And it doesn't. Resource denial is never a strategy that help you win. Stalling for its own sake is not a strategy. That's why aggro-control decks like miracle gro/madness/pyschatog/delver/etc traditionally do better than pure control.
Resource denial absolutely helps you win. No, resource denial is generally not a win condition in-and-of itself (with the exception of mill). However, denying your opponents lands, cards, spells, creatures, and so on is and always has been a major part of this game.
(By the way, Sinkhole in particular decreased in popularity in competitive use shortly after the Onslaught fetch lands were printed and introduced to the Vintage format.)
In short, purely reactive decks will generally lose to a proactive deck. All the best decks ever created are proactive decks.
I have to assume you're just hyperbolizing here, because this is clearly not true. Starting with Keeper (EDIT: I mean, The Deck), control has a rich history of powerful decks in multiple formats.
Go make a control deck with all the best counters out there and play against proper aggro deck, like zoo or affinity. You'll most likely lose.
Edit- Actually, with mental misstep I dunno. Zoo might lose.
Three things:
1) That's why Mental Misstep is banned in Legacy. Control started taking over when it was legal.
2) The definition of control is not just blue permission. Lands is control and just won a SCG Open a few weeks ago. Enchantress has seen a few high finishes recently, too.
3) Most importantly, you're turning the discussion into something it is not. You're focusing on a head to head match-up of control vs. aggro. Unfortunately, that doesn't paint a complete picture for this discussion since there are quite a few other decks to consider. Even if an aggro deck can beat a control deck, that alone does not imply the aggro deck is the best deck. It may lose to a significant number of other decks in the format, such as combo. The presence of other decks can and does lead to metagames where control is the top deck.
The format with all the best control cards to ever exist favors tempo/fastest aggro deck to ever exist/aggro-control deck/combo. But not control.
You're not considering the banned list. Legacy's banned list is currently full of combo and control enablers. The only true aggro card I see on the list is Black Vise. An argument could be made for Survival of the Fittest, but that could also be considered combo.
Vintage doesn't ban cards for power level reasons and that format definitely tends to favor combo/control decks over aggro decks. I believe the diversity of Vintage has increased over the years, but traditionally, blue has dominated the format in a number of control and combo variations. It's only relatively recently that aggro Stax variants have gained such ground in the format.
Just for fun, here's a M13 deck made entirely of commons. Note that the deck was created in about five minutes.
In many cases, the power level of cards in current sets is quite different than the power level in days gone by. If you're a newer player looking at the game with little to no historical perspective (M13?), then yes, aggro is better than control. However, players who have payed attention to competitive Magic for a number years will likely agree that traditionally control has been better than aggro.
Resource denial absolutely helps you win. No, resource denial is generally not a win condition in-and-of itself (with the exception of mill). However, denying your opponents lands, cards, spells, creatures, and so on is and always has been a major part of this game.
I should clarify. I meant resource denial for its own sake is not a viable strategy. One cannot merely fill a deck full of control cards and seriously expect to win.
I do recognize that it depends entirely on the format. Vintage, with its host of fast mana acceleration and access to every terrific control cards ever printed, is more than capable of pulling off such a strategy. I suppose I'm contradicting myself here.
I have to assume you're just hyperbolizing here, because this is clearly not true. Starting with Keeper (EDIT: I mean, The Deck), control has a rich history of powerful decks in multiple formats.
When I made this post, I was referring specifically to the guy's claims that control is "inherently" stronger than aggro. I do not deny that control has never been a strong archetype, nor will I claim that it was always the weakest.
I will argue that control ultimately fared poorly against the best combo and aggro decks that existed along side it, especially as creatures began to become stronger and stronger.
2) The definition of control is not just blue permission. Lands is control and just won a SCG Open a few weeks ago. Enchantress has seen a few high finishes recently, too.
I know. I inadvertently began focusing on MUC cause counters are where most people have their hate on this thread.
As for legacy-making a couple tournament wins or posting high finishes does not mean that a deck is dominant.
