Introduction
I think Dominion decks can be classified into a number of basic strategies, or archetypes. A strategy will tend to play similarly to other strategies in its archetype, and significantly differently from strategies in different archetypes. Knowing what kind of deck you're trying to build is an important step in transitioning from a beginner player to an intermediate player.
There are 6 basic archetypes of deck, each with a number of different categories. I'll provide a brief overview of the key features of each archetype.
Basic glossary for terms I'll be using:
Greening - Buying green (victory) cards that don't contribute to your deck.
Fizzling - Running out of things to do on your turn before accomplishing something useful.
Lab - Cards which have an effect similar to Laboratory. Similarly for Market, Village, etc.
Mirror - A match in which both players are going for the same strategy.
1) Big Money
The Big Money deck buys mostly money, with one to three terminal actions. Sometimes it will add nonterminals like Laboratory or Market if it draws a $5, but it will rarely ever buy Villages. Big Money is possible to build every game, and is the correct strategy whenever no other strategies are strong enough. Big Money decks tend to like terminal draw, cards which give silver, and dislike mass trashing. Attacks are often the best terminals for a Big Money deck.
Strong cards:
Jack of All Trades - Big Money likes Silver more than any other deck, and Jack is one of the best Silver granters in the game. 2 Jacks, Silver, Gold, and Provinces is an extremely strong deck.
Envoy - Envoy is best when most cards in your deck are close to average quality (e.g. lots of Silvers), and you don't have many terminals to collide with.
Wharf - Another of the best card drawers in the game, Wharf is close to +4 cards +2 buy in a Big Money deck.
Masquerade - Masquerade lets you get rid of useless estates. Unlike other trashers, it doesn't slow you down on the turn you play it. It can double as a nice attack against heavy-trashing combo or action decks which are forced to pass you good cards.
Counters:
Good decks - Big Money's biggest weakness is that it's simply mediocre, and will usually lose to a well-constructed deck.
Cursing attacks - Curse attacks are extremely strong, and a deck that can play more Witches than Big Money will usually beat it. A Big Money deck with Curses has a hard time reaching $8.
Pirate Ship - Big Money gives the Pirate a lot of juicy targets, and BM benefits less than other decks from losing Coppers.
Discard attacks - Big Money usually needs 4 cards to get a Province.
1a) Big Money + trashing
Chapel, Remake, and Steward all let the BM deck get rid of its coppers and estates, leaving it with only good treasures, and letting it play its terminals more often. The disadvantage of this approach is that it loses steam faster when greening. BM with trashers is usually better than pure, money-only BM, but often worse than BM with strong terminals. Trashing cards usually help action decks more than BM, so be cautious playing BM on a board with good trashers. Trashers make you more resilient to cursing and discard attacks.
Counters:
Thief/Noble Brigand - This is one of the rare times when Thieves are actually good, and combined with a good action engine they can cripple trashing BM.
Deck attacks (Rabble, Spy, etc) - Getting one of the deck's key Golds can really hurt it.
2) Action decks
Action decks buy a whole lot of actions, then try to take big turns where they get a large benefit. There's a huge variety of different kinds of action decks, so I'll list them separately.
Strong cards:
Village effects (especially Fishing Village) - Most action chains do that much using only nonterminals, so cards which give extra actions are great.
Multi-card trashers (Chapel, Remake, Steward, Forge) - Action decks have less use for their coppers than Big Money, so getting rid of them is great.
2a) Deck Draw
Deck draw decks attempt to draw their entire deck every turn, then use all the money to buy a province or two. They tend to start greening later than most other decks, but green faster and suffer less for having the greens. These decks are looking for strong draw cards, nonterminal actions which give money, and at least one +buy. Strong trashers help a lot. Deck draw comes in two flavors. Hunting Parties, Alchemists, Laboratories, Governors, Apothecaries, Caravans and Stables can let you draw your deck without having to worry about being able to play your actions. Alternatively, a combination of +actions cards and +cards cards lets you draw your deck, albeit at higher risk of fizzling out than Labs. Strong Villages (Fishing Village, Farming Village) and Smithies (Torturer, Margrave, Wharf) make this more appealing.
Strong cards:
Forge - Forging an estate and 2 copper into an estate is kind of crap. Forging 3 estates and 5 copper into a gold is great.
Baron - Deck Draw makes him more likely to find an estate.
Shanty Town - In a pure Lab strategy, you can always play Town last as a 3-cost Lab.
Horn of Plenty - Drawing your deck should give you 5 or 6 unique cards, which means Horn can get another 5-cost or gold each turn.
Scrying Pool - With enough trashing to get rid of most of your non-actions, Scrying Pool can be insane.
