The most hard to play archetype of decks is control decks. In the early and mid game you do not show the aggression and destroy enemy runes. You will defend your board and heal yourself for all the game and then you will destroy your opponent by playing strong creatures. The curve of control deck can be various. You can play cards that cost from 0 to 12 magicka. But one of the most important things in control decks is availability of point removals and AOEs. You can defend and clean the board by playing this spells even after total opponent`s domination on it. Your opponent will attack your face, destroy your runes and give you chance to draw a necessary card. But you should have another ways to circle your deck and find them. That is why you must have creatures with unique summon bonus effect or last gasp effect with drawing cards.
You can use almost of keywords when you play control decks. First of all you must have a lot of cards with Prophecy because of destroying runes by your opponents. They help you to clear the board by AOEs or point spells, to play good control creature and deterring aggression of the enemy. Sometimes Prophecy cards can have Guards too. But you can play some good creatures with Guard too in your control deck. Keyword Drain (maybe it will be keyword Heal) will help you to restore your health if you play against aggro decks. Sometimes cards with this keyword can have Prophecy effect too. You can also combine cards with Shackle synergy. Some of them have Prophecy effect too.
In Control Decks Intelligence Attribute is one of the main. There are a lot of good AOEs (
Willpower Attribute is strong enough too. There are some powerful AOEs (Dawn’s Wrath or
Deck «Control Mage»
In Control decks Strength Attribute is not so popular because of weak AOEs (
Agility Attribute is not so popular in control decks. But there are some cards that give you growth of your max Magicka (
in Control decks the cards with Endurance Attribute can be very strong too. You can play Ramp control deck with
Deck «Control Scout»
So control decks are very popular because it is hard to play them. You should feel the moments of playing spells or different cards and have some luck to not to die before you will have a chance to summon strong legendaries.