Shields are usually defensive items. Usually.
Control Warrior is a type of control-oriented warrior deck, aiming to achieve victory through amassing huge amounts of Armor and clearing the opponent's board in the early and mid-game, and crushing the opponent with powerful minions in the late-game and outlast them as the game reaches fatigue.
Note that while Control Warrior could refer to any warrior deck that aims for late-game victory, the specific options open to warriors means such decks tend to gravitate toward a particular play-style, which is the focus of this page.
Deck type[]
Control Warrior decks most notably revolve around generating Armor. This is achieved through their Hero Power Armor Up!, as well as spells like Shield Block, and minions like Armorsmith and Eternium Rover. The Armor serves a double purpose - it protects them through the early and mid-game, provides breathing room when fishing for the right cards later on, and allows the use of Shield Slam to devastating effect. With Armor totals of 50 not uncommon, this stack provides ample security against quick defeat from burst damage such as Tempo Mage. If the Control Warrior is allowed to gain high enough levels of Armor, they may even end up winning by Fatigue. The ultimate goal of the Control Warrior is to outlast the opponent through sheer amount of armor and wiping the opponent's board at the right time.
Control Warriors aim to survive the early game using weapons like Blood Razor and Supercollider, board-wide AoE spells like Warpath and Plague of Wrath, and small Taunt minions like Stonehill Defender and Frightened Flunky.
Mid-game involves clearing the board and delaying the opponent, while seeking various synergistic combinations. Many Rush minions like Militia Commander, Darius Crowley, and Restless Mummy aid in both removal and making sure their board always has something on board.
Brawl is another key Control Warrior card for wiping out their opponent's board. Execute is is also used. Shield Slam is extremely effective and efficient once the warrior has a good stack of Armor, allowing them to take out the largest minions for only 1 mana.
Control Warrior often sometimes assembles small combo pieces to use them once their opponent runs out of steam to lead to a quicker victory. Some common cards for this purpose include Grommash Hellscream with Cruel Taskmaster, Ysera, and Alexstrasza.
The Boomsday Project gave Warrior invaluable cards to win the value game in long games, the cornerstone of the deck being Dr. Boom, Mad Genius, where permanently giving Mech minions Rush, combined with value cards like Omega Assembly and minions with removal like Dyn-o-matic, makes out-tempoing the Warrior much more difficult for the opponent, while also providing unpredictable but very powerful Hero Powers.
Once the late game is reached the Control Warrior is usually unbeatable by lighter decks, unless the warrior's combined Health and Armor level is low, the opponent has a game-ending combo, or capable of outvaluing them.
Common cards[]
The following cards are usually in the deck.
Core cards[]
The following cards are played in most or all versions of the deck:
Optional cards[]
The following cards are played more than occasionally, but not always.
Wild cards[]
This section concerns content exclusive to Wild format.Wild cards that fit well into this deck type:
Galakrond Warrior variant[]
This section concerns content exclusive to Wild format.The following cards are commonly played in the Galakrond Warrior version.
Gallery[]
  Control Warrior mirror matches are some of the slowest and most protracted in all of Hearthstone. Note the high Armor and Health totals, the full hands, and the almost exhausted decks. Such matches are often decided through fatigue damage. |
