There seems to be quite a lot of players here that like control decks, but what type of control deck do you like?
(State some examples, description or decklist)
Is current HS designs direction align with your expectations? What is different?
My favorite type of control is greed. I want to control the board and stay alive while I slowly tear down each of the opponent’s minions and then comes to a point where my minions are far bigger than theirs. Then, they see that I have the advantage and I turn the tables to where they have to deal with MY minions instead of me dealing with THEIRS. To me, that’s the best. I want to first solve the problem of YOUR minions, then make you solve the problem of MY minions.
Not in the slightest. I think ranked (both wild and standard) are pretty much dead and no fun. It seems they would rather dump their resources and time into making other game modes.
In fact, I got this weird feeling while matching the Mercenaries video that they said “balancing ranked is too hard…let’s just scrap it and start focusing on another way to make money. Ranked is beyond repair”
Old school freeze mage and bomb warrior.
I like value comtrol decks, like control paladin way back in the day, or ultra survivable control decks like control warrior.
As for the bonus question: not in the slightest. Its so bad I just uninstalled today since I realized I wasn’t actually havinh any fun with ranked at all. Period
Depends on what type of freeze mage, since many types were combo decks.
The Rastakhan-era type of Dragon Control Priest was probably one of my favorite control type decks. What I particularly liked about it was its flexibility: you could run as control against more aggressive opponents, but you also had the ability to make proactive plays and close out the game.
You had control tools and some good minions that could help control the board.
You had a burst finisher via Mind Blast
You had some value options to Discover what you needed for each matchup.
And Shadow Visions in particular was a great, flexible tool in that deck to help find what you needed for each particular match, whether that was removal or an extra Mind Blast or two for your finisher.
Oh yeah I loved that package and zoolock and dragon warrior were my favorite gameplay aggros. Dragon package was fun I used that to years with great success in my wild tempo midrange tempo control razakuses.
I hated velen otk that did nothing but play the 2 mana 1/1 draw a card and flop over dead or pro, but I loved the tempo versions I made that fought for board. I used cards years ago people had missed like tgt inspire synergies like spawn of shadow and recruiter in razakus and helped popularize the idea,
I loved how every match felt different and fought for board. Against aggro you could play control or midrange, aiming to survive or outvalue. Against guldan malganis nzoth cubelocks who could revive, gain +4/4 aura buffed hero immunity boards you played for combo, clear, otk or a early finish. And against other raza decks I usually tried to go midrange and take advantage of their weaker tempo to damage them or hold calced hp advantages to keep them from spawn of shadows otks.
The deck played with huge variety and was one of the most enjoyable pet project decks I enjoyed for years, but it’s dead now. (homebrew to wild top 100-50 legend and 7 legend runs as f2p btw. ), as well as likely 40-60 iterations, successful or not ranging from healing quest variants, and 20k dust spent on it and experimentation all f2p.
It might not have been raw stronger as I might have piloted another 20+ winstreak 60% hsreplay deck to swoon but it was fun and by the end it was extremely fun and powerfully refined, then it got killed off in a single month by power creep to the moon.
The question should be, what type of control deck did you like.
My favorite control deck thats also my all time favorite is Big Spell Mage.
Removal ,sustain and win cons to turn the game around later on, thats the Control i like.
Ah, yes. Meteor.
Nothing more fun than casting a Meteor and hitting your opponent in the face for 30 damage lol
Its still my favorite card to this day, i was realy sad when it didnt get a spot on the core set.
Thats 1 of the reasons i want to try Mercenaries i get to see the old big fat spells again.
The one where I get to play Rotface xD
Reno/N’Zoth decks from Whispers of The Old Golds.
Sometimes with a C’thun package.
UnGoro era Paladin with Rag Lightlord, Sunkeeper Tarim, and Primordial drakes.
Machine Gun Raza Priest from Frozen Throne before it got completely degenerate.
before we decide what type of “control” we like, we need a definition of “Control” that everybody agrees to.
The best Control style for me is renolock: good board clears, good minions, good curve, doesn’t stall the game, but wins in the late game way before fatigue.
It’s also highly customizable, so you can make your own version of renolock: mine doesn’t have guldan, nzoth or skull of manari, but has ticketus, ysarjj and jaraxxus.
It has also room for tech cards, which makes it playable against almost every deck
I think that’s the question the op is asking: “what does control mean to you”
I like those long priest vs priest games that ends up with Archivist Elysiana mitgating fatigue and both players using 2x reno jacksons and stealing Amara from each other atleast twice with Entomb. Those kind of games allow me to play all my greedy cards in deck
I first started playing just after launch and I loved steal priest running Thoughtsteal, Cabal Shadowpriest and Shadow Madness, nothing more satisfying than getting lethal with one of your opponents minions.
Also really enjoyed those big legendaries like Sylvanas and Rag.
Also enjoyed Nax , Loatheb is one heck of a card!!
I liked how the game went through different phases as you tried to just survive until about T7, when you could start to play your bombs and your opponent was running out of steam, eventually a Rag or Ysera would stick and you could stabilise.
I’ve been enjoying Quest Priest in the current meta, but it’s not a good deck for climbing!
My most favourite were the old Nzoth builds, I really miss the times when you could win with the board as control deck.
But I also love Reno DKWarlock and Reno Priest. Classic control decks but they are not based on random card generation and have actual win conditions in late.
I’ll start with the bonus question since it’s easiest.
Absolutely not. Games should have a much better chance of going past turn 6-7. If there aren’t more nerfs to help and/or a big change in the min-set then I won’t be buying pre-orders again. If the next expansion is as anti-control as this one then I’m outta here.
As for the main, I used to not like control. My favorite decks were tempo-oriented. But now…
I love the priest quest. It gives a guaranteed finisher but you have to struggle and think in order to make it that far.
Also this.
I also like combo decks that take a long time to get there and so have to play control rather than hitting the hero power, casting soul rend, and killing you with their fatigue on turn 7. Things like OTK Quest Y’Shaarj Shaman or Ysera, Al’Akir, Nightmare Shaman.
Finally there are the meme control decks where I control you with your own cards. I love yoink priest where every single card in the deck is designed to take something from your battlefield or deck and use it against you. They don’t win a lot but every single game is different.
And I think the exact opposite. I insta concede those decks and leave.
Absolutely nothing is more annoying than playing against a deck that isn’t trying to actually attack and win.
You’re basically saying your top fun is crapping on people, though. All you want to do is make them miserable by negating their plays without making offense. That’s basically just trolling people.
Again, best meta ever right now outside of warlock quest BS.