The Complete Guide to Control Decks in Magic: the Gathering

Last updated on June 27, 2025

Control Magic | Illustration by Terese Nielsen

Magic is a game with diverse decks and numerous strategies across multiple formats. If there’s a way you want to play the game, there’s probably a format that supports whatever strategy you love.

Archetypes help you pick out your deck. Many Magic decks are categorized into four major archetypes that dictate how the deck plays and wants to win: aggro, midrange, control, and combo. Today, I dive deep into what makes control decks work, how to build and play them, and how to beat them.

What Is a Control Deck Exactly?

Mind Control | Illustration by Ryan Pancoast

Control decks look to win the longest game possible. They aren’t interested in pressuring the opponent in the early or mid-game. They want to stop any pressure their opponents might apply in those turns and win at their leisure once opponents run out of questions and no longer ask “Do you have an answer for this?”

Colors for Control

Each color has an aspect that lends itself to control:

• White offers board wipes, and defends your life total
• Blue has counters and card draw
• Black is great for removal in any zone
• Red represents versatile answers
• Green plays the long game well with ramp, regrowth and big finishers.

Control decks are often blue with another color or two. These additional colors add game-ending threats and removal spells blue doesn’t have access to. Some control decks may accent their blue countermagic and card draw with cards like Scorching Dragonfire and Niv-Mizzet, Parun.

Tap-Out Control

One subtype of control decks is tap-out control which is less concerned about leaving mana up to answer on an opponent's turn. Don't get me wrong it still answers stuff, it's just less reliant on counterspells. Sometimes it's downright proactive and forces discard like with Doom Foretold.

The biggest distinction between control and other archetypes is that it wants to control the tempo and win the late game. It’s got high numbers of cheap interaction to help slow down more aggressive decks, keep attackers off the battlefield then go over the top of them with threats like Tolarian Terror or Teferi, Hero of Dominaria or Shark Typhoon depending on the format.

Elements of a Control Deck

Lands

Let’s get the small one out of the way first. Many control decks run more lands than aggro or midrange strategies. It’s common for control decks to run 25 or more lands in a 60-card deck. They play so many more lands because they have expensive haymakers and want to hold up a bunch of mana on their opponent’s turns. Missing land drops can mess up a control deck’s strategy. Mana flooding isn’t as bad for a control deck as it is for something like Red Deck Wins since control decks play enough card draw and X-for-ones like board wipes to catch up.

Control decks have no problem playing tap lands. It’s perfectly normal for a control deck to hold a counterspell and play Tranquil Cove, Irrigated Farmland or Temple of Enlightenment, and is less interested in Adarkar Wastes or Seachrome Coast.

Counterspells

Counterspells are arguably one of the most notable features of control decks. Who hasn’t played against a control deck and felt they couldn’t resolve a single spell? Control decks often lean harder on cheaper counterspells and hard counters where available. You want counterspells that are relevant at as many points in the game as possible. Some control decks also run a few copies of a larger, more impactful counterspells like Cryptic Command or Mystic Confluence for extra value, but a deck with too many of these large counterspells leaves you without early interaction.

Removal

Counterspells aren’t the only interaction control decks play. You need other sources of cheap interaction to stop early plays from your opponent. This is often where the additional, non-blue colors come in. Control decks can find a robust selection of removal spells like Get Lost, Infernal Grasp, and Lightning Bolt by dipping outside of blue. You almost always want these reactive spells to be instant speed to get the most value out of it and help hold up countermagic.

Board Wipes

A subsection of removal, board wipes are important for control. Countermagic and spot removal trade one-for-one with all your opponent’s spells but may not be enough. It doesn’t work if they have access to card advantage of their own or if you took a mulligan. Board wipes like Supreme Verdict and Damnation give control decks an easy way to reset the board that often takes out multiple threats with one card.

When you sweep up your opponents’ early threats you recover the tempo lost by not doing anything on the first few turns. Sweepers can be very cheap like Pyroclasm, Split Up or Infest, or they can be on the expensive side like Sunfall and Farewell.

