I wonder does anyone here play other card games? Did similar balance issues exist in MtG but got ironed out during the decades? Are those just teething problems? Or is it simply the case that Brode et al. are a bunch of headless chicken who don't know what they're doing?
Magic is played professionally in different formats. You have a bunch of "limited" formats, which are the equivalent to Arena, where you have to make due with random cards (but the draft is way more demanding in the Draft format for example).
In constructed you have the "Standard" format that only allows you to use cards from the latest expansions and a bunch of "eternal" formats, that use different slices of the huge and deep card pool released over the years.
"Standard" gameplay is a lot like Hearthstone, you mostly have a minion focused deck and beat each other with it, with the occasional control or even combo archetype. You have the same problem as in Hearthstone, where everyone just plays the meta decks after a few tournaments but at least the card pool is continually shifting, so that you have to come up with something new from time to time. The format is USUALLY not that degenerate and games can take a while of back and forth play because of the limited availability of ultra powerful cards.
There are three big eternal formats, Modern, Legacy and Vintage, which use different slices of the card pool.
Modern uses all the cards since a design change about 10 years (?!) ago and is filled to the brim with combo decks that just win on the spot on turns 4-10, basically a situation unimaginable for HS players but pretty tame compared to the other formats (and there are some more classic decks as well).
Legacy is where it's becoming degenerate. You have most of the card pool ever released available for deckbuilding (except a few broken cards that were banned over the years), resulting in a meta of decks that want to outdo each other in brokenness. All of these decks are ultra fast and can either completely destroy you within a few turns (2-5) or set up a hard lock that doesn't allow you to do anything while they slowly grind you down. The cards that define this format are something that Hearthstone lacks, deck manipulation. There is a lot of cheap draw and shuffling around of cards in your deck so that you draw exactly what you want (this is not available to this extent in Modern, so the decks are mostly instawin there as well but can't assemble their combos as fast). Imagine Tracking on steroids in almost every deck.
Some of these decks utilize creatures to beat you, but they are mostly involved in setting up a combo. For example the "Elves" deck can chain its dinky mana creatures together in a combo to generate huge amounts of mana, draw half the deck and then overrun you with a combo piece in a few turns or alternatively cheat out an unblockable, indestructible 10/10 creature on turn 2-3. Other decks explode you with a spell combo a few turns into the game or destroy all your resources and watch you die slowly in agony.
Vintage has no banned cards, only a few restricted cards that you can use only a single one in your deck. In this format you have access to the design mistakes of the very early cards from the stone age of Magic, which are just completely broken and unfair, usually otherwordly mana acceleration and some over the top draw. Turn 1-2 wins are very common. Due to the broken mana cards from the dark ages you can kickstart your combo/draw engine, go through your whole deck, assemble the combo pieces and destroy your opponent in your first turn.
There are also a few turn 0 win decks that are able to kill you before you even drew a card on your first turn and had the opportunity to do anything. AND YOU ARE THE FIRST PLAYER. So you start the game as the first player and are destroyed by your opponent before you took a single action. Given, these decks are way less reliable than those that just cycle through your whole deck once it's your turn, but if you get the right hand they are kinda hilarious.
The thing that is balancing out these degeneracies are instant response cards that you can play on your opponents turn, for example countering a key spell of his for 0 mana. But always remember that your opponent can play these as well, so if you counter his key combo piece he can just counter your counterspell if he has the answer.
A funny anecdote of my schooltime, where a lot of people played MtG:
The brother of a friend of mine ordered a broken combo deck that was en vogue at that time (Megrim Jar) and challenged every dork in the school library to play against him for money (if he wins, everyone gives him 1€ otherwise he gives everyone else 1€). So herded about ten nerds together, that were sure to get some easy money with their Goblin aggro decks or whatever garbage they played at the time (they were pretty casul, but there were 10 of them).
So first round, everyone was playing dinky charge creatures or zapping his face with damage spells, being sure about how they get some eazy €. Then the guy went last (still first round), shat out his combo and oneshotted the whole table.
The deck revolved around a card that dealt 2 damage to everyone whenever they discard a card and another thing that let all players discard their hands and draw 7 new cards plus some mana acceleration. So he just cheated out the parts with mana acceleration, then let everyone draw 7 new cards and discard their hand, draw more mana and another 7 card draw/discard thing and repeat, dealing a shitload of damage to everyone around the table.
Of course I knew that the deck was broken as fuck (soon to be found on the banlist for official tournaments) so I just watched the library nerds cry out in agony over their loss and laughed my ass off.
