actually no.
Control decks are not really harder. Right now a dedicated control deck is virtualy impossible thus it appears hard. but actually if the game is properly balanced around the archetypes (aggro, midrange, control and combo) every archetype has its strongpoints and weakspots. The better his answers on Aggro the harder is aggro to perform. Aggro decks are seldom designed to totally overkill your opponent its always a risky balance of making the right decision at the right time. The timeframe where these decisions happen are just different.
....hmmm
let me try this way:
Combo: Combo decks are not really archetypes themselves in the greater sense in my opinion because they are essentially just an especially strong synergy in a shell of an other archetype. Valk Combo for example is Aggro-Combo. Heartichoke and Bad Moon rising are certainly midrange. There is always the ones that say that a true combo deck just tries to draw the combo and OTK the opponent but really most Decks considered Combo do more than just that. Combo is in a very good spot in PvZ:H.
Aggro decks basicly couldn´t care less about loosing a single zombie/Plant (ill be unifying this as Goons now) and plays rather few tricks to maintain a constant stream of little buggers to chip down the opponents lifepoints. What aggro DOES care about are things that shut down multiple Goons. For Zombies the chickening would be such a card but one of the reasons control doesn´t really work is that the chickening for example is overpriced. For Plants there is no such removal at all. Spotremoval is fine I guess but I think both sides need a more tempo-driven removal to Cripple early Defense options. To be honest I think both bungee zombie and Bananabomb could need a tiny buff for that matter or an alternativ trick.
All in all aggro is in a pretty decent spot right now so there isn´t much to complain about.
Midrange is really nothing you can ever press out of a Meta game. There is always someone who just likes them big butts (and they cannot lie) and opt out their curve. They just pick the best of both worlds. They got nice spotremoval, good lategame and a few early drops to fend of aggro. The key strongpoint is that midrange is that it never sucks because of the matchup but the weakspot is, that it might suck from horrible draws. Midrange decks are infamous for that you actually play against your own luck just as much as about your opponent. If you play against aggro and draw all your lategame you are screwed. deal with it. You can of course include some card draw-tricks/abilities or conjourer to counteract this (which you should) but in the end you rely more heavily on drawing the right thing at the right time (aggro decks for example basicly have only aggro-cards, they know it, they can rely on that. a midrange deck can´t really do that)
Control aims to supress the opponent to generate value when your opponent poses little threat to you. Now there are a few Decks I would certainly call controll but not a real, hard control deck that plays like....3 or 4 options to even win the game. If there would be enough removal to play card draw, removal and a single clique pea to eventually win. THAT would be hard control. There are two things for each faction that are sort of missing to establish a hard control deck: both sides need a unconditional, boardwipe ("destroy all zombies and plants") at an affordable price. Tactical Gourd somewhat does that but the ground line condition and the price make that card almost unplayable. In general we go in the right direction though. Secondly both sides need more trick-based card draw. 3 ressources for drawing 2 is actually quite nice but not enough. Especially for plants where that effect is limited to mega-growth. Something like:
3 ressources: drain all your remaining ressources. draw that many cards. thats draw 1 for 4, draw 2 for 5 aso. I know there is a mechanic in HEX wich is somewhat like clique peas thats named "escalate" which essentially does (escalate: shuffle a copy of this card into your deck / do [effect] X times for each time you already played this card]) but in hex this does various things and also drawing cards. depending on the price this could be a very good thing.
The decks that are btw very close to be hard control decks in my opinion are Trickster Control and Citron Starchlord. Everything else is a Hybrid.
The three archetype control, midrange and aggro really are fluidly merging in their definition. Its worth to mention that in almost all games following these archetype-paradigma aggro-control (or tempo) by far the rarest hybrid. You could say that paparazzi Zombie and other goons that steadily grow and can be played on turn 1 or 2 are tempo drops....but very very few of them (if any) are actually meant to be the sole win condition of the deck they are in like a tempo decks would try. So there are Tempo cards but they are not QUITE good enough to be the stars in their respective decks.
BTW: with the upcoming "untrickable" strongly implies that there will be more quality removal as well so maybe thats a hint for a push on midrange and control decks. I think we´ve seen enough combo-dominated metagame for now so that would make some sense
as I mentioned before I wouldn´t call combo decks a "real" archetype just because its card-shell is one of the "real" archetypes with a combo smeared into it.
One could say just as the archetypes are fluid to each other "combo" is fluid to "synergy".
I mean how I understand it a two card combo usually is "effect + enabler" (heartichoke effect + heal) and a three card combo is usually "effect+circumstance+enabler" (heartichoke+ flytrapplanet+heal". So I would claim that heartichoke is a 3 card combo if you play it as a "combo" but it still has very strong synergy when either the enabler or the circumstance are missing.
for valkyrie the "effect" is valkyrie and the "enabler" is teleport. one could argue the combo gets better with a bonus attack or a removal but I guess the "circumstance" of valkyrie is "any open line". A combo usually qualifies for a combo when it has the potential to end the game in one turn even if the opponent has full health.
so valkyrie quite clearly has that; Hearthichoke has that; Bad moon rising.....ah I don´t know....it´s random and requires either 3 zombies or 2 zombies and 3 Plants (for zombot + sharkotronic) to be lethal on 20 hp. Its probably a combo but I think of these three valkyrie qualifies best as a "pure" combo deck.
And yes, I am german so I don´t have the english names at hand. I know /most/ of them correctly I guess but .....it happens ~
