SHE ACTUALLY DID IT

I don't care that it seemed like a bullshit combo, I would have gone fucking nuts at that move.

>Yfw you've pulled off this kind of win before

Yeah, I think that either the author doesn't understand the hype of beating your opponent with his own combo or it's just some built-in genre blindness - just like people in zombie movies act as if zombies weren't ever portrayed in media.

started reading. fucking hell this shit's so relatable.

I never got why everyone was so disgusted by that move; pretty much anybody I know would have been amazed if someone pulled off a combo like that, including the person that happened to.

The problem was it was Manaka who did it, which at that point had set herself up as the "villain" of the tournament, because she seemingly just refused to have fun or even care about the game that much. The idealistic "hero" was about to win, when the villain pulled the rug out from under them.

It's also that this setting seems to have an insane hate of Control Decks.

JUST

>card games determine your social standing
>control is loathed and shunned
Well, it seems like a perfect world.

It doesn't matter if you'd have drawn it 1 turn or 100 turns later, you've already lost, fattie

I traded my Prophetic Prism for a Gearhulk :^)

To be fair, they are control decks.

Fair point

You would think if card games were such a big deal that maybe they'd do something about control decks, but apparently the card game overlords are as indifferent there as they are in real life.

Fuck these kind of manga, and fuck everybody who actually reads all of them.

youtube.com/watch?v=I1XQduS6IfA

So grinding down an opponent like this is still possible.

It might not be very fun to play, but it is rather amusing to watch.

No, fuck you I can't help it. i'm a sucker for turn arounds and hype.

Is one supposed to like this protagonist? I'm not seeing the appeal of following their activities, really.

Oh man this is great, they should make more.

>Not Despair.jpg

You had ONE JOB.

>control player in card games
I don't play card games, but what does a 'control' deck/player mean?
disrupting the deployment of cards? resource destruction? force the opponent to destroy a card from hand? something like that?

Control just means that you control the boardstate. This can be through resource denial, removal, preemptive (hand) removal, counterspells, and so on. Usually they have one wincon that synergyzes with the way that control plays. Control is usually very skill intensive and interactive, but folds to fast decks. In a simple control/combo/aggro trichotomy, control beats combo but loses to aggro. Control isn't nearly as good as the manga presents it, though.

You play defense, "controling" what your opponent's doing and then winning in late game through either exhausting their resources or superior card value.

You don't know the mechanics since we never really get any. It could be a lot more complicated than any card game that is currently played and someone good enough can be a god with control.

That wouldn't fly in any game and if that were true, no-one at the competitive level would play anything but control, fun be damned.

Control means that you play the "big picture" of the game and win in the long run. Simply put you are "not agressive", you are not at attacking the enemy head on the way common sense would dictate to most newcomer players. You have all kinds of answers against most things the enemy throws at you, you have several grand combos/strategies that will suddenly turn the game around with the opponent having no way to stop it. However the catch is that you need to wait for stars to align for these to come together.

In storytelling this works well because one can write "dramatic plot-tweests" with a control play. The protagonist can be completely cornered and all the odds against him/her with defeat almost certain but then suddenly he draws the epic game changer card and BAM the tides turn. Then it turns out that all was 1) "just as planned" and/or the protagonist 2) "believed in the heart of the cards." and achieved victory. Then turns out the the protagonist is either 1) a genius without peer who already thought forward to every play and turn in advance and victory was assured or 2) Believed in victory with a pure heart and the RNG gods favored him because that.

An agressive head on approach achieving victory doesn't create as much tension as a sudden turnaround.

>but folds to fast decks
so decks that can swarm out cheap cards that has little cost, thus just swarming the enemy before they can do anything?

>In a simple control/combo/aggro trichotomy
how does 'combo' work? like sacking a card or two for summoning a beefy unit?

ah. I see. so slowly bleeding the enemy to death, or just suddenly turning the table when the requirements are set, are both control, right?

There can be some issues like with cards that stop weak monsters attacking or only letting a few cards untap every turn to attack. Good weenie decks have a few board wipes in them just in case the enemy survives the initial swarm.

Kind of, but keep in mind that stories like the manga (or say Yugioh), often intentionally overplay control mechanics to the point that they are basically cheating.

aggressive is spelled with 2 gs

youre triggering me

>so decks that can swarm out cheap cards that has little cost, thus just swarming the enemy before they can do anything?
Sort of. They just frontload highly aggressive and cheap cards that can whittle you out fast. Combo is a blanket statement that requires a set of cards to work. That set will have a "combo" that can be used to win the game. For example, in Magic there's a deck called "Storm" that uses the card Tendrils of Agony, which can drain two life from an opponent and gives it to you. Tendrils also copies itself for each other card that you cast before it in the turn, so the combo comes out of the "set" of cards that let you cast nine spells, with Tendrils as the finisher. Control can disrupt this by breaking the chain or by somehow dealing with Tendrils directly. This can be applied to many combo decks, since they usually focus on a buildup to one big finish through a tricky set of mechanics that relies on one card, and since control can disrupt this it usually wins. There are of course exceptions, but this is the case for the most part. Aggro decks win against control by just not caring what control does because they can knock it off balance before it recovers, but folds to combo because combo doesn't care.

