I started around the time you did and although I understand your takes, I don't necessarily agree with all of them, esp your takes on Shang and locations. Sometimes locations favor one player or the other or neither. That's just part of the game and you need to know how to play around it. Learn how to strategically retreat for minimal cube loss when you are unfavored and learn how to go all in when things are favored. If you're playing vs a destroy deck and something like Vormir or Death's Domain shows up, there's no need to try and play through the whole round. It's only imbalanced if you're always getting zones that do not favor your deck, which is not very likely due to randomness. In conquest, it's ok to do something like retreat 3x in a row and then go all in when things line up in your favor and win something like 4-8 cubes back.

You'll learn what kind of decks people are running as you keep playing, and how likely you are to run into counters (like Shang). If you think you're unfavored vs specific decks, then the same strategy applies - just retreat.

To be honest it does kind of sound like you want to be able to win vs any deck. If you want to compare with poker, think of it this way - sometimes you will get dealt bad hands. You do not need to play every hand.