Card Draw

Good card draw is one of the most important elements of a control deck. The best way to win the long game is with more card advantage than your opponent. It lets your interaction outstrip their threats, it lets you make the land drops you need to play a massive threat and still hold up a bit of countermagic, and it’s one of the strongest game actions you can take in Magic. Instant-speed card draw is always welcome in the form of spells like Quick Study, Memory Deluge, and Three Steps Ahead. You can also get card advantage from your threats, as many Pioneer decks do with Narset, Parter of Veils and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria.

Threats

The last puzzle piece is the game-winning bombs. These are cards like Tolarian Terror for the Pauper decks, Ureni, the Song Unending, or Sire of Seven Deaths. These are cards that are often massively impactful and hard to interact with, the kind of card that wins you the game on its own if you get to untap with it. A threat that is hard to interact with helps offset its mana cost and makes it more likely you can untap with them. Control decks won’t be as threat-dense as aggro or midrange decks. Control decks are more concerned with a critical mass of interaction to allow them to reach a board state where they can play a late Ureni, the Song Unending and end things in a turn or two.

Occasionally, you can play a sub-archetype known as combo-control. These control decks use a combo finisher, often a two-card combo. The most infamous of these is the classic Splinter Twin combo that wins by using the titular enchantment to make infinite hasty copies of Deceiver Exarch or Pestermite. Other versions of this archetype include Jeskai Copycat from Aether Revolt Standard and Inverter Combo in Pioneer. These decks tend to play a little differently. They don’t need to control the game as hard since they can win on the turn of a dime, and enable a more proactive control variant.

Another variant is Ramp-Control. These usually add green to the mix and want enough mana to resolve a key expensive spell, with an example in the Sultai Emergent Ultimatum deck. After resolving the spell, players would proceed to tutor high-value cards that often win the game in conjunction with each other, like Professor Onyx, Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider, Alrund's Epiphany, Tyrranax Rex, or Lumbering Megasloth.

Tooth and Nail decks are another example from MTG's past, which often resolved a 9-mana Tooth and Nail to put Darksteel Colossus and Platinum Angel into play.

How to Play Control Decks

Get a Good Opener

You need to know what you’re looking for. First and foremost, lands! Land drops are incredibly crucial to control decks. You need to make three or four land drops from the opening hand unless you’ve got a load of cheap card draw.

You also need interactive spells. This can be a mixture of counterspells and spot removal. You want a few ways to stop early aggression so that you still do something with your early mana. Even if your opponent never plays a spell worth countering or killing in those opening turns, you want to have the option.

Card draw and threats aren’t strictly necessary in the opener. A hand with enough interaction often buys you enough time to draw one. Hands with too many of these spells are worth throwing back. If your opening hand has three Hullbreaker Horrors and three lands, you’ll lose to any couple of early creatures. Likewise, a hand that’s all card draw won’t impact the board fast enough to stabilize you. You are, first and foremost, a reactive deck. You need ways to react to your opponent’s spells or they’ll Overrun you.

Most control decks are 3+ color decks, like Esper and Jeskai . You usually want to have all your colors accessible right from your opener. An opening hand with a Ketria Triome and a Glacial Fortress is so much better than a hand with an Island and a Plains, or something like a Glacial Fortress and an Isolated Chapel.

Have a Gameplan

A concrete game plan is vital for any archetype, but especially control. It’s not just counter or kill everything your opponent plays (although some games go like that). You need to think about how you use your mana.

For example, let’s say you play control in Pioneer. You have the cards to play a turn 4 Supreme Verdict into a turn 5 Teferi, Hero of Dominaria. Since you’ll tap out on those turns, you may want to use your Absorb on turn 3 to use your mana every turn since it’ll be a while until you can hold it up. This might not be true for a Make Disappear you can hold up with Teferi untapping lands. Or maybe you don’t think there’ll be a relevant threat that the Verdict won’t take care of before then, so you hold it.

Any of these choices is fine! The best option depends on lots of information I can’t provide in a simple example. The important part is that all those gameplay trees had a defined plan – maximize mana efficiency, maximize the impact of the Supreme Verdict, and plan further ahead.

