Control Light - My experience with a recent powerhouse list
Hey, it's been some time since my last post so I took some time to share how I felt about Control Light.
I was happy to see Control Light do well in Tier Lists following Mortal Judgment and Core Set refresh, but it took me a few weeks to figure out how to play it. Through a lot of iteration and losses I learned to play the deck better and managed to win 11 of the 13 games I played with this list during Weekend Ranked. Here is my general guide and experiences
My list:
Main Cards:
General strategy:
Maximize Order - Giving the same creature +3 order 2 turns in a row gives you an additional turn where it can’t attack.
Heal Face as much as possible - Sometimes the opponents strategy is more about attrition damage and healing face helps stall that objective
Understand your opponent’s win condition - different control cards are good against different win conditions. Knowing what your opponent is trying to do is the best way to make use of the last sentence.
Mulligan and Game examples:
Limited due to cost
Facing Mage:
Autolose vs Dralamar and Schoolteacher OTK so I mulligan for low cards and hope for the best.
- 4 left - Looking for more heal if possible so toss Archpriest first since he’s most expensive
- 3 - Lips are Sealed for pretty much the same reason. Even vs Control it’s not needed till much later
- 2 - Tossed Sern. Looking back, I probably should have kept, but I can understand why at the time I was looking for low cost cards.
- 1 - Deuteria is great vs Magic, very distracting. I toss Talisman to look for other cards. Magic rarely has creatures anyways
Board 1:
Even with a decent early round and a successful Lysander’s Mercy the game was looking rough. But, it was now obvious I was facing Control Mage and didn’t have to worry about OTK. I just had to continue healing face and avoiding taking creature damage. This changed my Radiant Embalmer strategy.
Board 2:
After a lot of thinking I grabbed a second Lysander’s Mercy from the grave using Radiant Embalmer. It ended up being a lot more useful than what I drew, a Glaring Talisman.
Board 3:
I successfully stalled a few more turns into my next control card just in time for Polyhymnia to be dropped. Although this time I have Inescapable Duty to Swing the game completely from here on.
Board 4:
2 turns later my board is stacked, I have a buffed Embalmer in hand to do it again, and they’ve played most of their removal cards. Game ends in 2 turns