3) Most importantly, you're turning the discussion into something it is not. You're focusing on a head to head match-up of control vs. aggro. Unfortunately, that doesn't paint a complete picture for this discussion since there are quite a few other decks to consider. Even if an aggro deck can beat a control deck, that alone does not imply the aggro deck is the best deck. It may lose to a significant number of other decks in the format, such as combo. The presence of other decks can and does lead to metagames where control is the top deck.
Actually, I'm not. For one thing, the thread title is "aggro decks inherently weaker than control?". Second, I was making a specific response to a guy who said that control is inherently stronger than anything else, but especially aggro.
Hence, I tried to focus mostly on general concepts and tried to veer away from specific metagames. I realize that I failed on this account though.
You're not considering the banned list. Legacy's banned list is currently full of combo and control enablers. The only true aggro card I see on the list is Black Vise. An argument could be made for Survival of the Fittest, but that could also be considered combo.
I was under the impression that, besides mind twist and mental misstep, the rest are all absurd combo enablers that make it far too easy to create consistent 2-3 turn kills?
I don't see anything there that control could really use to break the format open besides mishra's workshop and balance, and balance is iffy. But, I do not claim that I know much about vintage and legacy. Only that workshop-trinisphere has influenced vintage in a while that nothing ever, ever has before.
Vintage doesn't ban cards for power level reasons and that format definitely tends to favor combo/control decks over aggro decks. I believe the diversity of Vintage has increased over the years, but traditionally, blue has dominated the format in a number of control and combo variations. It's only relatively recently that aggro Stax variants have gained such ground in the format.
But don't most vintage decks run blue simply to be able to use blue's absurd power cards like ancestral recall and time walk? Really, I'm hesitant to use vintage as any serious indicator of anything/for any discussion simply because wotc really had a different goal for the game in the first 2 or so years compared to any other time.
They've refined their view of what the game should be about throughout the decade(s). This actually goes into my comments concerning the last of your post.
Yes, magic traditionally had stronger control and combo components than creatures. After all, morphling/serra angel/erhnam djinn/etc have all been considered powerful, game-ending creatures at one point or another; and they all pale in comparison to the creatures being printed today.
Compare those to control cards like smokestack, tangle wire, winter orb, etc.
Or all the combo enablers in the legacy ban-list.
I really just see it as wotc going from being a spell heavy game to being a creature heavy game, and I can't really make a claim of which is better for the game.
Merely that none of this gives us evidence to make any judgment claim on whether control is "inherently" stronger or weaker than aggro or combo, which has been the topic of the vast majority of this thread's running time.
We can make claims that control is stronger or weaker than aggro in any given format. But we cannot make supposed "objective" claims of whether an archetype is inherently stronger than other. Such a thing is, afaik, actually impossible. How're we supposed to make an absolute evaluation of which is stronger than the other when we have to work with the cards that wotc gave us?
Besides, I'm of the opinion that combo beats everything.
I was under the impression that, besides mind twist and mental misstep, the rest are all absurd combo enablers that make it far too easy to create consistent 2-3 turn kills?
I don't see anything there that control could really use to break the format open besides mishra's workshop and balance, and balance is iffy. But, I do not claim that I know much about vintage and legacy. Only that workshop-trinisphere has influenced vintage in a while that nothing ever, ever has before.
A lot of the cards definitely fit more than one category. Balance is a good example. Trying to split hairs for each card could drive a person mad. Even Workshop isn't as clear cut as it used to be. Ever since Lodestone Golem was printed, Workshop decks can effectively be control and aggro simultaneously. But...
But don't most vintage decks run blue simply to be able to use blue's absurd power cards like ancestral recall and time walk? Really, I'm hesitant to use vintage as any serious indicator of anything/for any discussion simply because wotc really had a different goal for the game in the first 2 or so years compared to any other time.
To be honest, with the talk about Legacy, I just forgot this post was in the Standard forum. That certainly makes Vintage and Legacy a lot less relevant for this particular discussion. I think those old busted blue cards are certainly still relevant when considering the game as a whole, but not so much when the topic is just Standard. So I'm just going to move on...
We can make claims that control is stronger or weaker than aggro in any given format. But we cannot make supposed "objective" claims of whether an archetype is inherently stronger than other.
I don't think the OP was trying to be predictive as much as he was being descriptive. That is, he's only basing his statements on what WotC has done so far instead of basing them on all the possible things they could do in the future. That's fair enough to me, but you've made your viewpoint more clear to me now, too, and I can understand the logic of your statements.