Sample decks:
4-7 Hunting Party, 1 Gold, 1-3 Silver, 1 Baron, 7 Copper, 3 Estate - Hunting Party lets you draw all the relevant cards in your deck, including Baron and Estate, every turn. You can then buy Province/Party or even Province/Province.
Chapel, 6 Venture, Silver - Venture acts as a pseudo-action in this deck, effectively drawing all the useful cards in your deck and giving you enough money to buy a Province each turn.
Chapel, 6 Festival, 4 Library, 1-2 Gold, 1-2 Silver - Festival gives you actions while depleting cards in hand, Library draws you a whole pile of cards, Chapel makes sure Coppers and Estates don't clog everything up.
2b) Attack
Attack decks attempt to play multiple attacks each turn, or one attack consistently each turn. Attack decks can cripple your opponent, but ironically are themselves quite vulnerable to many attacks. Attack decks require Village effects to work, and combine very well with Village/Smithy style draw engines.
Strong cards:
Card draw attacks (Torturer, Margrave, Witch) - These let you avoid having to buy Smithies for your chain.
Saboteur - Saboteur can be devastating when played 3 times a turn, potentially wrecking an opponent's entire deck.
Possession - Although very difficult to get, Possession has a very strong effect. If you can reliably use 2 or more Possessions each turn, you're in a very good position. Ambassador and Masquerade let Possession decks come back from an otherwise unrecoverable point deficit.
Ambassador - Enough actions and card draw let you Ambassador away all your coppers and estates, leaving you with an efficient trimmed deck that can start Ambassadoring curses and your opponent with a big pile of junk.
Throne Room/King's Court - These are likely to have strong targets in an attack deck.
University - A lot of the strongest attacks, card draw, and villages cost 5, and University gets you these easily while also providing a valuable Village effect.
2c) Market
Market decks like to play lots of actions that cycle while giving money - Market, Grand Market, Peddler, Conspirator, or Highway. These decks tend to need strong trashing and/or Lab effects to stop them from fizzling out when they stop drawing their Markets. Market decks tend to focus on either getting a lot of Conspirators or a lot of Highways, though Highway decks can end up closer to the Combo archetype, and pure Market decks often end up in the Durdle archetype. Vineyard is one of the best reasons for playing a Market deck.
Strong cards:
Quarry - Quarries let you easily buy multiple Market effects on one turn when combined with your free +buys.
Ironworks - Ironworks lets you get Conspirators (or after a Highway, other Market effects).
Vineyard - Market decks buy large numbers of action cards.
Sample decks:
Chapel, 2 Ironworks, 3 Market, 5-10 Conspirator, 4 Silver - Chapel gets rid of the junk, Ironworks builds up the Conspirator count, Conspirators and Markets get the money.
3 Apothecary, 6 Market, 4 Caravan, 3 Farming Village, 3 Militia, 2 Quarry, 3 Silver, 3 Potion, 6 Vineyard, 7 Copper, 3 Estate, 2 Province
Counters:
Rush decks - Decks which aim for a 3-pile ending like it when you buy all the Conspirators
Cursers - Cursing attacks make fizzling more likely.
2d) Minion
The Minion deck is simple - buy as many Minions as possible, then play Minions for money into Minions for cards into etc into Province. Minions is the strongest strategy on a significant majority of boards which contain the card.
Strong cards:
Nonterminal actions which give money (Fishing Village, Festival, Lighthouse) - Don't buy Festival until you have 6 Minions or the pile is exhausted, though
Cellar/Warehouse - The card disadvantage of these cards doesn't matter if you're going to Minions for cards, and they help you keep Minioning after you start greening.
Trashers - Trashers let you play more minions for +$2 and less for cards.
Counters:
Lighthouse/Horse Traders - these stop Minion's attack while not being terrible by themselves.
3) Combo decks
Combo decks build up their decks to an extremely powerful level, and then win shortly after. Although rarely possible to build and highly vulnerable to attacks, they are very powerful when they work.
Strong Cards:
Multi-card trashers, especially Chapel - Combo decks nearly always need to trash all or nearly all of their coppers and estates to work.
King's Court - KC is essential for many combo decks, and useful to build the engine of many others.
3a) Bridge/Highway combo
Bridge decks build up a strong actions/cards engine, then play lots of Bridges and buy up all the Provinces (or Colonies). King's Court is usually involved. Highway/Market is a related deck that has a somewhat smoother setup. Sometimes you can get your mega-turn from Mining Villages or Native Villages.
Sample decks:
2 Steward, 3 King's Court, 3 Bridge, 3 Laboratory, 2 Village, 3 Silver - draw enough cards to play KC/KC/Bridge/Bridge/Bridge, win.