>how does 'combo' work? like sacking a card or two for summoning a beefy unit?

Any cards that work synergystically together. They can be any crazy thing.

thanks for the explanation.

>but folds to combo because combo doesn't care.
wait, wouldn't the aggro deck's swarm over and destroy the combo's setup? or do they use setups that can't be attacked directly by the units, due to being set up too fast or being untouchable by normal units?

how does this one work?

For those that don't know how Magic works, Horseshoe crab can be untapped if you paly a water mana, the other card enchants it so that every time you tap with it it can deal one damage to anything. Meaning it can deal as much damage as you have water mana read to dump on that turn so if you have 20 water mana it can deal 20 damage without even attacking or anything happening. Meaning that despite appearing to be a mostly harmless minion, when combined with the other card and a lot of water mana it can immediately deal massive normally unblockable damage to a player or another minion in one turn without even attacking or doing anything.

You forgot to mention it's shitty taste in lore.

>enchant Horseshoe Crab
>tap and untap crab for 1 mana dealing 1 damage until you run out of blue mana
>win

You can pay 1 blue mana to untap the creature. The creature can tap to deal 1 damage to anything. It's a nice silly way to put damage on anything. If you've got free mana at the end of the turn, (because you're saving it for a counterspell but the enemy didn't cast anything) it turns it into free damage.

It's not the best combo as it dies to removal or magic or pretty much anything, but it's not terrible.

>wouldn't the aggro deck's swarm over and destroy the combo's setup
So in Magic (which is the TCG I play and an following the conventions of), you can only attack a player. Spells you cast may target that player's permanents and possibly destroy them, but they have to specifically be able to do that. In permanent based combo, the combo will have some sort of protection for those permanents (like a control deck. The best decks run a mix of all three main archetypes, like Storm running hand disruption to weed out counterspells from control decks) so those spells won't do much, and spell based combos will usually pack a free counterspell to negate other counterspells. Aggro doesn't run much removal since it focuses on just killing someone as fast as possible.

>Yugioh), often intentionally overplay control mechanics
i would argue yugioh overplays combos a lot more
all too often when i watch the show, i'm thinking, "just fissure the damn thing" but nobody plays removal so it's just a race to see who gets the cards needed to play their big monster first
kind of understandable since they're trying to advertise the rare monsters to kids and it wouldn't look good if it falls into a trap hole as soon as it shows up

I see. I guess it would be incredibly annoying for the enemy, seeing that it's just a small thing that's scratching you in the back if you do nothing.

so basically,
>Aggro just mauls the enemy to death before they can hatch their master plan
>Combo sets up the stage for a single huge push
>Control avoids direct head on engagement and disrupts the average brawl by throwing in curveballs that knocks out enemy logistics and thwoing salt and caltrops at the fighting ground whenever possible
something like this?

>something like this?
Roughly. Aggro doesn't outspeed a master plan (combo's game), it just doesn't allow control to stabilize and steer the game into how they want to play it. Control is direct in dealing with threats, but plays reservedly and makes people play the game on its terms.

Also, they cheat all the fucking time in the show
Always pulling the exact fucking card they need to win
Been that way since episode 1, and only increased from there

thanks. I think I kinda get it now.
maybe I should have searched up some examples while reading.
aw dammit. I'll just do it now.

pretty much.

Here are some examples
youtube.com/watch?v=SZDaM4VpSBk
This is the ultimate combo deck of its format (Eggs, which is now banned because of slow play) vs the ultimate midrange (middle ground of aggro and control that's packed with value cards, this specific deck is Jund which is the current best deck in the Modern format). Watch how the control player gives no shits as to what the midrange player is doing.
youtube.com/watch?v=2pJyOtEzLWo
This is a clip of an aggro player (using Legacy Burn) vs an aggro-combo player (Maverick). This shows that not everything is rock-paper-scissors and that there are ways for the disadvantaged to win.

Another way to look at it is in terms of asking questions

Aggro is about asking a lot of little questions: "can you deal with these creatures?" "Can you deal with this damage?" Eventually either the opponent answers enough of the questions that they can win, or they die.

Combo instead asks basically one queation, and the entire deck is built around posing that question. If the opponent can't, they lose.

Control is a deck full of answers, and nearly nothing but. Their plan is to answer everything that comes their way until they can pose a single question of their own and back it up with answers for the answers.

