Comment by brightball

Fwiw, the amount of cards we have to play with is pretty limited to a few starter sets so very specialized decks don't really happen. I got rid of all of my cards from the 90s (still kicking myself there).

It's more that it keeps the game fun as he's just getting into it. You're guaranteed that both players are going to have playable draws.

For any setting with more advanced players there would definitely be side effects and a more polished set of rules in place for those special cards and circumstances.