Sorry your description of the tactics explains nothing to dispute the fact that this is an auto battler so skill plays a way smaller part than it does in a game like chess or mtg. Yes placement can be critical which leads back to the battle helper only gives you best placement of said cards under said ruleset based off your deck and past game history. Team Fight Tactics(Another game I coach) have all sorts of helpers that give you basic placement for your lineup based off of the data of played battles. Now, it can't take into account a player that constantly changes their board to counter other boards during gameplay which is where a bit more skill is involved because that would be cheating. But it lays the foundation for someone who doesn't study the meta to have info to understand the how and whys.

And yes League requires way more skill but it still spoon feeds you meta data for every little facet of the game. It's up to you and your time and skill to determine how good you want or can be.

So if placement is the problem that the helper proves unfair would it then be fine if it just gave you the top cards to play for that ruleset? Because we just saw splinterlands showcase Splintercoach on the townhall which is another form of a "battle helper". You can break down win percentages by focus/ruleset with specific cards. That is critical data that if used correctly could be just as if not more powerful than the current popular battle helper.

I'll touch back on the competitive nature of games in this genre. It is all about up to date information and how to counter said data. It is constantly evolving and requires much skill and intelligence to keep up with and conquer. This is what the causual gamer fails to understand about this at a very high level. A casual gamer has the same info and can have some success but will hit a skill wall. If we have enough gamers playing our ranked modes the skill will rise to the top regardless of battle helpers. I've stated before, the only way the battle helper would be a complete no for me is if it were to counter a submitted lineup by the other player. That would be an exit for me but to my knowledge that is not possible.

I really hope that we find some kind of common ground and balance with the companion helpers. But just to come out and say yup their bad because chess or mtg is very sad. This is an online auto battler(RNG) If you want to have organic one on ones head back to friday night Magic. Or look forward to when we have more in person events in splinterlands. Let's not put up walls that can't be taken down until its too late. Instead look to the recipes of the most successful online tcg/autobattler games out there. Again I will point you towards Riot Games. Will we ever be that big? No probably not but even if we can be a 100th of what they are everyone will be extremely happy in this space.