Yes although control still has to have some sort plan for a victory condition. Boring the opponent to death and dragging the game out forever is not that effective. Control games often last very long to conclude even if the winner is usually already decided half way into it, to actually get to the point of victory without one of the players conceding can last very long.

She's being forced to play a deck she hates in a playstyle she hates to salvage her family's finances. She's actually very sweet and happy, but the entire plot is basically torturing her.

>video length 1:49:18
>Control games often last very long to conclude even if the winner is usually already decided half way into it, to actually get to the point of victory without one of the players conceding can last very long.
yeah, I can see why control players are hated.

this is much easier to understand.

Happened to me once, it was a perfect game, I thought it was a shit hand when I first got it. One vanilla 1/1 1 drop three islands and four different counters. Somehow, I managed to counter literally all of my opponents attempts at casting creatures or spells that creates tokens and I finished the game at around Turn 10 with me pecking at him with 3 1/1s, and 1 2/1. Also, whenever Mistblade Shinobi actually is useful (Which is mostly never). I'm starting to see why it's un-fun to play against control decks since everytime I turn around in Game 2 once I mainboarded in the proper counters (I'm poor so instead of getting staples, I just bring a lot of counters and hope that I can counter whatever strategy my opponent has) they already settle for just a draw.

>yeah, I can see why control players are hated.

The fucking asshole who's lost already should just concede instead of dragging things out and ruining everybody's fun. If you can't win, get on with the next game.

>video length 1:49:18
That's the beauty of Eggs. It was the best deck in the format, but it took ages to play. The video is basically the Eggs player doing some sick solitaire shenanigans while the Jund player just sort of looks for things to do. It is the epitome of the combo archetype, especially since the combo itself is the entire deck.

It almost always simply means late game.

Basically. The control deck is that of the master schemer, biding their time, weakening their opponent bit by bit until the control master holds all the cards and their opponent holds none, figuratively and and often literally. They'll use all their resources to either disrupt their opponent (such as creature destruction and counterspells) or set themselves up for the long game (such as card draw) and generally win off something big enough to win quickly but small enough that they can play it without leaving themselves open.

The combo deck on the other hand is the brilliant inventor. Their deck plays innocent at first, but when it goes off it does so in a flash, either winning the game outright or putting them in the perfect position to do so. One nasty combo in Magic: The Gathering is Painter's Servant (Makes all cards in all zones the color of your choice) coupled with Grindstone (opponent puts the top two cards of their library (draw pile) into their graveyard (discard pile), and if both share a color repeats the process.) When the combo goes off, the opponent's library is instantly empty and they'll lose the next time they have to draw a card (usually at the start of their turn)

The aggro deck is that of the berserker. They hit things really hard to the exclusion of everything else, their goal being to utterly overwhelm the opponent. They generally want cheap, efficient creatures that hit hard, and maybe a couple removal spells to clear the way for them.

Combo beats aggro because aggro usually lacks the resources to disrupt combo, and combo usually goes off before aggro can deal lethal damage. Aggro beats control because everything they have hits the field hard and fast and the opponent can rarely stop all of it. Control beats combo through simple disruption of their key components; it's easy to conserve resources and play for the long haul when you only have to stop one out of several key cards.

Well said.

There are a few reasons to drag things out. In Mtg, most tournaments have timers on the rounds, and the person who is refusing to concede might be looking to take the game to time and get a draw instead of a loss. On Magic Online the timers are individualized, so by forcing your opponent to put in the leg work, their clock runs lower and they run the risk of losing if they can't finish the match fast enough. Both are kinda dickish, but fair as per the rules.

And then there's midrange, AKA the Ultramarines of Magic

I see this card mentioned quite often, whenever MtG is brought up. I'm not a player myself, but is it really that strong?

Running 3-colours isn't the most optimal set-up for a deck from what I understand.

thanks man.

to be fair, no one would want to be stuck on a seat for an hour when the result is inevitable.

It is pure value. When you get it out, there's a 6 life swing and you get a very large body. Getting that mana isn't really bad. It dominated the Standard environment that it was a part of.

It depends on the format. In most of the format's with older cards, the number of colors matters less, given that there are easy and consistent ways to "fix" your mana.

Additionally, running those other colors opens up a bunch of new options for different questions and answers.

As for the rhino, it's simply a very efficient and difficult to deal with creature that also has an immediate effect on life totals. Even if they answer it the turn it comes down, it has created a 6 point life swing, and its high toughness (the 5 in the 4/5) means that it's harder to kill. Additionally, being only 4 mana, it isn't too expensive to cast.

>is it really that strong?

