I disagree, I'm pretty sure you can 100% winrate if you play properly
I don't doubt it. But how many of the cards would you actually ever use? And how many would you never ever use, since they are bait? That's kind of the root issue. If there is only 1-2 "proper" ways to do it, and everything else is bait. Then we get back to the "illusion of choice" conundrum. That is my core concern for replayability.
Yeah, most cards are just outright bad. Then some have the illusion of being good, but are actually bad. And then there's Minecart. If you have any amount of payoff already in your deck (Aquafer, Wrench), then Minecart is singlehandedly the best purchase you can ever make going forward.
For instance... Smeltery. 2 Energy for 1, has to be good right? Well, if you consider cards and energy both a resource, then this is net 0 (-1 card +1 energy), with no other effects. So you essentially wasted your ore buying it. Furnace on the other hand, 2 Energy for 4 Energy. This is a net +1 (-1 card, +2 energy), and is crucial for building a "Draw your deck every round" engine.
Other net 0 cards are fine. Like Ingot (+2 ore), Helmet (+2 score) and isopod (shuffle discard into draw). They don't harm your deck (0 cost, play a card, draw a card), give a small little benefit, and also contribute towards Wrench (great payoff card for engine decks)
But then you got cards like the anvil or whatever. +4 resource and +1 cost? Even for the "play a resource" cards like brush and glove, there's still better options than that.
There's some "okay" early game cards that haven't ever caused me a run failure like Campsite, Bat Cavern, and Salamander, but things like Furnace and Minecart are better than them.
I don't even remember a majority of the cards because playing a card to get some ore or score while doing nothing else didn't need to be an action card, because we already have resource cards. The +1/+1 cards that only work if you have no resources seem bad, because you just always want resources to play during a round. Would be better if they cost 0, because then you could at least use them after playing all your resources. But again, other options are just outright better for that.