For everybody arguing that old school control is stronger than aggro, please remember, this thread was started in the standard sub forum and thus it was assumed that this discussion was in regard to current standard.
In THAT regard, there is NO question that aggro is stronger than control.
I thought THAT'S what we were talking here.
But...if you want to talk old school, play a Vintage MUC deck against a Vintage Goblins deck and you'll see that the matchup slightly favors Goblins, though not by a lot. It's close...very close.
I love playing control. I feel like it's a challenge, especially against aggro. But to say that it's hands down more powerful than aggro is nonsense.
Rock/paper/scissors, back in the old days rang very true. Today, not so much because of how the game has changed and how scissors and paper have been seriously nerfed to the point where one doesn't even exist anymore. So rock runs rampant and there's very little left to stop it.
For everybody arguing that old school control is stronger than aggro, please remember, this thread was started in the standard sub forum and thus it was assumed that this discussion was in regard to current standard.
In THAT regard, there is NO question that aggro is stronger than control.
Control has been stronger than aggro in near recent Standard formats. Just because it isn't in this particular block of sets doesn't mean that Standard can't have strong Control decks or won't again.
Control has been stronger than aggro in near recent Standard formats. Just because it isn't in this particular block of sets doesn't mean that Standard can't have strong Control decks or won't again.
True. We don't know what the future holds. But right now, playing anything but aggro or tempo is an uphill battle for the player. Would you agree there?
True. We don't know what the future holds. But right now, playing anything but aggro or tempo is an uphill battle for the player. Would you agree there?
Sure. I wouldn't take Control or Combo to a tournament. But Mid-Range with Naya Pod is perfectly reasonable.
I'm curious, does anybody either have an eidetic memory or has done the research to see the viability of each archetype throughout the history of Magic?
If I recall correctly, in the early days, mid range was never viable because control just had too many counters and aggro was just too fast. I also don't think we had any real combo decks until Urza's. I mean, yeah, we had Channel/Fireball, but I don't recall exactly for how long that was even viable outside of type 1.
As I'm getting older, it's all becoming a blur. There's just too much for me to keep track of.
It would be interesting to compile a history of each archetype and the breakdown of each throughout the years to see what the trends have been.
In the early days, things were too unknown, untested and MTG theory too weak to really have archetypes. It's really better to start at more modern magic to get a feel for what archetypes have been viable. I would start in Invasion. Before that, things were pretty loose. R&D has been a lot more defined since then.
What really piss me off btw is that current T2 is not about ruining control...is about non interactivity...
i mean between rancor and the new dragon, even the combat phase isn't interactive....
This is the problem.....control was the last deck trying to play the game and not to see wich cards you draw to determine the victory.
I have to agree with some of this. With all the insane ETB and LTB effects (Thragtusk i'm glaring at you), and super resiliant creatures (undying, hexproof, etc.) most of the 'interactivity' takes place between clunky, clogged board states.
I sincerely hope Remand comes back to play in RTR, cause I love playing control and don't know WTF to do about all these crazy creature-based shenanagins. I mean an indefenite amount of time slapping Rancors onto Strangleroot Geist or whatever is not the most appealing scenario.
...not only is the total number of players expanding very quickly, but at the same time a greater and greater number of those players are being pushed to only desire a small subset of the available cards. These combined forces drastically increase demand for those cards and cause the values of just those specific cards to often balloon out of proportion.
Isnt standard control basically tapout? Esper ?midrange" seems more like control. I mean, yeah you have mana leaks for permission, so what. If your running lingering souls, restoration angels, snapcasters, sun titan, phantasmal images and some planeswalkers, thats tapout control. Seems a natural evolution given the printing of Cavern of Souls, of course control decks would become much more tapout in strategy. Its still the same basic premise, survive the early game to the mid-late game using cards that create advanatge. SCMage, Restoration Angel, Sun Titan and Planeswalkers def create continual advantage.
Rancor should make aggro decks smile for sure, especially green/white and monogreen. It helps get in early damage really fast and turn dungrove elders and thruns into trampling beaters against the ever present lingering souls by control lists. I think both archtypes are fine.
