I have been playing with a few friends since May of 2011 and have heard these terms used when talking about decks. Some of them I think I understand from context, but others I don't get. Can an experienced player give me a quick explanation of these terms? I have also heard Rush deck, but I assume that one is designed to use Renown to build power tokens quickly? Thanks in advance.

AceManUSC said:

From what I understand... Most decks contain some aspects of all, but decks that skew really far towards one or the other would be considered Rush, Control, or Combo decks.

Rush (aggro) = Creating more threats than your opponent can answer, hopefully gaining you the win.
Bara rush is a good example.

Control = Being able to contain all of your opponents threats until they are prone, and then you attack and win.
Lannister kneel is a good example.

Combo = Themes with a lot of moving parts. Fragile, or slower, but usually really strong.
That Robert or Joffrey maester deck is a good example.

So I am far from an experienced player but here's my understanding:

Aggro: a deck that focuses on putting out a lot of threats and establishing board control quickly. The idea is that any card in your deck is equally as valuable as the next, and that you're able to put out more characters than your opponent can control. Typically you're running a bunch of high strength/low cost characters, and your deck probably has a lot of synergies within itself. Stark Tully's come to mind as a pure aggro deck.

Control: this is a deck that aims to control the options of your opponent. Either you lock down threats (lanni kneel, Martell Icon stipping), remove them from the board completely (Targ Burn, Martell VB/bounce to hand), or prevent cards from being played at all (Greyjoy choke). You might also consider cards that stop the opponent's strategies control or combo cards ( Location Hate or Event Cancel)

Combo: This is a deck that tries to get a certain set of cards together, and once they're in play you'll win the game regardless of anything your opponent does. I don't think there's any true winng combos in AGoT, but there are a lot of combos that will help you get closer to winning the game.

Most decks in AGoT exhibit blends of these deck types. Martell Summer for instance is a Aggro-Control blend. There's a bunch of threats that can overwhelm your oppoenent, but there's also a lot of control usually in place (VB, Ghaston Grey, Game of Cyvasse). I would almost consider rush strategies an aggro/combo blend. If you can get the right pieces in play (a bunch of power grabbing characters all in play at once) you're going to win the game.

The typical "meta-game cycle" is Aggro beats control, control beats combo, and combo beats aggro.

I hope that helps! I would love to hear the thoughts of some more experienced players. in particular, these terms, AFAIK, come from MTG. So I don't know that they apply directly to AGoT. Maybe we need to come up with our own deck archtypes that describe the possibilities? The biggest difference (and I'm not a Magic player, so this is my assumption) is that is that Aggro in magic can win games by dealing direct damage to the opponent. In AGoT however, you need ways to claim power. So purely attacking doesn't necessarily win the game by itself. Hence my opinion that rush is not by itslef an aggro build, and that aggro is more of a strategy of building board control.

Just to add to this, each of these terms refers to a type of card, but can also refer to a deck type as a whole. For example, Newly Made Lord is a type of location "control," but just having him in your deck doesn't make it a "control deck." Generally speaking, a "control" card is a card that removes the target card's ability to work as intended. Similarly, this classification is reserved for a deck which has a win condition predicated on gaining control over the opponent. As perpetual noob points out, there are a variety of ways to do it. The bottom line though is that you are restricting your opponent's ability to effectively play his/her deck. Most people rely on winning challenges to build power and ultimately win the game. If you can consistently kill characters or in some other way take away their ability to participate in challenges, then you have effectively "controlled" the characters...sometimes called controlling the opponents "board" or "board position," as if the characters were all formed in combat position on a board.

"Combo" is just short for "combination." Most decks have some basic combinations in their deck...though when people throw around the term "combo," I think it generally would involve three or more cards. These days, combos are extremely common because of maesters + chain attachments. Historically though, multiple-card combos haven't been nearly as common outside of decks devoted to them. As a deck type, a "combo" deck tends to be over-reliant on getting out a specific combination of cards to win. This is often an all or nothing gambit, and has a very high likelihood of failure if it's missing just one of the 3-5 cars needed to make it work. An example combo build is the Sand Snake deck that won the Days of Ice and Fire melee tournament this year.

Combo doesn't always claim power quickly, it can also take the form of control. If you have an extremely powerful combo that essentially gives you the ability to lock down your opponent, almost fully restricting their ability to play or use cards, you would have a combo deck...but these tend to be rare in this game (they are more popular in some other card games), I think in large part because the plot phase gives the opponent a chance to disrupt the combo. So normally people who like to play control don't put all their eggs in one basket. Instead they build a slightly less powerful but overall more reliable deck that doesn't rely on complex combinations in order to win.

Aggro cards or decks are the kind of decks that just beat down the opponent. Sometimes this is fast power grab, but it can also just involve the relentless battering of the opponent. A deck based around dothraki, clansmen, wildlings, or just full of a bunch of characters and very few control effects would typically be considered an aggro deck.

One last point is that certain card effects tend to be associated with certain deck types. Because a control deck devotes cards specifically designed to knock the opponent back, it can take longer for a control deck to win. This long-term strategy often makes it more important for a control deck to have a larger hand size in order to prepare for the long game. Thus, you may see people discuss cards that boost a player's ability to draw beyond the normal 2-cards each round as "control" cards. This characterization (and other similar characterizations) is not entirely accurate...every deck type can benefit from having more cars in hand. It just tends to be more critical for a control deck to have more cards in hand, while an aggro deck tends to have more cards in play. Extending this logic a bit further, many control players tend to focus more on the intrigue challenge, while aggro players may focus more on winning military challenges. (The core set alone doesn't really give you enough cards to build consistent control builds, so new players tend to start with aggro builds, then some find their way to control.) this is not an absolute truth, but just a common characteristic of the deck types.

Thanks to both of you. This was awesome to read. I feel like knowing these "mindsets" when building a deck help to build a more effective deck. I have always been aware of the elements you mentioned, but having it all laid out in a clear way was a major help. Also, I agree that most decks seem to have a mix of these strategies since a lot of the cards can do a few things, which adds to their utility.