Essential Magic Articles

Controlling the board (Battlefield) in magic is the most basic and most overrated form of control in the game. The best single thing to do with board control is to mostly pass it to your opponent, and let them assume they have gained the upper hand. Board control can be simply a large number of creatures (more than your opponent can/wants to deal with.) To more simple and elegant forms of denial such as forcing your opponent to pay for/pay more than they normally would. White lockdown decks often focus exclusively on generating board advantage through a deluge of enchantments, artifacts and select creatures. Blue and Black are also good at holding their position on the board. In Blue we find control magic and various lock-down and lock-out effects. In Black, raw creature control, punishment enchantments and efficient removal spells. Red and Green are on the "Timmy" side, using large and menacing creatures to "cower" their opponents. Red has the advantage over Green, it has the ability to burn away creature threats, though, it cannot deal with enchantments at all (neither can Black.) Green is the most straightforward aspect of Control-Through-Muscle. Green has very few actual control spells and most of the time is absolutely reliant on creatures to obtain victory.

Hand control, is exclusively in the realm of black, blue and colorless. And represents a remarkable switch in strategy from simple board control. Whereas board control relies on removing threats once they hit the battlefield, hand control lies in its exclusion of letting the opponent do anything other than put cards directly into their graveyard, or in some cases, back onto/into their library, or, in some cases, directly exiling the card. While several artifacts make this aspect of control available to other colors, blue and black maintain the strongest advantage here. Hand control can also mean having a larger (card advantage) hand then your opponent, but only if having a larger hand is through drawing more cards then your opponent, or using more efficient spells. Neither Red nor White has any significant presence in hand control. Green has no hand control at all.

Library, the "deck", control of it is the realm of blue. Of all the colors, only blue, and artifacts, are freely able to manipulate an opponent’s library. Two forms of library control exist: Mill and Steal. Milling is the act of certain cards and abilities to place portions of an opponent’s library into their graveyard. Another method is to force an opponent to out-draw their deck (Causing them to lose.) Milling often requires a strong hand and board control element to win and most decks built around mill use combos to do so. The other Library control method is to steal creatures and artifacts out of your opponent’s deck and put them into play under your control as well as instants and sorceries, this is a limited method as only a small handful of cards allow you to do so, and are expensive to cast. Black has a few small effects that enable the caster to pick a cardname/target a card in the graveyard and search for all copies and remove them from the game. Neither White, Red nor Green have any similar spells or abilities.

Graveyard Control is the most underrated of all methods of playing magic, much to the surprise of an opponent playing a skilled graveyard manipulator. All colors, expect red have large numbers of graveyard recursion spells and abilities (excluding the Unearth ability.) With Green, Blue and Black having the most used and powerful spells and abilities of the five colors. Green has several spells that enable it to return permanents to either the hand or library, blue has the ability to return sorceries, instants and artifacts to its own hand, and black has powerful spells and creatures that enable it to recover creatures and artifacts, even some which are in an opponent’s graveyard. White has a few recursion effects; however, they are limited to either artifact, enchantment, or creature from its own graveyard for the most part. Red has, as mentioned, very few options for recursion. Graveyard control, however, is exclusively Black. Many decks rely on graveyard recursion in general to expand their winning potential; however, Black has the opportunity first, and foremost, to steal those graveyards from their owner. Graveyard Control is the culmination of Board and Hand control, also limited library control if mill is involved. As the most underrated of all control types, Graveyard control is often an unseen and uncalculated threat. In many games, a single black card recurring an opponent’s creature or artifact can win the game. Or, in Dredge and Reanimation decks, the use of graveyard control can completely shut these decks down. Many decks relying on basic recursion principles in magic often stall and die to decks utilizing efficient graveyard control.

The most complete form of control however, is a combination of Board, Hand and Graveyard. B.H.G. (You can pronounce it as Bag, to remember it easily.)
Essentially, B.H.G. is what a black control deck is. Board control through removal and deadly creatures, hand control through discard and graveyard control through various toolbox cards and singular effects.