I am an avid control player, and as such think I should chime in here. In regards to standard, control as I would like to play it simply cant exist on a competitive level. My style of control is what most of these new players hate, COUNTERSPELLS. I am the guy that plays 20 counter in a deck and one creature and drags the game out to long and wins because I drown you in card advantage and you get frustrated and make to many mistakes to recover. This style of control simply cannot exist on a competitive level right now. The reason isn't that aggro is stronger, no no, it is because the cards are to narrow. You are forced to pick and choose your answers, and at bare minimum numbers at that, where aggro actually can jam 4 copies of the best cards in their colors into a deck and swarm you with consistency. In addition, combo does not exist. This is not so much a game changer but mainly a factor. Aggro can't interact with combo, combo can't interact with control, and control can't interact with aggro (at least not on the level that it can with combo). However, bringing things back to standard in general, control can jam an abundance of kill into a deck and it could operate almost to the degree that a draw-go deck from 12 years ago would have acted. You may get to resolve creatures and, and get some profitable effect in most cases, but when you consider that your creature will almost certainly die then you simply overpaid for a marginal effect (to clarify, blinking a creature with restoration angel is awesome if you get the 3/4 flyer attached to it, if not then it is an overpriced Cloudshift, regardless of the effect the blinked creature had) In addition, I would also like to point out that control is strongest in a known meta because you can custom taylor the deck and streamline it against the meta. Many on the so called boogy-man decks (Draw-GO, I am looking at you) had a know meta and a large card pool to work with, not to mention that many of the pilots that made these decks famous had byes at the major tournaments and could almost negate the "rogue deck" factor since most of those decks would most likely be in the lower brackets.
As to what deck style is strongest, well I would say control is stronger than aggro because it has greater flexibility in its construction can metagame the best, where aggro is usually more focused and can't really afford to deviate from a set build due to the loss of efficency it would suffer.
Control in standard right now must be kill oriented, however, when the dust settles and aggro decks become more focused I think we will see a shift from the tap-out kill focused builds and a move toward a counter/kill mix build if not primarily counter oriented. This is even with cavern of souls. Cavern does not kill counters, matter of fact it could actually help them. Unless a deck goes tribal they are ill equipped to use cavern to truely thwart counters. Non tribal aggro decks using cavern do some of the work for counter control players. If we cant counter something then we have counters for other spells thus alleviating the need of calculating what our opponents are trying to do, in addition we have kill to complement counter. We can easily focus our kill on what cavern is naming and counter any other relevant threats.
So this turned into more of a rant then anything and as such I will stop here.
Control by permission isnt exactly viable, but that doesnt mean control is dead. Besides, I did fine with a deck that was MONOBLUE and had ratchet bombs, devastation tides, phantasmal images, mana leaks, dissipate, rewind, tamiyo, karn, think twice, ponder, augur of bolas, mental missteps, dismembers......and did fine this past FNM. People are just lazy, even with gaming.
Resource denial absolutely helps you win. No, resource denial is generally not a win condition in-and-of itself (with the exception of mill). However, denying your opponents lands, cards, spells, creatures, and so on is and always has been a major part of this game.
(By the way, Sinkhole in particular decreased in popularity in competitive use shortly after the Onslaught fetch lands were printed and introduced to the Vintage format.)
I have to assume you're just hyperbolizing here, because this is clearly not true. Starting with Keeper (EDIT: I mean, The Deck), control has a rich history of powerful decks in multiple formats.
Three things:
1) That's why Mental Misstep is banned in Legacy. Control started taking over when it was legal.
2) The definition of control is not just blue permission. Lands is control and just won a SCG Open a few weeks ago. Enchantress has seen a few high finishes recently, too.
3) Most importantly, you're turning the discussion into something it is not. You're focusing on a head to head match-up of control vs. aggro. Unfortunately, that doesn't paint a complete picture for this discussion since there are quite a few other decks to consider. Even if an aggro deck can beat a control deck, that alone does not imply the aggro deck is the best deck. It may lose to a significant number of other decks in the format, such as combo. The presence of other decks can and does lead to metagames where control is the top deck.
