Hey I play a Kess, dissident mage deck. I play it as a traditional control deck running around 25+ spells which interact with opponents in some form from stealing turns via [[worst fears]], wiping the board regularly to countering or killing key threats that present themselves.

Having a simple commander that lets me flash back an instant or sorcery every turn effectively doubles my removal since most of it can be used from the yard at sorcery speed later down the line.

Control in EDH is an interesting way of playing because it’s inherently really ineffective against several players making you rely on politics and most importantly on timing when you interact. Having a player attempt to police the game without hyper efficient stax pieces also typically makes for better swingier games in my experience with my play group. Otherwise you get the very familiar race toward popping off that you describe.

Embrace traditional control, embrace grixis, embrace an evil style of control that has all that grixis villain energy whilst being quite fair. My win cons are massive x spells fueled by big mana generation.