The game plan prevents you from hitting awkward turns when you don’t know what to do and aren’t sure how to spend the mana. Once you know what you’re doing, you’ll understand how best to react to what they’re doing.

One of the first lessons I learned when playing control decks is counter what you can’t kill. In control decks you rely on instant speed interaction, so Negate what can be countered, and Doom Blade what can be killed, and so on. When you know what deck your opponent plays, it’s easier to align your answers with their threats, and stick to your game plan.

Understand Your Win Condition

Once upon a time, the win condition of control was two copies of Elixir of Immortality. The deck would loop the two Elixirs until their opponent milled themselves out because you always had a full deck when they ran out of spells. That’s one way for a control deck to win.

Some control decks play a haymaker that turns the game on its head, and they go from a reactive deck to a proactive one. You’ll see this most often in decks with creatures as their top end, like Absolute Virtue or Colossal Grave-Reaver. These decks turn the game on its head, and close things out in a few turns with value and combat damage.

Both reactive and proactive decks share inevitability but in distinctly separate forms. Understand how you win informs how you want to control the game. For example, a control deck topped by Hullbreaker Horror might let a few smaller creatures, especially tokens, run around unchecked since you can control the board with the Horror. If instead you look to ultimate a Teferi, Hero of Dominaria and continually tuck it to win the game, you want absolute control.

Combo-control looks different since you find just enough breathing room to establish your combo. Splinter Twin doesn’t need to win on turn 30 (although it can); it just needs to hit a point where it can comfortably curve Pestermite into Splinter Twin for an easy win.

How to Build Control Decks

Find Your Interaction

Interaction is one of, if not the most important components of a control deck. This often comes in the form of efficient countermagic like Mana Leak or Spectral Interference and cheap kill spells like Go for the Throat and Path to Exile.

Tap-out control uses sorceries, enchantments, planeswalkers, and board wipes to keep control of the board and establish threats.

You need a solid base of interaction. Otherwise, you'll lack the fundamental elements to actually control anything. In some formats, the best thing a control deck can do is lean into a more controlling midrange deck and use some early threats to help stabilize itself.

If you build a control deck outside of Pioneer you will want to adjust the mana value lower to see what my counterspell options are.

Look at the format you want to play and look at the interactive tools available. I recommend Scryfall. (The above example uses this search: o:”counter target spell” legal:pioneer mv<4.) Some useful terms to search for include: destroy, exile, counter target spell, destroy all creatures, and exile all creatures. Also, sort by mana value or filter your search results to cards 3 or lower. Control decks have room for some more expensive interactive pieces, but if all the good options cost 4 mana and up, the deck becomes too clunky to function well.

Understand What You’re Fighting Against

The decks you are trying to beat will also determine what interaction works in your format. For example, if there’s little to no aggro in the Arena meta and it’s all midrange grind fests with planeswalkers, you might be able to get away without small board wipes like Malicious Eclipse that are only effective against decks going wide with small creatures.

On the other hand, if your meta is all white weenies and elfball, those small wraths are incredibly useful disruptive tools to set them back before those decks can get ahead. In a meta where both these strategies are present, you need to find a balance.

Understanding your meta gives your control deck a fair shot. If your deck is loaded with Temporary Lockdowns and Anger of the Gods against decks that go bigger, you end up with a ton of dead draws in those matchups and it gets hard to win. You can’t answer everything, especially in formats with deep card pools like Modern and Legacy, but you need to give yourself a fighting chance.

Figure Out Your Win Condition

We all need a way to win, even if that's simply “Don’t lose.” That's a completely legitimate win condition, regardless of what the control haters tell you. It’s also important to help determine your color combinations. One reason to play a 3-color control deck is that the best interactive spells are in one color or color pair and the best threats for your deck lie in another.

The win condition determines how you build your control deck. A general, draw-go control deck is happy with sheer card draw from things like Whirlwind of Thought and Arcane Epiphany. A combo-control deck may want more precise card advantage spells like Ponder and Serum Visions that don’t give as much raw card draw, but greater control over what’s getting drawn to help find specific pieces.

