Very compelling, if a little hard to understand immediately. Worth learning though! One thing I wish was a little clearer was that the "points" from hands give you both defense and attack; the colors from the hand types gave me the impression that I was only receiving one type of stat. Also, special attack/defense stats like dodge and multiattack also decay the same as normal attack/defense, but don't give you a tooltip warning you about it.
Overall I really enjoyed my first couple runs with it. The items feel interesting and impactful, and I like the concept of getting extra gold for taking weaker cards, or sacrificing existing cards to take stronger ones. The consistent tension of the clock, declining combat stats, and escalating power costs makes for a very tight game experience with very little stalling, and the rewards for constructing powerful hands had me doing mental math. Special shoutout to Deathwish for being a very cute risk/reward item!