Interesting, I look forward to seeing the conclusion of this experiment. As you know I ran a similiar one where I used only the starter set cards with no upgrading/buying or selling and reached into the Silver leagues.

My strategy was simply play until I win the daily and then stop. On the last two days of the league I ran up the league standings as far as I could. Silver league was as far as I progressed using this strategy and considering I only used the starter cards I thought that was more then a fair level to reach with such underpowered and limited card set. In other words ... great value for $10.

Now some things have changed since my experiment and yours. I do disagree with some of your assessment and I see your outcome in game play as positive for an investment of $10 thus far. I think the biggest issue that you are going to run into that I didn't is the army of bots you will eventually have to overcome.

Some other notes : It also took me 10 - 40 minutes per daily quest with the starter set cards. As you are doing the same it looks like that aspect of the game hasn't changed. I stopped climbing the league on the last day if gaining points became too slow. Its actually possible to get into the gold league with just level one cards but you would need an abundance of time on your hands (which most of us don't have) to accomplish. I know this because I have played against level 1 teams in the gold league.

Thanks for taking the time to do this experiment as I know its time consuming. The info attained will likely help allot of others in the game.