I don't know why but my battles today just made me think about what kind of game Splinterlands really is. The card choices are all made at the beginning of the game and no decisions are made during the game. Ultimately, the game is about maximizing the combination of health, shield and damage done per round.
If you have used Excel, you might be aware of a feature called 'Solver'. It is used to optimize inputs given constraints. In this case, mana cap and maybe position of range and melee cards.
It is an interesting exercise and i haven't used solver in more than 10 years but I wonder when the next generation of bots are going to use AI to solve such problems. It will be interesting to see how the introduction of Lands changes the dynamic of the game.