Frankly I don't think Triple Triad is intended to be a 'skill' game at all. Certainly you can make good decisions that will up your winrates compared to someone playing blind, but only by a little bit and there'll always layers of randomness present (outright random rules, random card drops, etc).

Collecting cards is meant to be more a long term effort - for some cards much longer than others. Which is an attempt to draw out the lifespan of content so you're farming cards over the course of an entire expansion, or what have you. Otherwise we'd collect everything the first week of an expansion and then quibble about having nothing to do.

I'm not saying that's good or bad, it's just what it is. It works out well if you're fortunate enough to only care about TT semi-casually, but if you're in a "Must have EVERY card right now" kind of person and go after them in an ocd manner you're going to have a bad time.