The State of Control in cEDH
Kraum, Ludevic's Opus by Aaron Miller
Control is an archetype with a long and storied history in Magic. While the forms these decks have taken and the tools they've used have varied greatly over the years, there are some common elements. These typically include a) a high density of answers, be that removal, counterspells or hand attack, b) some form of card advantage, either incremental, like Teferi, Hero of Dominaria, burst, like Sphinx's Revelation, or self-replacing cards, like Cryptic Command, and c) a small number of efficient and resilient wincons, such as Celestial Colonnade, Aetherling, or your planeswalker of choice. These wincons are typically only deployed when already in a commanding position.
These decks focus on answering every threat an opponent can present while maintaining card advantage over them, then committing to make progress towards winning only when they have largely exhausted all of their opponents' resources. Translating this archetype to cEDH has a few inherent issues.
The Problems
The first of these is maintaining card advantage. When your opponents get three times as many draw steps as you, it takes a pretty substantial board investment to maintain advantage.
The second is mana. In cEDH, most kills are formed by cards that start in hand and end the game the same turn they are played, or at least have that capacity. This means that your answers will need to be instant-speed and absolute. You can't necessarily tap out for a turn, understand that you will take some damage, but set up for a wrath or other spell to "stabilize" on the next turn.
So where does that leave control in cEDH? While the answer of "non-viable" does have some merit, with a little bit of bending, I think there is a place for cEDH decks described as "control". If we look at the description of control, the most obvious problem is going to be the clause about wincons being deployed only when a commanding lead has been achieved. While nearly any cEDH deck in the world can win turn 1 or turn 2 with a perfect hand, there is still a continuum of how realistic this is. Generally, control decks are not only less likely to be able to kill in the very early turns, they are also built to reward pursuing a gameplan other than a fast win, such as using a tutor to find a value engine rather than a win condition.
The Payoffs
Luckily for would-be control players, the news isn't all bad. There are advantages available to leverage in cEDH that aren't available to our 60-card counterparts. The first is an incredibly high ratio of air (cards that don't present a meaningful threat in and of themselves). The reality is, with some exceptions (particularly in combat-focused decks, like Winota), most cEDH decks have almost nothing that can actually end a game. Looking at the extremely popular Grixis+ Ad Nauseam shell, dealing with Underworld Breach and Thassa's Oracle will be enough to shut most of these decks out of winning. Some versions may have a build specific backup combo, or maybe a Praetor's Grasp or Mnemonic Betrayal to steal someone else's wincons, but generally, most decks have fewer than five cards that truly demand an answer.
Before you run off and sleeve up that Jester's Cap, remember that you have three opponents, and taking one of them out while leaving the other two unscathed is unlikely to be a rewarding strategy. There's a reason single-person kill combos, like Rest in Peace + Helm of Obedience or Painter's Servant + Grindstone, haven't seen play for many years. What it does mean is that the majority of cards do not actually need to be answered. Unlike in 60-card formats where pretty much any creature with power can theoretically go the distance, most cards in cEDH only need to be evaluated as a threat in the context of card and mana advantage for a player looking to execute and protect a win.
No longer a cEDH-worthy combo.
The second advantage is that everyone is a control player when a win attempt is on the stack. When facing a potentially game-ending spell, other players at the table, even those not typically playing control, can often get involved in assisting to resolve the immediate and existential threat. As a control player, this is the best possible scenario, since not only does an opponent spending interaction on another opponent eliminate the need for you to spend resources, it also reduces the potential for that interaction to be used to defend a win attempt of your own in the future.
The third advantage is that, since you have multiple opponents, each of them knows that they don't necessarily have to eat through your interaction. In 1v1, an opponent who knows that you have a piece of interaction knows that they have to get through it eventually, so they'll throw out something to try and draw it out of you. In cEDH, while throwing out "medium threat" pieces to work through interaction does happen, your opponents can also try and outwait each other, maneuvering to force each other to try and go for it first and drain their resources.
Taking advantage of this tool is one that will require active political effort on your part, both in making sure that your opponents understand that a win attempt is unlikely to succeed and will present an opportunity for another player, and also in ensuring that your opponents can only force each other to attempt wins when you are prepared for it. Sometimes this can even mean actively protecting an opponent from another; for example, removing a commander that is threatening lethal damage.
The Art of Not Losing
The combination of these factors makes playing control a much different experience than in 60-card formats, where you're trying to maintain card advantage on a shifting landscape where you can ignore much of what your opponents are doing. The biggest long-term threats to this plan are typically going to be value engines, since they make it much harder to keep card advantage. This also applies to commanders that generate value, which is why I recommend that any control deck have ways of more permanently dealing with opposing commanders, such as locking them in the command zone with Drannith Magistrate, gaining control of them with Gilded Drake, or otherwise rendering them unavailable to your opponents, or at least shutting off their advantage-generating effects. I'd also recommend running a potent removal suite, since there may be long-term threats that you cannot deal with on the stack at the time they are presented. In fact, it's arguable that removal and commander denial are the hallmarks of control over counterspells, especially when we consider how many counterspells even turbo decks tend to run.
The goal when playing control is to keep your opponents predictable and manageable. One of the reasons it can be a challenging archetype to play is that predictability hinges on a strong understanding of the gameplans and wincons of any deck you may come across, so if you're looking to take a control deck to your next event, I'd recommend studying up on the metagame. Keeping your opponents manageable will involve walking a tightrope of managing long-term threats while not presenting windows for short-term threats (which in a format as volatile as cEDH usually means an opponent winning the game on the spot). You'll have to maintain this balance while shifting focus away from yourself, buying time to amass an insurmountable advantage.
Understanding which decks at the table are primarily going to be presenting threats vs. answers, which pieces you can afford to have your opponents keep around, and figuring out windows where you can afford to focus on advancing your position rather than holding back your opponents are going to be key skills if you are going to be successful with a control deck.
Is Control Worth It In cEDH?
If you're looking to hone your politicking, reading, and threat assessment skills, develop a deeper understanding of the format or of navigating the labyrinth of a cEDH game from the perspective of a player trying to outwait and outlast all of your opponents rather than racing to the finish line sounds like your idea of a good time, then sleeving up a control deck may be the right choice for you, so get out there, develop your value engines, and make your opponents too scared to even think about trying to win!
Decks like this are good place to start:
Spleenface is involved in the cEDH community in many ways. If you'd like to find him on other platforms or check out his work, you can do that here.