You're not considering the banned list. Legacy's banned list is currently full of combo and control enablers. The only true aggro card I see on the list is Black Vise. An argument could be made for Survival of the Fittest, but that could also be considered combo.
Vintage doesn't ban cards for power level reasons and that format definitely tends to favor combo/control decks over aggro decks. I believe the diversity of Vintage has increased over the years, but traditionally, blue has dominated the format in a number of control and combo variations. It's only relatively recently that aggro Stax variants have gained such ground in the format.
In many cases, the power level of cards in current sets is quite different than the power level in days gone by. If you're a newer player looking at the game with little to no historical perspective (M13?), then yes, aggro is better than control. However, players who have payed attention to competitive Magic for a number years will likely agree that traditionally control has been better than aggro.
I should clarify. I meant resource denial for its own sake is not a viable strategy. One cannot merely fill a deck full of control cards and seriously expect to win.
I do recognize that it depends entirely on the format. Vintage, with its host of fast mana acceleration and access to every terrific control cards ever printed, is more than capable of pulling off such a strategy. I suppose I'm contradicting myself here.
When I made this post, I was referring specifically to the guy's claims that control is "inherently" stronger than aggro. I do not deny that control has never been a strong archetype, nor will I claim that it was always the weakest.
I will argue that control ultimately fared poorly against the best combo and aggro decks that existed along side it, especially as creatures began to become stronger and stronger.
I know. I inadvertently began focusing on MUC cause counters are where most people have their hate on this thread.
As for legacy-making a couple tournament wins or posting high finishes does not mean that a deck is dominant.
Actually, I'm not. For one thing, the thread title is "aggro decks inherently weaker than control?". Second, I was making a specific response to a guy who said that control is inherently stronger than anything else, but especially aggro.
Hence, I tried to focus mostly on general concepts and tried to veer away from specific metagames. I realize that I failed on this account though.
I was under the impression that, besides mind twist and mental misstep, the rest are all absurd combo enablers that make it far too easy to create consistent 2-3 turn kills?
I don't see anything there that control could really use to break the format open besides mishra's workshop and balance, and balance is iffy. But, I do not claim that I know much about vintage and legacy. Only that workshop-trinisphere has influenced vintage in a while that nothing ever, ever has before.
But don't most vintage decks run blue simply to be able to use blue's absurd power cards like ancestral recall and time walk? Really, I'm hesitant to use vintage as any serious indicator of anything/for any discussion simply because wotc really had a different goal for the game in the first 2 or so years compared to any other time.
They've refined their view of what the game should be about throughout the decade(s). This actually goes into my comments concerning the last of your post.
Yes, magic traditionally had stronger control and combo components than creatures. After all, morphling/serra angel/erhnam djinn/etc have all been considered powerful, game-ending creatures at one point or another; and they all pale in comparison to the creatures being printed today.
Compare those to control cards like smokestack, tangle wire, winter orb, etc.
Or all the combo enablers in the legacy ban-list.
I really just see it as wotc going from being a spell heavy game to being a creature heavy game, and I can't really make a claim of which is better for the game.
Merely that none of this gives us evidence to make any judgment claim on whether control is "inherently" stronger or weaker than aggro or combo, which has been the topic of the vast majority of this thread's running time.
We can make claims that control is stronger or weaker than aggro in any given format. But we cannot make supposed "objective" claims of whether an archetype is inherently stronger than other. Such a thing is, afaik, actually impossible. How're we supposed to make an absolute evaluation of which is stronger than the other when we have to work with the cards that wotc gave us?
Besides, I'm of the opinion that combo beats everything.
A lot of the cards definitely fit more than one category. Balance is a good example. Trying to split hairs for each card could drive a person mad. Even Workshop isn't as clear cut as it used to be. Ever since Lodestone Golem was printed, Workshop decks can effectively be control and aggro simultaneously. But...
To be honest, with the talk about Legacy, I just forgot this post was in the Standard forum. That certainly makes Vintage and Legacy a lot less relevant for this particular discussion. I think those old busted blue cards are certainly still relevant when considering the game as a whole, but not so much when the topic is just Standard. So I'm just going to move on...
