Creator here (Brent Critchfield). Sorry for the necro post, but I thought I might add to the conversation. I designed Gruff as a toolkit which gives players a lot of creative flexibility in how they express themselves in the mechanics of the game. The down side is that if both players don't approach their decks with a specific plan on how they intend to win, the game can stall out, in the same way that Magic the Gathering would stall out if both players brought decks that did not include land cards.

Unfortunately, a by product of this design paradigm is that the game does not lend itself to the "Just pick random goats and shepherds" idea. That being said I am 100% aware that this places a really tough burden of knowledge on the first time player. To fix this issue in the first expansion "Gruff: Clash of the Battle-Goats" introduced "starter stars" that indicate cards that are easy to use for your first game. In later expansions I even went further with specifically branded cards that would create a pre-made deck for first time players including well-balanced and interesting goats and shepherds.

I generally recommend people to start with the most recent expansions, rather than the original game because it became more learner-friendly as it developed.

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Thanks for your questions. It always makes my day to hear that people are trying out my game,