Team Building Strategy - Control Team

Hey Dice Master Fans, this will be one of the 4 posts regarding the different team building strategy you can use in the game. If you wish to learn more about team building, check up my post on Team Building basics first before reading this post. 

Introduction

Control team are one that you don't want to play with. They have characters that control almost every aspect of the game, and they will make you pay for using essentials effect. Control team aren't as fast as an aggressive team, in fact, they are the slowest to set up. However, once they have set up all their characters in the field, your opponent would have a hard time continuing the game. 

Type of Controls

Control team aren't that generic, there are different types of controller that controls an aspect of the game. 

Global Abilities 



Some characters helps a control team by penalizing your opponent for using global effects. Wasp will deal your opponent 1 damage each time he/she uses a global, Oracle on the other hand increased the cost of using a global ability. These characters might not be able to deal a lot of damage in combat, but they can hurt your opponent in the long term if your opponent's game is very dependent on global abilities. 

Fielding Characters



There are some characters that help a control team by penalizing their opponent from fielding a character. Lyssa Drak makes your opponent pay 2 life for fielding a named character while Cerebro increases the fielding cost of a character, similarly these characters/actions cannot deal heavy combat damage but they will weaken your opponent overtime. 

Actions



There are also characters that place a penalty for your opponent to use an action. However, unlike fielding characters or global abilities, not every player will use action die in the game, so you might not want to put too many of them in your team. 

Preventing Character 



There are times where your opponent has a trump card and he/she is intending to use that character to win the game, you can include characters like Joker or Loki in your control team and field them before your opponent fields that trump card. What is great about these characters is that they can lock out that trump card as long as they are active. This will totally screw your opponent's game. 

Damage Reducer



If controlling your opponent's global, action and characters isn't enough, you can have these characters that help to reduce damage in your team. Captain America can reduce non-combat damage while Mera can reduce combat damage, adding these characters into your team will affect your opponent's game play. Imagine if they could deal you 10 overcrush damage or 12 non-combat damage, only to be reduce significantly. 

Blanking Ability



I placed these 2 cards for the last because it's the best control card ever. These characters can blank out another character's text, and blanking is the most irritating thing you can do to your opponent, it makes their character less useful and you probably countered their game by blanking their character. 

There are other characters that are capable of controlling your opponent's game, these are just few examples, basically, you need a controller in every aspect of the game to make your control team strong, so don't just focus solely on one as your opponent can always bypass your characters with another alternative, for example, don't put all characters that controls the way your opponent uses global abilities, your opponent can use actions instead for his/her whole game and your team is going to be less helpful if your opponent does that.  

Support

Ramp



This may sound obvious, but having a ramp is important in your control team, it's because you want your characters to come out as fast as possible, and if you have no ramp, it will take forever to get your characters out. Also, do avoid putting too many ramps in your team as you need those spaces for your control team. 

One More Chance, or infinity more as long as you can pay them



It is important that your control characters come out as soon as possible, but if your characters refused to come out despite your reroll, then having a reroll global would be perfect for your team, you can use as many chance as you can to roll your characters out. 

Source of Damage



This is one important thing to take not when you are using a control team, often players get too excited in building a control team and they have all sorts of controller in play, but they forget about 1 thing, they do not have a source of damage. One great source of damage for control team would be non-combat damage from action die, your characters won't be attacking because they are in the field to control your opponent and your character slots are probably full by using having all the good controllers, so action dice are the best source of attack for you. Once your control team is all set up, there is nothing your opponent can do in the game, so you just have to keep pinging him until the game is over. 

Weakness

Cards getting blanked



One major weakest to the control team is having their characters lose the ability they possess. Each controller is essential to the game as they are part of your master plan, when your opponent blanks them, it is really irritating as whatever plan you have set up so far is gone because of one action. 



Well, lucky for you, Doomcaliber Knight is here, he can cancel an action die from Kryptonite or Prismatic Spray and your opponent can't do anything about it. You can keep him in your team as a reserve in case your opponent has any action cards that can blank your character's text. 

Aggressive Team



Another major problem for the control team is facing an aggressive team, you will likely to get squashed before you set up your team well.



You can hold them back by either having a blocker early or use the distraction global to hold back for a turn. However, since Control team are weak to Aggressive team in nature, if you really can't hold back your opponent's aggression, don't feel too bad about it. 

Conclusion

I will be very frank with you,  control team isn't very easy to play. You need a lot of experience in playing and knowing the different types of team a player can possibly come up with, if you lack the knowledge and experience factor, you won't know which character to buy first and which character to blank out and that would not do well for your game. 

If you don't feel comfortable playing a control team, do try other playing styles, you might perform better. I hope my post helps you understand better in building a control team and thanks for reading.