects on the game) card, he gets to discard another card from their hand of his choosing. That is nasty, a single energy causing you to lose up to two cards from your hand! Then there's Hooligans Jim and Cas, which on a heads flip of a coin, pick three cards from your hand and have you shuffle them back into your deck. Hand manipulation can keep you on your toes, and make you left with only what you have already in play, which may not be much...or enough.

HOW TO COUNTER THIS: Hand Control decks tend to sacrifice their one and only attack per turn in order to manipulate your hand due to many of these effects being on the Pokémon themselves, and still costing energy. By rushing them head-on and taking down their troublesome Pokémon as quickly as possible, they won't have the opportunity to mess with your hand, as they will be on the defensive the whole time. Aggro decks work well for this. (Aggro decks will be the subject of another article, as well. I'm going to cover as many different archetypes as I can this month. Archetype August...I like the sound of that.)

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- Deck/Discard Pile Control (Also known as Deck/Graveyard control in more "adult" games). I lumped the two areas together because both of them tend to be controlled within the same deck, which is deadly effective because of synergy. (Here is a more detailed description of what Synergy is and why it's important.) These decks are generally called Mill decks, because like an actual windmill, they churn through their opponent's deck card by card, sending them all to the discard pile and making them unusable, with the ultimate goal to make their opponent lose the game by "decking out", or running out of cards and being unable to draw next turn, which causes an automatic loss. A popular deck that does this is called a Durant Mill deck. Durant's attack for one metal energy states that for every Durant of theirs in play, they discard the top card of their opponent's deck. You can only have three of any specific Pokémon card in your deck, but if they are from different expansions, you can have three of each, which means with an active Pokémon slot and five spaces on the bench, he has the potential to send SIX cards from your deck to the useless discard bin quickly. They also have cards with the ability to search the discard piles for all sorts of things, like Pokémon or Energy or Trainers, and put them into their hands, or into play. They feed off of your misfortune.

HOW TO COUNTER THIS: Deck/Discard Pile Control relies on very specific cards. Ironically, the best way to beat a deck like this is to have some form of either Field or Hand Control yourself. You don't need to build a deck around it, as most good decks will have some slight form of control as a counter for things like this anyway, again relating to synergy (link above). Being able to keep them from getting their needed Pokémon out in the active slot, or keeping them Asleep or Paralyzed to prevent them from attacking is invaluable to a deck's success in this case.

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I will likely go into better and more detailed examples in later articles when I start talking about some majorly complex issues, but for now, this should give you the basic idea of what a Control deck is, how it operates, and hopefully, how to counter against it. If I have overlooked anything, or have glossed over important details, let me know in the comments below! The best teacher is the one that never stops being a student.

Your homework for today is simple in theory, but complex in practice.

THEY CAN CONTROL YOUR BOARD, BUT THEY CANNOT CONTROL YOUR MIND. OUTSMART, OUTWIT, OUTLAST.

That's all for now, you fresh-faced scholars, you! Go enjoy some real control of your own!