Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ex-Power Artifact, Ex-Academy, Ex-Oath-Combo, Ex-Enchantress and Active Legacy Splinter Twin combo player here. I really don't see how actually interacting with your opponent is less "brainy" than comboing out. Building a combo deck to win turn 1 reliably is not as difficult as actually interacting with your opponent and forcing them into submission. To win with a good combo, just assemble the deck with dollars and l…
I do somewhat agree with you from a playing standpoint. I often gravitated to combo or control because I didn't want to deal with doing the math on attacking / blocking as it could lead to some awfully complicated interactions. But there were definitely difficult decisions to be made when playing combo or control, since you'd often be facing aggressive decks that put you on a clock. But mainly, I found the deck build…
In a typical Academy deck (pure combo) you just built a 56 card combo deck and slammed in 4 force of wills for protection. A game will another is only slightly harder to win than a game against a goldfish. If the metagame decisions around your control go beyond "How do I defeat the one thing that stops me" you probably weren't playing an optimal version of that deck. Academy decks should be winning before turn 3 100% of the time.
Someone mentioned Prosbloom, I was under the impression it won 3 or 4 with a city of solitude in play. Pretty much the only question you need to ask about that metagame is "How do deal with someone stopping my turn 2 squandered resources?". Versions dealt with that with copious use of 4x enlightened tutor and 4x vampiric tutor, not a real metagame choice.
In Illusions/Donate (combo/control) you build and play a blue/white control deck with a win condition that sometimes saves you the hassle of having to interact. You are still playing a two player game with removal and sometimes even creatures, but your wins come in fast from nowhere. There were several ways to interfere because the win could come well after control was seized or sometimes just before the aggro player attempts to win.
Try pulling off anything of that consistency when you cannot run duplicates of your combos and need to run 100 cards. This is what EDH looks like. Actual thought on deck design because you can't easily build a well oiled machine from cookie cutter parts. When running it feels like trying to win a race while building the racecar from secondhand parts. There is immense challenge and complex decisions.
The combo decks look totally different and barring an extreme outliers (Arcum Dagson and Narset) it is nearly impossible to build a deck that wins consistently without actual board interaction.