In Theros/Khans standard, mana was good enough to reliably cast it on turn 4 almost every game. Against aggro, playing a rhino was a massive stop sign that would bring back your life total from when they were beating you down. Against control decks, they could just kill the rhino the turn you played it, but you already got that 6-point life swing. It's big enough to end games on its own and the fact that it has trample means it can't be chump blocked and must be dealt with.

In those days, the most hated card in standard wasn't Siege Rhino. It was the second Siege Rhino that came down right after it.

>to be fair, no one would want to be stuck on a seat for an hour when the result is inevitable.

Never underestimate someone who is determined to win by any legal means possible

I'm surprised it worked. Like, with shitloads of commons, your deck would still be terrible. In Japanese games like Yu-Gi-Oh, the value of rare cards are just so much better.

Iirc it's brought up against the big minion player that the idol plays the same type of deck, but her expensive cards are so much better individually.

Maybe it's like Hearthstone - aggro meta is the only viable meta.

How far back in the future are you OP? And how far forward into your relative future can you shitpost via your tachyonic data transfer device?

The only people who genuinely think control decks are a bad thing for a card game are children and people who want to play solitaire but still say they beat someone at the end of the day. Control stops degeneracy, just like aggro stops greed and combo stops uninteractive aggro. Each of these have to exist for a healthy metagame to exist.

The next page better be the other girl be overjoyed her cool dragon get to win the game, even if it's against herself.

It means you are a massive asshole, basically.

The problem with control, to my mind, is you sit down, and you don't play the same game as anyone else.

Your game is "No, you don't get to actually play the game", and by doing this, you somehow win.

"I want to play this creature"
>Countered
"I want to play this spell"
>Countered

So on, and so forth into forever.

Been reading WS and it encapsulates exactly what playing a card game is like in real life.

Speaking as someone who enjoys playing control, permission and lockdown I will say that it also helps to have a friendly attitude while playing. Jokes, smiles, and simple banter help the mood in the air between the two players. Not saying not to take it seriously but to ease their pain when playing against those types of decks as WS does capture exactly how people feel when playing against those decks and also to piloting those decks.

If I were to guess Ms Combo will be sad but she seems like the type to bounce back up and be cheery again.

Even if they killed your rhino immediately, 4 mana for a six point life swing was and still is better than mono-red burn decks could hope to pull off.

>those smirks
this is by the author who did Bonnouji, isn't it.

>Control is usually very skill intensive and interactive

The meme never ends.

Is mill a meme tactic?

So when is the next chapter coming out? It feels like I have to wait half a year every update.

In something like Shadowverse it's a broken strategy and why everyone hates Forest and Sword.

It's fine to dislike control.
It's not fine to consider everyone playing an archetype an asshole because you are bad at magic.

I don't like control either but grow up man.

>filename

Sick reference, broski

Nah. Fuck you. Literally everyone I've played in ANY game that likes Control has been an irredeemable jackass.

When I sit down, I want to play the fucking game. I don't want to waste 20+ minutes of my life being told "No, you don't actually get to play the game".

That's a rare manaka

So you're saying your play style is insufficient in a game that includes other styles.

If you are playing in anything but the most super casual format you can't fault your opponents for playing to win.
Also maybe just don't hang around "irredeemable assholes"

Counters aren't the only form of control.
They're infamous because they are too efficient in MtG, but destroying resources (on the board or in the hand) or win conditions are forms of control as well.

Aki Eda has a good way of doing this.

I once spent the better part of half an hour drawing out a WC3 match I lost.

Don't forget that in the Yu-gi-oh anime the cards are semi-sentient, so if you are a good guy who believe in the heart of the cards you will always draw the card you need.

Mill is an alternative win condition. You can use it like Aggro, playing lots and lots of cards that focus on milling your opponent to the exclusion of all else. You can use it in combo, building up to one big flashy mill that takes their entire library at once like the aformentioned Painter's Servant+Grindstone or Brain Freeze in a Storm deck. You can use it in control, relying on a mill card as your finisher, slowly stalling them out to draw-death.

However, mill is very inefficient, so decks that try to play it like aggro tend to perform poorly. In control it has a bit more use but still suffers issues; it's harder to stop than raw damage but needs be significant enough to outpace your own card draw, which control relies heavily on. It's most effective in combo as it's harder to disrupt than simple damage and efficiency doesn't matter when you go infinite, but the opponent still has until their next draw to answer it if you can't force a draw and you have to be VERY wary about sideboarded answers; some cards shut down mill simply by being in the library.

You should read Mudazumo Naki Kaikaku, I don't know if every Japanese think like that, but in this manga cheating isn't see as something bad, in fact being able to cheat without being caught is a proof of skill and the best player are also the best cheater You should also read it just for super sayan Hitler fighting the Pope Benedict XVI during a yu-gi-oh level mahjong game