I’ve played Chess, I’ve played COD/Halo etc, I’ve played GT, I’ve played Soul Calibur, Tetris, a ton of RPGs. E&P has a huge amount of strategy which is comparable to many of those - a lot of it is hidden, but is definitely there. I am finding new ways to play with new tactics every day - going from mono to rainbow offers a whole new style of play. Even picking up a new hero offers a whole new dimension - I am discovering the synergies between Lady Loki and Myztero. Myztero is particularly strong against Tel as he can usually slow the enemy mana down before the flanks have charged. Myztero is great against Bera tanks as he can throw back the poision and minion block to all, allowing you to dump tiles into her as much as you want without fear of her special doing anything.
There are so many layers of play in the actual board - yes the starting board is RNG, yes there is RNG in replacement tiles - but you learn to understand how to play the odds. You learn how many tiles will trigger an opposing hero (you may want to do that, or you may want to avoid it). You learn how to trigger cascades, and you learn how to minimise your footprint.
The specials are another dimension, particularly with newer heroes. Ninjas, tile-dependent heroes, hero counters, taunters, mana controllers, cloners, status returners… there is a lot of thinking to be done in each and every match, vs how it probably was af the start with a bunch of pretty basic hitters and healers
Whenever I lose I look back and think why did I lose - and as long as I am bringing a team that has a decent chance of winning against the team I went up against, then in almost every matchup I can recognise a timing or targetting mistake or a wrong board move that directly influenced the outcome. The other day in war there was a board that I conceded was unwinnable due to lack of tiles - but I get one of those maybe once every 20 boards, if that. As long as I prepare right, play the board right, make the right choices with which specials to charge up first and which to fire and the order to fire and who to target - 95% are winnable. Regardless of the starting board. And that tells me that skill > luck, by quite a margin
Quite honestly I just don’t get why anyone would play this game if they genuinely believed that luck plays a greater part than skill. That would suck the challenge and sense of progression and accomplishment right out of it for me