Get Card Advantage

Card advantage is another vital piece of control decks, right after threats. What are your card advantage options? This is another reason to look at multiple colors, and ties back into your interactive suite. If all the good card draw is at sorcery speed like Ancestral Reminiscence, Night's Whisper, and Sign in Blood, that makes countermagic a bit more awkward and could mean you want to lean towards a tap-out control build.

If all your card advantage is the precise kind with cantrips, this means you can’t rely on casting several draw spells that bury your opponents in card advantage. This leads to card selection, exchanging quantity for quality, which is a powerful exchange.

Build Your Mana Base

Your mana base is incredibly important. Making land drops is key. Can the mana base of my format support the colors I want to play?

This is generally an important question for formats with smaller card pools like Standard and Pioneer. It’s easy to rummage through a search engine like Scryfall and pick only the best spells, then find yourself with a 3- or 4-color pile of cards. If the format you play doesn’t have the mana to support such a deck, don’t do it. It will lack consistency and you’ll lose games to mana screw.

It’s better to make a few concessions in card quality and always get to cast your spells than to try and play everything and just pray your mana base works. It's very rare for 5-color decks top the tournaments.

What kinds of value lands are available? Not every format has these, but control decks can often find lots of value in their land base. Cards like Hall of Storm Giants and Castle Ardenvale can serve as win conditions that avoid conventional removal spells. Some control decks can leverage lands like Demolition Field and Field of Ruin to punish opponents on a greedy mana base. Be wary of nonbasic land hate in your format, and play basic lands so you don’t get punished.

Consider the colored mana you need to pay. Some control decks have pretty intensive costs. For example, a control deck with Cryptic Command or Archmage's Charm wants as many lands that tap for as possible. It’s incredibly hard for a mana base to support casting spells like Cryptic Command and Invoke Despair in one deck because they require so many colored pips. You may end up playing these cards too late, if at all.

Build Your Sideboard

Building a sideboard is tricky. This is another point where understanding your meta is important. Sideboard cards are your silver bullets in traditional matches. Is there an aggro deck? You’ll need some of those early wraths we talked about. Against a midrange-heavy meta, a control deck might want to bring in a couple of threats like Thief of Sanity or Chandra, Torch of Defiance to help up their threat density.

Sideboard cards can get more specific. Are there enough red or green decks to want a spell like Flashfreeze? If there’s a heavy share of white decks, you might want something efficient like Mindsparker or Lithomantic Barrage.

Are there enough blue decks to warrant Mystical Dispute? You also need to consider how you’ll beat cards that the opposing decks sideboard in against you like Thrun, the Last Troll or planeswalkers. This is incredibly meta-dependent and something that you adapt over time, even if your main deck stays relatively the same.

Guidelines Against Common Decks

This is a little guideline that you can easily apply to formats like Standard and Pioneer:

• Against red aggro: Go for cheap removal and lifegain because they’ll run out of gas.
• Against white weenie: Get rid of their permanents with small wraths (think Pyroclasm, Anger of the Gods, Infest).
• Against blue control/tempo: You’ll want cards like Mystical Dispute, Duress and counterspells that can’t be countered, like Dovin's Veto.
• Against midrange: Prioritize threats like planeswalkers and more card draw.
• Against linear/kindred decks: Pack more removal and sweepers to disrupt their board. 
• Against combo: Ensure you have more cheap interaction, like Duress/Negate, and less removal/sweepers.

Do Your Research

My final bit of advice for building a control deck is to research other successful control decks in the format. You don’t need to net deck, but it’s important to understand what’s working. Decks don’t win MTGO format challenges or PTQs by accident. They win because they do something well.

Control decks that win in your format illustrate which tools are useful for the meta. You can reverse engineer that to understand what other decks in the meta do. All those control lists run Temporary Lockdown? Perhaps your control list wants an Anger of the Gods to fulfill a similar role because something about the Lockdown worked.

Examine what other deck lists use as sideboard cards. I can’t stress enough how much a good sideboard matters when you play Best-of-Three on Arena.

You can also research past control decks. Magic has changed over time, but some of the core fundamentals still stand the test of time, including how the archetypes work. Examining the Splinter Twin deck that won Pro Tour Fate Reforged might spark inspiration on how to innovate with your Modern control list.

