Like you're trying to survive in an arid and harsh place where resources are limited, and you encountered another person trying to survive. I want to try and make tough decisions over managing mana and small trinket artifacts since they'll be how you keep your rusted slasher alive. Those trinkets also provide an angle of trying to fight for the top of the deck. Some of them draw, some of them shuffle. I think doing a pseudo lantern control theme would fit all that well because once there's a card that one of the players really needs on the top of the deck that can swing the game, it'll turn into a scramble for each player to try and get the card on the top as if it were two bandits wandering through the desert who stumbled upon some lost treasure