I think thats something that keeps me from enjoying card battlers too much. I like them, but burn out quick on them. M:TG has the same issue I think.
I like deck building, playing wild, creative decks... but, card battlers/mtg are designed with hard counters. oh, you want to play that fun deck? too bad, hard counter, its unplayable. Corruption in mt:2 for example, just kills multiple deck builds. regen, etc.
theres then this weird middle ground when playing, where you need to be flexible and not try and force builds, but also, there are builds that are just dead ends.
and I struggle with that. I often want to play cards that are fun, or interesting. or sometimes have a build in mind before I even start a run. (which trying to force will often lead to failure)
draft in mtg helps alleviate it. as the rng means its unlikely either player will have a raw meta deck.
Path of exile, or more traditional rogue likes, are way more generous in letting you build what what, based on whatever drops. rarely have lets say, a boss that auto wins against bows. so, when doing a run, you know bow is a 50% chance to auto lose, thus its never worth going bow, in the case that boss spawns in the later levels.
the predesired build versus pure rng build is a interesting element I think that could/should be addressed in game.
imagine a check box. random path, versus player choosing path.
then we make use of the "biomes". like currently for act 1 there is docks and overgrowth.
what if docks and overgrowth each had deck priorities. like, silent -docks favors shivs, overgrowth favors poison. so if you are playing silent and want to do a shiv run, you can choose docks to have a higher chance of getting shiv card rewards.
