Yeah i'm not with you on this post sorry. You know I love the game and the investment.
However, let's not compare a game with 4k players to one with millions... it's not gonna end well for us.
And let's not bash some of the things that has made games like that successful for many many years... let's find a way to see how we can take elements and adapt them.

We lack a "battle of wits" style of game play... right now we have a "blind player vs meta" style. We don't have to change what we're good at in order to bring in elements that make millions of people happy. People might be missing the ability to react to what someone else does.

Here's the thing about a 5-45 minute game they actually are playing most of the time... because they are thinking of strategy for their next move while the other player is doing their turn. And people love that... that's 45 minutes of game play to some people and for millions of people that thinking, strategizing and out-witting is what they love.
Strategizing is fun in splinterlands... but can be sooo much more fun if you can strategize against the actions of your oponent not against a general guess and meta expectation.

Personally i think that can be fulfilled in a non-blind live drafting system. The game still focuses on the drafting and isn't as long as hearthstone but maybe appeals to the things that made those other games successful for many many years.
Even tournaments with blind drafting can still be good... because then part of the game play might end up focusing on learning your opponent and researching. Can't do that in the present style because you get the announcement right as game play starts giving you zero time to allow it to become a battle against the player

What we have is an amazing foundation on a great blockchain. We can do things those other games can't because of how they have built their foundations.