Control Decks on MTG Arena

Control decks show up in Arena’s various Constructed formats. Standard has lots of great interaction right now, while formats like Historic have access to amazing win conditions like Shark Typhoon, Jace, Wielder of Mysteries and Approach of the Second Sun.

Watch the meta to see if you're using the best control cards available. Arena Tutor’s metagame explorer is great for research purposes! The tool compiles the best decks in the format so you can easily see what’s winning and find plenty of exciting new deck ideas.

Are Control Decks Good?

Control decks can be very, very strong. Like any strategy, they can also be pretty weak. The strength of a control deck is relative to the tools available in the format and the decks seeing play in the meta.

I’ve called cheap interaction and good sources of card advantage the backbone of control decks, and I stand by that. If your format doesn’t have those elements, playing a control deck is hard.

The rest of the meta is a bit trickier to account for. Aggressive decks tend to be very good against control because they can slip under the control deck’s defenses before the board can stabilize and finish things off with burn.

Fast combo decks can also be tricky, especially in game 1 since they can ignore most of your interaction and just go off through a little disruption. Planeswalker-heavy decks can also be hard to deal with since planeswalker removal is scarce and the permanent type is generally hard for control decks to answer as a threat that generates tons of value each turn.

Metas filled with decks that are hard to interact with can be tough to manage. A Bogles or Voltron commander deck shrugs off most spot removal and can navigate wraths pretty well with totem armor or other protective spells.

Sometimes the meta is just hostile to control, in which case you can do one of three things:

1. Try to innovate and make your control deck work with the meta
2. Play something else until the meta shifts in your favor, or
3. Accept that your deck isn’t favored at the moment and do the best you can.

Note that metas shift; new cards get printed, a forgotten card becomes a hidden gem of a sideboard card in the depths of last year's set, or any number of other things can happen to make control more viable.

What Makes the Best Control Deck?

The meta is what makes for the best control deck. Incredible interaction and card draw, a couple of sticky threats that are hard to beat, and the mana to support it all create the perfect storm for an incredible control deck.

Alternate win conditions can also make for a great control deck, especially if you can find a combo win to go in a combo-control deck. There’s a reason Inverter of Truth is banned in Pioneer, but Teferi, Hero of Dominaria and Approach of the Second Sun remain free.

Arguably, the best way to win with control is with combo control. These decks don’t need to control the game for nearly as long since they can close the door at a moment’s notice with a combo finish. This lets them play a more proactive game plan to balance control’s reactiveness, which is especially useful in metas where a more traditional control deck would be too slow.

What's the Difference Between Control and Midrange?

In terms of speed, midrange is a little slower than aggressive decks and a little faster than control decks. Midrange wants to outgrow the aggressive decks, and play the tools to pressure control decks and sometimes grind them out in the late game.

A good example of a midrange deck is Rakdos Midrange in Pioneer, that plays proactive cards like Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, Liliana of the Veil, and Sheoldred, the Apocalypse that force issues on opponents.

How Do You Beat a Control Deck?

How to beat a control deck is as important for control players as it is for everybody else. Knowing how other players plan to beat your deck tells you how to combat that strategy.

Pressure when you can. The best way to beat a control deck is to take them out before they take control. Pressuring the board is simple; throw what you can at their life total. Sometimes, you can afford to ignore planeswalkers. A planeswalker that soaks up three turns of your attacks effectively gained them a bunch of life because you sent your damage there instead of their life total.

Pressure Their Mana

It’s also important to pressure their mana. One way to do this is to understand when control decks want to cast spells. For example, say the control deck in your meta uses a 4-mana instant as their primary card draw engine – something like Memory Deluge. Casting a spell into their open mana on turn 4 is a great way to pressure their mana. If they counter the card you’re playing, they can’t draw cards. If they draw cards, then they have to deal with an additional resolved threat.

Get the control players to spend mana on their turn. This leaves them tapped out so you can resolve threats. This is tricky for some decks to do, but the best way to go about this is by casting flash spells on your opponent’s turn. Interactive spells and card draw put the control player in another tricky spot. If they counter the spell you cast on their turn, you’ll have a window to resolve a threat. If they let your instant resolve, you may not cast anything into their open mana, so they’ve let you get away with casting spells for free and have nothing to show for it.