Chapel, 6 Highway, 7 Market, 1 Silver, 2 Quarry - Chapel gets rid of the junk. Quarries, Markets and Highways let you buy more Markets and Highways more cheaply. Eventually you play all your Highways and Markets and buy out the Provinces.
Chapel, 3 Ironworks, 7 Mining Village, 5 Bridge, 1 Smithy, (Nobles) - Play all your Mining Villages and Bridges in one big turn. After 2 Bridges, you can Ironworks for Nobles, which gives you +1 card +1 action.
Horn of Plenty
Adding a Horn of Plenty to a draw deck (2a) lets you get your engine pieces faster. Once you're set up, you can Horn for Horn buying Horn, then use the 3 Horns to get 3 more Horns, then use all 6 Horns for Provinces and win.
3b) Lock
Lock decks aim to prevent your opponent from doing anything useful. Masquerade, Saboteur, Possession+Ambassador, and in some cases Thief/Pirate Ship can all lock your opponent.
Sample decks:
2 King's Court, Goons, Masquerade - The classic Lock deck. Goons forces your opponent down to 3 cards, then Masquerade takes all 3 of those cards and trashes them. The opponent is left with nothing in hand and 3 fewer cards in the deck.
[some actions/cards engine], 2-4 Throne Room, 2-4 Saboteur - The deck Sabotages everything the opponents buy, preventing them from getting anything over $2 unless they're lucky enough to draw it right after buying it.
Counters:
Masquerade - If the combo deck needs every card in their deck, having one Masqueraded really hurts.
Lighthouse/Moat - Stopping your opponent from attacking you makes locking difficult, hopefully giving you enough time to get a Masquerade against 5-card lock or enough useful stuff against Saboteur.
3c) 5-card
5 card decks aim to get down to 5 cards, and get rid of their victory cards for benefit as soon as they get them. They tend to be very fast and consistent.
Sample decks:
Bishop, 2 Gold, Copper, Province - Each turn, Bishop a Province and buy a new one.
(Chapel), Hamlet, 2 Gold, Silver, Native Village, Province - Each turn, Hamlet discarding Province, Native Village setting Province aside, buy Province. It's 6 cards, so sometimes you won't draw the Hamlet. Buying a Lab reduces the odds of this happening.
2 Tactician, Secret Chamber, Spice Merchant, 4 Copper, 3 Estate - Play a Tactician every turn, using Secret Chamber for money. This deck has an extremely fast setup, especially Chamber/Tac off of a 5-2. There's a lot of possible variants to this strategy.
Counters:
Discard attacks - These decks can't function on 3 cards
Cursing attacks - The extra card really messes these decks up
3d) Governor
Governor decks buy a whole pile of Governors thanks to Governor-for-cards and Governor-for-Gold, then spend a turn getting a lot of Golds, then spend the next turn using Governor-for-cards and Governor-as-Remodel to trash all the Golds into Provinces and win.
Counters:
Horse Traders/Baron/Vault + Big Money - the extra cards and Silvers from opposing Governors make getting to $8 fairly easily. Governor decks have a hard time winning if their opponent can get 5 Provinces before they go off.
4) Rush
Rush decks try to win without Provinces before their opponent can get enough Provinces. Rush decks nearly always aim for a 3-pile ending. When playing rush decks, it is important to have a plan for which piles you're trying to empty.
Good cards:
Horse Traders - Rush decks buy lots of green cards and often coppers, and horse traders turns 2 greens and 2 coppers into exactly what you want, with an extra buy on top.
Crossroads - It'll draw you a lot of cards thanks to all your greens, and give you actions to play multiple Workshops or Horse Traders.
4a) Gardens/Silk Road
Decks with Gardens and/or Silk Road want to fill their deck with huge piles of junk. They enjoy +buys and Workshop effects, and are resilient against discard attacks and cursing. A Silk Road rush isn't strong enough by itself; you need another cheap VP card (Gardens, Tunnel, Great Hall) or a pile that's going to empty fast (Curses in a curse game, Fishing Villages in a game with 3+ players).
Good cards:
Workshop/Ironworks
Hamlet - You've got plenty of crap to discard for +buys, and it's a good 3rd pile to deplete after Gardens/Silk Road and Estate.
Woodcutter - A cheap source of +buy is good for Gardens.
Mountebank - Gardens decks don't mind Curses so much, and like the free Copper.
Secret Chamber - Secret Chamber lets you always have enough to buy a Gardens or Silk Road
Baron - You're going to be buying more estates than usual, Baron gaining Estate isn't bad, and the +buy is good.
Thief (4+ players) - Thief can get you a whole lot of copper very quickly, boosting your Gardens points.
Counters:
Buying their rush cards - Gardens/SR decks often have a hard time ending the game. A deck with 8 Gardens can beat a deck with 5 Provinces, but a deck with 5 Gardens will have a hard time beating a deck with 3 Gardens and 3 Provinces.
