If you decided to read this thread you know what your in for so sit back and relax while I going into my typical mode. If you are new to my analysis get a cup of coffee and get ready to critically look at every piece of evidence I'm going to give you. With that said lets get started.
If one goes through some of my more recent excitement and ramblings I've spent a lot of time working on 2 characters. Yoshimitsu and Kisheri. Both characters revolve around discard. I thought I was going to bear witness to the strong return of control. I was really really wrong. I did a lot of playtesting against mid and top teir decks and characters. I found that discard could not go head to head with strong aggro decks. A discard deck could win game one but game 2 and 3 was up in the air and most likely the odds are against you. Over 60% of the second and third games ended in a loss. The main reason is that the opponent has learned how to pace a lot more conservatively thus they are less likely to over extend their hand. Just as much as not over extend one's foundation against stun the same applies to ones hand when it comes to discard. The results of my deck building made me very depressed because there isn't any hard control effort to battle the strong aggro decks that dominate the meta.
Recently I had a chance to talk to a player about making a Kisheri deck. In the middle of the conversation I realized that I was thinking like a minitures player. Even though I've played lots of card games, and did well at some of them, i always come back to my minatures foundation. In minitures all the info is out infront of you. Chance is only in the dice roll. Great plans succeded or failed due to the manipulation of dice rolls. I didn't think that control had to be sneaky on every level to win. In other words play dirty to miniture player. This hits the core of my title. The control player, not just discard, must make an effective deck that can transition back and forth from aggro to control. One may need to play 2-3 characters in a deck and the side board has a foundation/action/asset that is needed for a hard counter against an obscure weakness.
1. Play dirty and love it.
The best thing to do is start out playing aggro. In the case of Kisheri she can start off playing Mitsurigi, Cassandra promo, or Sophita Promo. After you win the first game switch into Kisheri. Your opponent won't think about packing anti-discard. They just might play anti-aggro cards instead against Mitsurigi. Against cassandra anti-speed tactics may appear if they haven't already. Against Sophita some mix of the previous is possible. But this will do no good against Kisheri. YOu pretty much increase your chances of winning because the pivitol game 2 is no longer going to go as planned. Your opponent is stuck with an even less optimized deck.
Other control like characters that the same rule can be applied are Kilik, Zhao, Lu Chen, and , Yoshimitsu, Dariya and White Crane. Each of these characters are quirky and abnormal and takes a bit of skill to play. THey are easy to counter or plan for on game 2 and 3 and are easy to shutdown. Each character has strong aggro characters that allow them to switch to aggro mode really easily. Even with control elements in an aggro deck the aggro character still can thrive and may even surprise the pure aggro deck.
2. Serving two masters and not getting torn apart.
The first thing people may look at me crazy at is the fact that putting an aggro character and a control character together is like night and day. Actually that is not true. THe new control characters depend more on attacking to get their effects off instead of their foundations. Most high control foundations destroy themselves. So bridging the two mindsets is more based on the player then on the mechanics of the game. The next thing one has to look at symbols like order, good, void, chaos, and death to make the change up almost apear seamless. These symbols have odd mix of aggro and control. Each of these symbols follow a general mechanic or serve as what I like to call bridge symbols. They are designed to be the happy medium of seperating 2 extremes from mixing. This is more the case of good and void then order and chaos.
This mindset will force the player to leave the main symobls and dual symboling behind for the surprise element of a control character win. This is hard when you are facing Hilde, Hata, and Astrid. Yes leaving the main symbols is going to be hard but it the risk/reward is worth it.
3. Kicking them in the groin
The attack setup has to be the starting point. You are avoiding character specfic attacks of course or you are side boarding them. Your attacks are going to determine what secondary character you are going to play. If you play a chaos control character like Zhao Daiyo you may consider running your mirror aggro character off of Steve Fox or Kazuya. This way you can focus on punches and have no problems worrying about attack line up between characters. ZD actually benifits more from gut drill then the other characters so she can get her rfg effects in play.
One has to be careful that an attack edge for the control character is shared by the aggro character or the aggro character can use the tactic. The golden rule for this setup would be which ever character needs specfics build the aggro for that character then pair the second or more characters based off of that unique element. If you are playing Kilik as your control character and Christie as your aggro character then putting punches in the deck is a bad idea. But if you play Kilik and you play Paul as your offensive character your better off.
4. Setting the stage for trickery.
I'm going to assets before foundations for one big reason. Assets are tricky and can screw over a character and helps another. Recently I played Hall of the Warrior god. I played this card to give my Kisheri a speed pump so I could playful a kill. The card helps my opponent and is still in effect even while tapped. So the card backfired hard on me because my opponnet was getting +2 or more speed on their attacks. Hall of the Warrior God would do little good paired up with a throw character. What do you do? Assets have to focus not so much on control but on damage and non-symbol specfic draw. Paul's Gi is awesome but man if you don't have the all symbol it doens't do you much. Remember not all of us have POTM. Dependence on generic POTM is becoming more and more risky. Look at Defeated the Rifle, (Ragnar attack that destroys assets) and Yimfang. The days of POTM are numbered. Stick to foundations that give you a generic boost all your characters can use. If at all possible avoid terrains they never play out the same across characters.
5. Fiends and Foundations.
Foundations are there to do 2 things. Support the control character. Give enough aggro to make the aggro character effective. This means that you need to not go control heavy in the deck. You are going a bit light on defense. But that is fine. You are using your control elements to stall your opponents kill turns. Generic damage pumps are better. If a you see that some cards would go better for both characters then play it of course. But you want avoid symbol specfic skills as much as possible.
6. Plans, Plans, and Plans.
Action cards is both the icing on the cake and the glue between pages. They both hold everything together and finish everything off. Go for action cards that fill in your weak point or help you defensively. Action cards are mainly focused on damage and stat manipulation. Look more at cards that manipulate checks, and gives you draw. If your symbol can't play those cards go for defense.
Ok lets wrap this all up. The future of control is in aggro. The future of control is not fronting a control character but stabbing your opponent with it from the sideboard. Control Characters are dead. Long live control characters. We are facing the forced evolution of the control player. The control player MUST play aggro. But the contorl player MUST change in and out of control characters to make pure aggro an unsure investment.