Bait Out Spells

Baiting out your opponent’s spells is also important. You’ll always know what your most important cards are, so see if you can bait your opponents to cast removal on cards you don’t care about. This is especially important against countermagic. The best way to bait counterspells is to wait until you have the mana to play two important cards.

Let’s say Enduring Innocence is the card you really want to resolve, and you have Caretaker's Talent you wouldn’t mind having either. Play the less important one first, in this case Caretaker's Talent. If your opponent counters it, you can go for the Enduring Innocence. If they let your enchantment creature resolve, and even if they have another counterspell, you already resolved the permanent you need, so you’re not in the worst spot.

Play Around Board Wipes

Baiting out board wipes is another trick to apply. If you’re afraid of a board wipe, don’t just dump your hand into play. Keep your threats restrained, just a couple at a time. Sometimes your opponent will cast the board wipe and unless you have a great protection spell or countermagic, you can’t do anything about it. The trick is to make them cast it in a bad spot. Minimize the board wipe to a measly two-for-one or so, leaving you with creatures to play afterward.

The ideal scenario for the control deck is to use their Supreme Verdict to kill five or six creatures for a complete blowout. The best scenario for you is for one creature to put so much pressure on the opponent that they have to use the board wipe as an inefficient, slow one-for-one trade to take out that creature.

Sometimes you won't be able to play around your opponent's spells. There are games when your best chance is to throw your hand at the board and hope they don't have it, play to win rather than playing not to lose. Sometimes they'll have it; sometimes they won't. 

Sideboarding Against Control

Let’s consider sideboarding against control. You broadly want to take out ineffective removal spells in favor of sticky threats and cards that represent lots of value and are hard for the control deck to deal with. Planeswalkers are a great option; these are especially useful in the sideboard of aggressive decks because post-board games are a little slower anyway and it helps counteract the fact that your opponent brings in more cheap interaction and small board wipes.

Sticky Threats and Disruption

Sticky threats are also useful. Cards like Mosswood Dreadknight and Unstoppable Slasher are great to bring in against control since removal is far less effective against these cards. Or you can consider a card advantage engine like Phyrexian Arena that'll out-draw your opponent if it resolves.

You can also bring in relevant interaction. Hand disruption like Cruelclaw's Heist and Thoughtseize can be incredibly useful against control decks. Not only does it give non-blue decks a way to interact with countermagic, but lets you map out your game plan by knowing exactly what cards you need to play around and what they need to draw.

Some decks can also bring in countermagic like Negate and Dispel to help fight counter wars and provide additional protection for their threats on top of savvy play.

Are Control Decks Always Counterspell Decks?

Control decks aren’t always counterspell decks. Control decks that don’t rely on countermagic are more willing to tap all their mana on their turn.

This kind of control deck often leans harder on enchantments and board wipes for removal and typically deploys planeswalkers for threats. They also run a higher creature count; one of the biggest reasons draw-go control decks don’t play creatures is that it’s hard to hold up mana for countermagic when you play creatures in your main phase.

It’s easy to play draw-go in a format with cheap counterspells, instant-speed card draw, and interaction. If all your interaction and card draw is sorcery speed, it may be better to forgo counterspells altogether to avoid the tension of holding Cancel and Read the Bones.

Non-counter control card Cyclonic Rift became a mainstay in EDH blue decks thanks to the fact that if you overload it, you undo all the other boards but yours. A real 7-mana panic button. Farewell is similar and gives you control over what does and does not get exiled.

Is Control Viable in Commander?

Yes control is viable in Commander, the commanders for control decks can be pretty famous. A deck filled with one-for-ones works well in 1v1 formats, but it’s not nearly as good when you have three opponents. Control decks in Commander benefit far more from board wipes than other control decks, plus Commander has some excellent answers designed for the format, like Windgrace's Judgment and Druid of Purification to help combat this.

If You Do Play Counterspells, How Many Should You Have?

