The Grand Melee - Playing Control in Melee Part 1: Is it Possible?

Playing Control in Melee Part 1: Is it Possible?

Hello readers! After a small lapse, I’m happy to welcome you back to a brand new series of articles in The Grand Melee. I don’t know yet how many there will be but over the next few weeks we are going to look at control from the Melee point of view.

Before entering Melee-specific mechanics, let’s have a look at what a control deck is. A control deck is a deck that aims to lock-down your opponent’s options. This can be done by kneeling his characters, disrupting his gold flow, destroying his hand, etc. There are many control deck that do well in Joust and I’m sure you have already encountered one. The classic rock-paper-scissors metagame view states that control loses to aggro decks, but beats combo decks. This is somewhat skewed by the fact that most decks are typically a blend of deck types. But according to this view, playing control in Melee doesn’t seem like a good choice; let’s have a look at why.

1. Time
All the decks that I’ve presented over the months this column has been in existence were designed to win as quickly as possible. This stems from the fact that winning slowly opens you to the other players trying to shut you down. Thus, the obvious answer to that problem is to win as many power tokens as possible before your opponents can react (i.e. in one challenge). This behavior is the epitome of an aggro deck. Typically Joust aggro decks are dependent on a good setup to ensure their rush runs smoothly from turn 1. A bad setup means a bumpy ride. In Melee, thanks to the dealing plots, they are almost guaranteed to have what was missing from their deck (think Daenerys Targaryen (QoD) or Melisandre (RotO) or Robert Baratheon (Core), etc...). This means the typical Melee game will last 2 or 3 turns. This is not enough for a control deck to deploy his elements of control and use them efficiently, at least not the classical one. If you need 2 turns to put your recursive character control engine into play and running smoothly, the best you will achieve is stopping one opponent from winning. Or is it?

2. Four players
The biggest problem control decks face in my opinion though is the number of players. First of all, it means the other players can simply ignore you if they want. Say you are playing some kind of defensive-deck based around The Wall. This works in Joust because in order to win the game your opponent HAS to attack you. That is not the case in Melee though, as the other players still have two other targets each. But more than that problem, control faces a HUGE dilemma when playing against 3 opponents, namely, which card to use against whom? Many control cards have a single target. Take Flame-Kissed (Core) for instance, a burn staple, for one card you remove one character from your opponent’s board. This is the same for No Quarter (TBC). This is a decent deal in Joust, especially if you can recurse the Flame-kissed like Targ can. However, in Melee if you want to achieve the same amount of control, you would need THREE Flame-kissed. This puts you at a severe card disadvantage. And I’m not even going to mention the draw and resources needed to play those three cards. Yes, some control-cards have across the board effects that will allow you to bypass this problem, but are they enough of them and do you have the time to play them?

3. Targeting
This could be considered a corollary to the previous problem. Most control cards require you to target a character, but that character must be controlled by a specific opponent. This can limit their usefulness in Melee as you might not be able to win a challenge against the person you want to control, and as I said, they have no reason for attacking you. Effects that you can target across the board after winning a (often easier) challenge against another opponent are really most effective from a control point of view. Sadly, they are not a numerous as the ones that do not offer you a free choice of target.

4. Reputation
Finally, control players face another type of problem at a Melee table. Even though it would seem they face a major disadvantage just by playing control, the other players tend to think control is a threat. Kind of a “let’s take care of him and then sort ourselves out” mentality. In many ways that can be a very frustrating experience. The hopelessness factor can be very high. There is no real way to counter this unfortunately apart from some form of table-talk.

So, playing control in Melee sounds very tough. But is it possible? I’ll let you decide for now, but I will be back next week and hopefully start answering that question.