I don't think the OP was trying to be predictive as much as he was being descriptive. That is, he's only basing his statements on what WotC has done so far instead of basing them on all the possible things they could do in the future. That's fair enough to me, but you've made your viewpoint more clear to me now, too, and I can understand the logic of your statements.
In THAT regard, there is NO question that aggro is stronger than control.
I thought THAT'S what we were talking here.
But...if you want to talk old school, play a Vintage MUC deck against a Vintage Goblins deck and you'll see that the matchup slightly favors Goblins, though not by a lot. It's close...very close.
I love playing control. I feel like it's a challenge, especially against aggro. But to say that it's hands down more powerful than aggro is nonsense.
Rock/paper/scissors, back in the old days rang very true. Today, not so much because of how the game has changed and how scissors and paper have been seriously nerfed to the point where one doesn't even exist anymore. So rock runs rampant and there's very little left to stop it.
Welcome to today's Magic.
Control has been stronger than aggro in near recent Standard formats. Just because it isn't in this particular block of sets doesn't mean that Standard can't have strong Control decks or won't again.
True. We don't know what the future holds. But right now, playing anything but aggro or tempo is an uphill battle for the player. Would you agree there?
Sure. I wouldn't take Control or Combo to a tournament. But Mid-Range with Naya Pod is perfectly reasonable.
If I recall correctly, in the early days, mid range was never viable because control just had too many counters and aggro was just too fast. I also don't think we had any real combo decks until Urza's. I mean, yeah, we had Channel/Fireball, but I don't recall exactly for how long that was even viable outside of type 1.
As I'm getting older, it's all becoming a blur. There's just too much for me to keep track of.
It would be interesting to compile a history of each archetype and the breakdown of each throughout the years to see what the trends have been.
I have to agree with some of this. With all the insane ETB and LTB effects (Thragtusk i'm glaring at you), and super resiliant creatures (undying, hexproof, etc.) most of the 'interactivity' takes place between clunky, clogged board states.
I sincerely hope Remand comes back to play in RTR, cause I love playing control and don't know WTF to do about all these crazy creature-based shenanagins. I mean an indefenite amount of time slapping Rancors onto Strangleroot Geist or whatever is not the most appealing scenario.
Rancor should make aggro decks smile for sure, especially green/white and monogreen. It helps get in early damage really fast and turn dungrove elders and thruns into trampling beaters against the ever present lingering souls by control lists. I think both archtypes are fine.
As to what deck style is strongest, well I would say control is stronger than aggro because it has greater flexibility in its construction can metagame the best, where aggro is usually more focused and can't really afford to deviate from a set build due to the loss of efficency it would suffer.
Control in standard right now must be kill oriented, however, when the dust settles and aggro decks become more focused I think we will see a shift from the tap-out kill focused builds and a move toward a counter/kill mix build if not primarily counter oriented. This is even with cavern of souls. Cavern does not kill counters, matter of fact it could actually help them. Unless a deck goes tribal they are ill equipped to use cavern to truely thwart counters. Non tribal aggro decks using cavern do some of the work for counter control players. If we cant counter something then we have counters for other spells thus alleviating the need of calculating what our opponents are trying to do, in addition we have kill to complement counter. We can easily focus our kill on what cavern is naming and counter any other relevant threats.
So this turned into more of a rant then anything and as such I will stop here.
2 Snapcaster Mage
3 Cremate
4 Think Twice
3 Forbbiden Alchemy
3 Syncopate
3 Psychic Strike
2 Negate
3 Dimir Charm
3 Tragic Slip
3 Tribute to Hunger
3 Mutilate
2 Vanishment
3 Evolving Wilds
4 Watery Grave
4 Drowned Catacomb
3 Island
8 Swamp
This aint your girlfriends meta! This is a man's meta! TURBO META.
The card was last printed in Fifth edition (1997), I think? Age of the 3 mana Land destruction and all...
Lol true
But a stasis legacy deck technically does win by resource denial and ONLY resource denial.... well that and skipping their next 60 turns....
Seriously... who would have ever thought that SKIPPING your next 60 turns would actually be considered a win con?????
This aint your girlfriends meta! This is a man's meta! TURBO META.
Legacy stax isn't doing too hot right now.
And, seeing as how creatures are finally catching up to the power-level of the control cards of old..