I do not know if there is such an archetype in other card games, but HS’s version of “control” is basically “Clear the board and kill minions every turn until you win”.
I’m absolutely sure that it is making HS a worse game.
The most interesting matches are aggro vs aggro, midrange vs midrange, board vs board. I’m playing this game for several years on and off, and only these kind of matchups require any kind of “thinking” from the player. This is where trades and board control happens, this is where decisions about trading or pushing face happen and actually matter.
The argument “me agro me go face” is only valid when aggro is facing control. What else can aggro do? Only hope for a high roll and push face ASAP or it’s GG. Of course you should play around removals etc. but there are so many removals and board clears that it is impossible to play around them. I haven’t seen an important minion staying alive for a full turn in years. For example brann - have you seen it live past your turn, like, ever? No. And will not be a value trade that will remove it, it will be something from hand. And now we reached a point where playing minions is actually detrimental vs some decks. Quest / Spell DH for example, which in fact, is a degenerate mutant hybrid of OTK combo and control, it is not an aggro deck at all.
All in all I wish HS would turn more towards board contest / value trading / midrange gameplay, instead of this “hyper aggro to compensate for unstoppable control” meta. And it is Blizzard’s version of “control” that is at fault.
In most other games I’ve played board clear is quite interesting because it’s rare and it means one deck doesn’t solely run board wipes, it actually runs a mix of board wipes and minions and tends to have to decide whether or not to progress their own board state, I’m pretty sure they like the simplicity behind the design that revolves around killing every minion fatiguing and that actually it will never change. It also seems like they have gone too far with hand refill that this kind of play with some minions and some board wipes would never feel very rewarding.
Heathstone Version of control is mild. Other card games have the same kill everything gameplay, but you don’t risk dying out of nowhere with no way to defend from an opponent OTK out of hand like in Hearthstone. In MTG it can get real toxic such as never getting to play anything or even your opponent controls all the turns but it also has way more ways to defend against it.
You rarely would take their whole field away in MTG though, often they’d still have a planeswalker, an enchantment, an artifact equipment. A lot of it is purely single piece removal. There were definitely OTK’s in magic, actually the OTK’s often are more combo centric from my memories of it, harder to pull off, but MTG gave you a lot more freedoms to do more intelligent combo plays. A lot of hearthstone players would actually complain about many keyword cards in magic because they are hard to understand and develop counter plays for even if there is plenty of counterplay, knowing which combo pieces are worth killing with your limited removal is also part of the strategy.
On the flipside, these days if you let a minion live for more than one turn you usually lose. Exceptions being specific dinky minions in specific decks, like Hematurge from a Blood DK.
ever heard of a game called shadowverse…?i havent played in a while i checked their reddit and it turns out the game has several turn 5-8 otks
i mention shadowverse because is the clost game i know to HS (turns mana and not being able to play cards on opponent turn)
Playing a big minion with good stats is a risk because single target removal is too good (Too cheap and effective), focus on lower cost minions because even if the opponent transforms or kills one, you have more coming, decks now need mass board clears in order to deal with zerg rush decks that just flood the board, zerg rushes now don’t work so you need to make them sticky or be able to reload the board instantly. The amount of power creep with the need for immediate effects that can’t be answered is titanic.
The entire design philosphy of the game from Beta has led us to this point.
I will sympathise with you because I think cards of all archetypes have become too good and that includes control deck board wipes. Board clears in early hearthstone required some setup to actually clear the board completely, unlike now.
However, I disagree that matchups versus control are hopeless or boring. Yes, often the correct play is just pretending as if your opponent doesn’t have the card that beats you. But matchups that include a control deck are about resources, hand reading, making your control opponent spend mana and cards inefficiently, and sometimes playing slower and more of a midrange strategy to deplete the control deck’s methods of surviving before going all in. I think if you appreciate strategy, you can find something to enjoy in these matchups even though it’s more about what’s in the hand rather than the board.
Now the only decision is, roughly, if you’re gonna use clean the scene or lightbomb to clear the board this turn🤔
I’m not even talking about single target removal. As i said, an important minion will not live past your turn, ever.
It’s fun to play, let’s say, handbuff paladin for a couple times. But after your Liandrin or Kotori gets insta rekt the very next turn, it gets old fast.
That’s why deathrattle rogue was so strong. It countered all that OP board clear. That’s why Frost Mage is so strong - it actually wants it’s minions to die. Or frost DK - it uses minions only fir their dethrattles. That’s why the abomination that is quest/spell DH was spawned - the ultimate “fck you” in HS meta - “you play minions, you die”. Or another abomination - OTK armor druid. Basically gain armor, clear board, OTK. All these toxic decks are a result of “control” being too strong. Minions do not matter. The only board based deck we have is Hunter - because all it’s cards are overtuned and way ahead on tempo.
As a result, power creep created hyper aggro, that if not stopped, will destroy you by turn 4.
This. I remember playing Magic control decks that were more nuts than a Druid in HS. Green ramp was insane too.
I don’t care for the control decks as much, but they are necessary for game balance. If there were no control decks, then we would have a game dominated by one or two decks and the variety is gone. Could you imagine playing against the same deck over and over again with that same deck?