Combo decks - Rush decks don't buy Provinces, so combo decks don't have to worry about them getting 5 provinces before the combo turn.
4b) Duchy+Duke/Fairgrounds
Both of these strategies aim at getting green cards that are worth less than Provinces, but are easier to get. Their biggest downside is the difficulty in emptying 3 piles.
Good cards:
Discard attacks, especially Militia - Getting $5 from 3 cards is fairly easy, getting $8 is quite difficult.
Vault (especially for Fairgrounds) - Vault lets you guarantee $6.
Copper - Duke decks want an average of $5 per turn, or $1 per card. Copper gives you that.
Black Market (Fairgrounds only)
Counters:
Buying their rush cards - Same as for Gardens
Multiple Rabbles - Filling the top of their deck with green cards is easy against decks that buy a lot of greens, and with fewer useful cards it's harder to buy even cheap victory cards.
4c) Ill-Gotten Gains/Duchy
Buying out the IGGs empties two piles. Buying out Duchies empties the third. Conveniently, IGG makes it easy to buy Duchies because of the extra copper, but hard to buy Provinces because of the curse. In an IGG-Duchy mirror, you should buy a Duchy over the last IGG unless buying the last IGG causes you to win immediately.
Good cards:
Trash-for-benefit cards (Remake, Remodel, Salvager, etc) - the main benefit of IGG is the curse, but it still counts as $5 for trashers.
Counters:
Cursing attacks - If the curse pile empties faster than the IGG pile, buying the last few IGGs becomes entirely unattractive and the strategy falls apart.
5) Durdle
Durdle decks don't do anything useful, then they lose. They're typically built by new players.
Counters:
Big Money, even without any actions, beats all of these decks.
5a) Sampler Pack
The Sampler Pack consists of one of each card, with way too many terminals. They're the classic first-game-of-Dominion deck, and most players learn better quickly.
5b) The Magic Player
The Magic Player looks at Market and says "wow, a card that replaces itself and gives me $1. That's broken, I'll buy as many as possible". By the time he's got all the Markets his opponent has 4 Provinces. Any deck containing lots of nonterminals which don't do much falls into this category (you really don't want to play against a Magic Player who tries to build Pawn/Pearl Diver/Conspirator).
5c) Turbo Remodel
Turbo Remodel is any deck that tries to eventually upgrade a Copper into a Province. A typical Turbo Remodel turn will be "Village, Remodel Copper into Estate, Remodel Remodel into Gold, go". Upgrade, Remake, Expand and Develop are also commonly used. I spent ages when I was new trying to make this deck work, and 97% of the time it's too slow.
5d) The Trasher
The Trasher just realized that Chapel is awesome, and by logical extension, he should chapel everything. He Chapels coppers and estates while buying Silver, he Chapels Silver when buying Gold, runs out of steam after 3 Provinces, and loses to Big Money. This is a trap even experienced players sometimes fall for - just this morning I realized I'd trashed down to only 1 silver and had to embarrassedly buy a copper.
6) Oddball
Oddball decks rely on synergy between a particular set of cards, but don't have the explosive potential (or fragility) of combo decks. They're occasionally good enough to be worth building, but almost never worth transitioning into. Embargo will often hurt these decks a lot.
Ironworks + Great Hall/Island + Transmute
Great Hall's dual typing makes Ironworks work well with it. Alone this isn't very good, but when combined with Scout and/or Transmute you can end up with an interesting deck. Tribute is a good counter.
The Copper Deck
The full Copper Deck is actually a combo deck, consisting of Tactician, Counting House, Cellar, Coppersmith(s), Workers Village(s) and optionally Throne Room. Some combination of these cards, with possible Chancellor, can lead to an interesting non-combo deck.
Good Turbo Remodel
Peddler, Border Village, and Ill-Gotten Gains all have costs higher than their values. Haggler lets you get expensive cards cheaply. Forge lets you make good use of expensive cards. Throne room Develop, developing Border Village into Ill-Gotten Gains and Forge, developing Ill-Gotten Gains into Border Village gaining Ill-Gotten Gains and Throne Room is an amazing turn.
Pirate Ship
Pirate Ship has amazing self-synergy, where each Pirate Ship powers up your other Pirate Ships. Especially good in games with 3+ players, as Pirate Ships have a higher chance of hitting their mark, and in games with Village effects so you can play 2 Ships on one turn. Countered very effectively by strong action decks who love having their coppers trashed.
Two-card Synergy
These decks aim to exploit two cards which work together. They work best when you can reliably get them together thanks to trashing, draw, or simply buying a lot of each card. Examples include Chancellor/Stash and Tunnel/discard.
