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>Fundamentally having more cards is bad, because it increases variance in what you can draw.

StS has a number of enemies that shuffle bad cards into your deck, so this dillution works both ways. On higher difficulties more of these cards get shuffled into your deck. Trying a "thin" strategy with no countermeasures in such a fight (high damage output to end the fight fast?) can get you railroaded. You also start out with 10 starters that you want to dillute because virtually any card is better than them. Cards with "draw" and "exhaust" written on them also let you workaround the problem of drawing starter or negative effect cards. Picking up one or two versatile 2-cost cards early (attack or block card) can give you a good way to use your energy even if you draw mostly starters or negative effect cards while avoiding excessive deck dillution later on.

StS does offer you worse cards at the beginning of the game, and limited ways to remove or upgrade these cards, so picking up too many cards can burden you later on.

Really to be good at StS deckbuilding mostly requires you to know which enemies will come up when and building your deck sufficiently to survive them without shooting yourself in the foot long term too much. Jorbs is usually focused on building his deck to beat the hardest fight in the game while absorbing the minimum deadweight to survive until that point. Watching a stream can give you a rough idea of what a good "pace" for adding new cards into your deck is.

Jorbs's way of thinking about the game is very well considered and I'm sure useful for new players but his skill at taking turns makes it hard to copy him. Try it - take a seed from one of his runs, copy his decisions, and play the fights out yourself. You'll get flattened.

Jorbs can reliably reach the heart with a much more challenging deck than you or I can. He's also playing a game mode that imposes challenges that don't exist for new players. Just shoving a lot of good cards in your deck might be pretty good advice for new players up until about ascension ten.

An important idea is that you're not only drafting to make a generally good deck, you're drafting to defeat the immediate challenges that are coming up.

If you're in Act 2 and headed for an elite, you have to think, "can my deck beat book of stabbing? gremlin leader? taskmaster?".

If right now your deck sucks against the book, and you're offered a disarm or caltrops, it might be worth picking it even if it's doesn't generally make your deck stronger. Cause otherwise you might get stabbed to death.

On the flip side, Demon Form is a very strong card, but it's practically a curse for most of Act 1, because it's too costly and slow. So sometimes you might skip even a strong card if it doesn't help you right now.

That concept is what has helped me get over the A15-20 hump. It's more important to draft cards that shore up immediate weaknesses than it is to draft cards that might pair well with other effects in your deck. Draft for the short-term, not the long term, because stronger short term victories means you can pathfind more aggressively and acquire more gold/rewards.

I'd say that's probably the most important "ah-ha" moment where my winrate really started to significantly improve. That and knowing when to min/max # of combats while pathfinding.

Yeah, I definitely don't mean to imply that the comparison to your current cards is a hard and fast rule, but more that it's a good thing to start thinking about if you never skip cards.

I do skip taking cards, but I probably don't skip it enough. It's difficult to get over the psychology of 'I beat the battle, I get to pick my reward.' It's my reward, I should pick one, and anyway I get a choice of 3, so one of those 3 ought to be good for me, right?

No, not necessarily. But my brain wants to pick one anyway.

It takes a while to get a feel for the strategy and a lot of counterintuitive or seemingly impossible things become straightforward. Considering there's a lengthy stretch just unlocking cards, it doesn't sound like you're in some particularly unusual place, 40 hours in.

What you're saying is true, but I think people with card-game experience tend to over-skip the card rewards in the name of consistency. Low difficulty levels reward this, because the bosses are the only real challenge and holding out for cards good against bosses helps your win-rate.

At high difficulty levels you need to pick a card (and possibly buy cards at shops) through most of Acts 1 and 2 because you won't be able to reach the boss without a bunch of damage commons.

Yeah, my advice was squarely aimed at those who are struggling with the base game difficulty. Your advice is sound for those who get better for sure, the game will definitely punish you for being greedy and trying to keep your deck too clean as you ramp up the difficulty.