many are going to find their approach lacking
Only if they made bots to play for them. Have you played CCGs before? XD
When new sets drop, you excitedly go through the new cards and find cool ones and the first thing you do is work out where you can use it in existing decks or what kind of decks you can build with or around cards.
Or where you can slot stuff in the lineup in the case of Splinterlands, I mostly come from playing Pokemon TCG and M:tG x_x
A lot of people seem that they don't want to buy into anything digital
As far as I can tell from knowing a lot of these people (not even on Hive), is that with digital assets you're "wasting" "real" money on "nothing" whereas when you buy a piece of cardboard with pretty artwork on it you have a piece of cardboard with pretty artwork on it.
Never heard.
Everyone loves pretty cardboard pictures - that is why Hallmark makes so much money! :)