I like 10-12 counterspells in most of my control decks. You always want some in every game, but countermagic has some distinct weaknesses; namely, it doesn’t deal with resolved threats. That's why the balance of countermagic and removal is important for control decks; if you don’t have Essence Scatter the turn your opponent jams a creature, you’ll need a way to remove it.

Control decks in Limited run far fewer counterspells, if any. Playing a control deck in Limited is more about having early creatures to block with and decent mid- to late-game removal. You can’t get a deck that primarily plays at instant speed in Draft or Sealed the way you can in Constructed. It’s also usually worth holding your countermagic for later in the game to develop an early board presence and counter your opponent’s bomb rather than a stray 2/2.

For Commander, it’s important to have some countermagic to stop the powerful things everybody does. If you have 30 counterspells in the deck, you’ll never advance your board and just annoy everybody else. I generally like five or six counterspells in my Commander decks in addition to permanent removal, unless I try to do something like Baral, Chief of Compliance that wants me to run as many counters as possible.

How Many Creatures Should Be in a Control Deck?

Most control decks run very few creatures. Some iterations of Control in Modern and Pioneer even run no creatures to companion Kaheera, the Orphanguard as an extra spell. Control decks with no creatures work because of win conditions like Teferi, Hero of Dominaria and Shark Typhoon.

When control decks do run creatures as finishers, they’re often large, hard to deal with, and impactful threats. These aren’t cards to play early but to hold until you’re in control of the game and ready to end things.

The lack of early creatures in control decks make more of your opponent’s cards unplayable. Decks that pack a bunch of removal like Infernal Grasp and Cut Down effectively get dead draws.

Early creatures also makes your board wipes way more awkward.

Some control variants put creatures in the sideboard. These are often efficient, high-impact threats like Thief of Sanity or Chrome Host Seedshark that spiral out of control when left unchecked. Control decks keep these cards in the sideboard until game 2 or 3 because the first thing many opponents board out of their deck is all the cheap interactive spells that would punish these creatures.

Many Limited decks are more midrange than anything, with aggressive or controlling tendencies. You can’t get the critical mass of interactive spells and board wipes in Limited that a Constructed deck gets., so Limited control decks often run a bunch of small creatures that block well early, like Oracle of Tragedy, Magebane Lizard and Skullsnap Nuisance to stop early aggression.

How Many Lands Should a Control Deck Have?

Usually, 60-card decks have something around 20-24 lands. Control decks should aim much higher, usually between 27-29 lands. If you play counterspells, being able to play two of them in a given turn is gold, and you can use the excess lands to draw cards later via Sphinx's Revelation or Memory Deluge.

How Do I Get Better at Playing Control?

Get better at control by understanding the decks you will face. Know which cards are their key threats and distinguish between early, must-kill enablers and cards that don’t matter.

Leverage your life total and keep track of the burn your opponent is likely to have to know when you need to preserve your life total.

Control decks reward patience better than any other archetype. Reserve your interaction for relevant threats that draw cards or something else that would be harder to deal with.

Patience also extends to playing your threats. Casting your bomb as soon as possible is tempting, but what if they remove it? Control decks can often afford to wait for a few turns to play their threat and hold up an interactive spell in the same turn.

What'll usually happen in control vs control mirror matches is that one player will either cast an uncounterable threat and use their counterspells to protect it. Winning the counter war in control mirrors is especially important, and one key turn can define the outcome of the match.

These are just a couple of tips to help improve your control gameplay. If you want to go more in-depth and level up your skills as a control player, check out the Spikes Academy course from Corey Burkheart on how to master control decks across all formats!

Wrap Up

Dovin's Veto | Illustration by Izzy

Control decks are among my favorite archetypes to play. There’s something innately satisfying when it goes right, knowing that you’ve been in command of the game from turn 1, and had every answer and won with a strong game plan that ended with a massive monster.

Not every control deck is blue, but the strategy is fundamental one, even if they play a Mardu tap-out control variant. This strategy is for players who want to build complex game plans and analyze large, long-reaching decision trees to figure out the best plays for the next five turns.

Do you play lots of control decks and have a tip we missed? What’s your favorite archetype in EDH? Let me know in the comments or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and remain in control!