Hearthpwn

I've seen quite a lot of complaints recently regarding control deck's miserable matchups against the 6 or so OTK decks that are popular on the ladder right now. Looking into it a bit, it does seem that control is a little gimped in the current meta, with their good matchups being up to 70% (80 in the case of Warrior) but their bad matchups being less than 5% (assuming both sides play correctly - HSR and vS numbers don't account for that).

This being said I feel there is an answer that isn't whining about balance on forums, but adapting the way players approach the deck building process when making a control deck. So what does the modern control deck need to survive in a world where OTK combos are farming the majority of current builds.

1. A way to proactively win the game.
   Control Priest really breaks the mold here. It is the only popular control deck that actively seeks to kill the opponent through midgame minion pressure (or Alexstrasza) into a lethal set up over 1-3 turns with a combination of Holy Fire, Mind Blast and Shadowreaper Anduin. Therefore it should come as no surprise that control Priest is the only control deck that is well positioned to take consistent wins on ladder. Other classes are going to have to start looking for ways to actively close out games by adding threats to their decks. Mage has so much burst at its disposal, but players are so fixated on Big Spell packages that Frostbolt and Fireball are not even considered. There was a new control Warlock build at top 5 legend yesterday that played two copies of Soulfire and a Doomguard with Soulwarden to recycle discards that was performing well against OTK decks because of its ability to end the game by pushing damage without relying on fatigue. The key seems to be cutting some defensive options in favour of a little aggression. Control decks right now do what they are designed to do - smash aggro - but they are a little overtuned for that purpose and really suffer to inevitable win conditions because of this. If you truly want fatigue to be your decks win condition, then burning their cards is a must because if you simply allow them to draw their whole deck with the idea in mind that you will answer all 30 of their cards, there are, and should, always be matchups that you will lose 100% of the time.
   
   
2. A way to slow down combos
   Knowing how much combo is on ladder, it would be foolish to even attempt to rank up with a control build unless you had some sort of tech against them. There have been cries that Warlock has the only true anti combo card, Demonic Project, but that isn't quite true (it can also often be diminished to a 33% chance of success fairly easily by a lot of these builds and we are not looking to win games on coin flips or dice rolls). Right now we still have Nerubian Unraveler, which is great for slowing down both cycle and board clears in Paladin/Priest's combo decks (in fact it messes up Bingo Priest completely) in the midgame. Additionally if the OTK relies on spells, it makes Nerubian Unraveler a must kill, which may be impossible if you are able to pressure out their removals early on. We also still have Skulking Geist, fantastic against any Druid combo relying on Naturalize or Lesser Jasper Spellstone (with the kicker of destroying all of their single target removal), and is also really nice against a couple of non-otk combo decks like Cube Hunter/Warlock, and randomly on the side removes up to 16 potential burst from Odd Rogue. Mojomaster Zihi is the big card I want to talk about here. Timing is crucial with this card, but if you land it correctly it can give you a huge avenue to success as most OTK combos cost 10 mana (Paladin horsemen costs 8 and Holy Wrath depends largely on life total and gamestate) and they will have often drawn their whole deck (absolutely in the case of Mecha'thun) and will be stuck in fatigue for several turns. Consider also that Mojomaster Zihi can be reused with cards like Zola the Gorgon if she fits in the deck, which can extend the game by up to 8 turns. There are also other bits and pieces such as silences and weapon destruction that can mess with combos depending on what they are relying on.

With a little bit of intelligent deck building and intelligent play, I think the control archetype can really close the gap on combo decks a decent amount, simply by including ways to actually threaten the opponent, and by jamming Mojomaster Zihi into a tech slot (doesn't work for odd decks but perhaps some odd costed tech will be released in the future). Aggro matchups may suffer a few % but if you want a playing field that doesn't feel like rock-paper-scissors then shaving a few % off of your good match ups to add on to your bad ones is a worthwhile consideration.

In many ways odd mage seems a little more like control priest in that it can generate pressure via tempo turns, it has traditional board clears, and it has rag and alex to deliver more of a punch. Still not quite like control priest but closer than pure BSM.

Yes I certainly think Odd Mage has something going on. The ability to pressure with midgame minions, deal some burst with Rag and clock opponents with the hero power give it some potential where pure Big Spell falls on its face. This feels like more what a control deck needs to look like right now than pure stall for fatigue.

The aggressive Odd Made can sustain, but the control variant gets to do nothing at all when there are no minions on board. 

Priest can seriously kill an OTK deck wit 10 turns and sustain againstt aggro. It's really well balanced. The only real awful matchup is Odd Warrior. 

Mojomaster, to me, feels like something you run in a midrange deck, not a control one.

In Control v. Control, you're still not really applying enough pressure for the few turns of Zihi to matter.

Besides the aforementioned Mind Blast Priest (which can't really play Zihi), what other control decks are generating pressure? BSM via wellies, maybe.

I play zihi in mind blast (control) priest. You actually don't have a lot of cards above 6 mana in control priest so you can still play most. Your mind blasts are 2 mana so you can still deal 15 damage with 6 mana from hand.

Next to this you typically don't play zihi before yyo reach t9 so at that time you have played anduin (if necessary/possible) and/or even alex.

I actually also play chameleos to know better when to play zihi and it also sometimes gives tactical advantages otherwise sometimes

I've played a lot with Kibler's Dragonvolve shaman, and it's actually a pretty good deck. I'd highly recommend it for anyone who wants to play a cool, new control deck. Only problem is odd paladin, but hey. 

Quote from ColinthePyro >>

I've played a lot with Kibler's Dragonvolve shaman, and it's actually a pretty good deck. I'd highly recommend it for anyone who wants to play a cool, new control deck. Only problem is odd paladin, but hey. 

 And you can get up 3 Mojos off with Zihi, Zola, and Shudder. That has won me more than a few games.

Quote from ColinthePyro >>

I've played a lot with Kibler's Dragonvolve shaman, and it's actually a pretty good deck. I'd highly recommend it for anyone who wants to play a cool, new control deck. Only problem is odd paladin, but hey. 

 Yeah - Kibler's Dragon/Frog deck and his Book of Specters Mage decks are both surprisingly good and make great use of Zihi. They both put pressure behind the mana reduction.

Son this is a well written post but at it's core pointless. Not because your arguments are wrong but because the counters you speak of do not exist.The anti combo cards we have are utter trash so there is not really room for control decks to adapt.It's ike saying : 'man i can do scuba diving' when you are in the middle of sahara dessert.