That said, I prefer non control decks too. Matches are just too long for me. Playing cards with someone in person is better when playing long matches. E gaining against someone you can’t chat with? Boring.
I think they have done a better job - they separated out the “control” into the board clear classes and greed classes.
In the old models the only classes that could use a greedy, heavy, “big” deck were the board clear classes since everyone else had to fight for control without the clears. What you ended up with was priest, warrior, warlock becoming eternal greed classes. If you didn’t kill them by a certain mid-game turn it was game over.
Now those clases still have clears, but they haven’t been supported with much extreme greed class card finishers.
The month long experiment of injecting greedy big priest back into the standard game just reminded us how terrible it is.
It’s a tough issue to tackle, though. People have some really strong opinions and preferences in both directions, and I don’t know that there is a great answer to the problem, but I agree that we are in a bad place with very little middle right now.
DK introduced deck constraints to the game in a different way than other classes, and I wonder if we couldn’t expand on those ideas to fix some of the issues?
What about deck requirements that only so many minions or spells can be included?
Alternatively, what if cards had a point system and decks had a point limit (min/max) that had to be hit? It would be intersting to see how that would affect balance as they could change deck values of cards without changing mana cost or effects, which would then affect the supporting cards allowed into the decks. So you could run X win con, but it would cost you tons of control tools to do it.
Idk, just spitballing.
I’m glad there’s not a wallet warrior or wallet paladin list rolling around now, but I think blizzard wants that to be a thing for cash reason.
I believe, the best Hearthstone is where players can play with fun, a meta where decks not too “hyper” (hyper aggro, hyper control, hyper OTK)
Unfortunately, Hearthstone developers think differently: “A solitaire game is more fun”
“Playing board clear every turn against aggro is fun”
“Playing OTK against control is fun”
“Playing aggro vs OTK is fun”
Because it is solitaire.
I get Legend in Wild almost every month for 2 years.
Sometimes I just can’t believe that at D4-1 people will ignore my board and essentially throw the game to get early chip damage (when it’s way too early to set up lethal) thereby allowing me to establish board control that I should never have if they played smartly.
What you mention is like provisions system in gwent, to be fair gwent deckbuilding is very challenging and I spent like 10 hours just crunching numbers on figuring out which combos to take out, which to leave in just to meet the provisions limit. I really like that system, but no chance it gets introduced into hearthstone because it is more leaning towards a hardcore gamer who would enjoy that kind of depth. A lot of people are saying the worst things about standard mode right now, but with how they treat game design, it is the only mode that can be good, given that in a vacuum of so few cards you can decide how many control tools a class should get.
A lot of people with disagree, but i believe that control should be more proactive. Okani, objection, counterspell, are great control tools. “Destroy all minions and heal to full” is not.
Blood DK just sits there for the most part waiting for you to play a minion they can destroy. If you don’t play anything, they just pass the turn or play some discover (to get another removal, or health gain naturally).
I recently played some deathrattle rogue which was nerfed into oblivion, but miraculously i got matched vs 3 BDKs and 2 DHs, won 5/0. They just don’t know what to do since their removal is useless.
I disagree with most of the forum, because I enjoy a lot of the T3 OTK decks that get nerfed. I wouldn’t worry too much if you like control and others are telling you that you’re wrong for playing it.
I personally don’t think those kinds of cards are much more interactive, best case is you play a cheap card to draw out their secret, but you don’t always have the opportunity to test secrets in such a way. You can interact into a board wipe more so by not playing anything, often it is well televised, however they might just be holding back because they didn’t draw on curve, so you hedge your bets and it’s that kind of reasoning that at least makes control playable.
Taunt walls really really should go though, again taunt has it’s place, but you shouldn’t be allowed to justify more than 2 or so copies of taunt, in some other card games you basically just have one defender and that is it.
This playstyle can be found in arena. If this is what you look for arena is a very good option.
Once they balance dk in arena , if they ever get to it that is.
Control is removing all threats,and then preferably end with a wincondition though against agro removing all threats is a wincon in itself.
What else could control possibly be? Control has always been like this,remove threats and outlast the opponent. Untill you can play a big threat that the opponent cant deal with.
I dont think control now is fundamentally different from how it used to be. Its just that everything has become more extreme and more powerfull.
The main issue is that overtime, aggro decks have become more powerful, able to deal larger amounts of damage per turn while also having good card draw to supplement their weakness of running out of cards in the late game.
This led to more and more late game strategies (in particular attrition) focusing less on winning in the late game and instead focusing on purely removal, because playing a high cost card (say a large minion for example) would put the control player at risk of being blown out the following turn.
So the only consistent way such decks could win was to keep being on the defensive. Thus turning more and more late game decks into the fatigue play style, where all they do is stall the game, instead of actually playing it once they reach turn 7 or later.
Either late game decks (that aren’t otk combo decks) need better late game cards, so that they can both play high cost cards in the late game instead of just removal and survive or early game/aggro decks need to be toned down on the amount of resource generation/card draw.
That’s how I see it anyway.
