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If it's deck bloat, then yes, it's a surprisingly common issue. In fact one of the biggest run killers in my experience. Sometimes the maps just don't work with you that much and you really can't avoid it (nothing like picking the "wrong" path in a fork in the map but not realizing it until you advance the map further). Most of the time though you can at least keep it in check, though what exactly you have available to help with this is also partially dependent on how much you've unlocked and what handicaps you have so far (like its obviously easier to get a card that is at least decent for your deck, when you still have clover active). When it comes to map nodes, you want to prioritize nodes like the campfire, the sigil swap, the mycologists, the bone lord, or cave trials whenever possible over nodes like any of the card selections. Woodcarver can also be a priority depending on your tactic, some totems can be ridiculously powerful and if you manage to get something like the hoarder sigil base then even a bloated deck may not actually be an issue (since a decent portion of that deck likely now lets you hand select a card from your deck when you play them). If you MUSt choose a card selection node, try to keep as much control in the selection as possible. Cave trials are preferred because you can skip the card entirely if you fail, but even if you get the card its always got a double sigil bonus to. After that, favor the standard selection where you just outright choose between 3 visible cards, if that isnt available the tribe card node is usually the next best because you can at least keep it tribe related for totem help, and the last one I tend to go to when i truly cant avoid it is the cost card node, where you select a cost and it gives you a random card of that category.
Hoarder sigil I already partially touched on, normally it's Magpie card in the game, the one that let's you hand select a card of your choosing from anywhere in your deck. Magpie however is also normally a 2 blood cost, so it's a sigil thats great to swap onto something cheaper and/or more useful. The faster you can play it, the more you can benefit from it afterall. That part ties into the fair hand mechanic. If you pay close attention to your hand, you will ALWAYS draw something from your top deck that you could reasonably play turn 1 (how helpful that card is is entirely your problem to deal with though). Normally it's a 1 blood or a free card, but there is the potential for it to be a bone card as well. If you ensure that either your win condition cards, or your cards with hoarder, fall into this category then you have a better chance of drawing them in your first hand (especially if you limit what other cheaper cards you keep). If you can get that hoarder sigil on a totem, especially in a heavily tribe-focused run (like a mantis god insect deck run for example) then RNG becomes your toy instead of the other way around.
If it's boss gimmicks, I think i already typed too much to cover that here lol. Thats what a bunch of the guides are focused on anyway (like fliers being anglers weakness for example).
I've been keeping my deck lean, per the advice I read on here.
I'll endeavor to put the hoarder sigil on a 1 cost. Honestly, the rest of it just feels like the game is bending me over. I'll have a lean deck with killer cards, and somehow I'll draw the worst possible starting hand, that plays into the strengths of the opposing deck, with nothing to use to get a leg up on in the subsequent cards. This is either because the cards aren't good, or they are simply too late coming out at that point. The opponent will have cards stacked, and I can't survive long enough to get the good ones out.
I guess my next question would be, what is considered lean? Aka what's the range in # of cards? I know how to handle each of the bosses well, that's not the issue.
I'll definitely use Kingfisher more now. Love cuckoo, such a great card.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2880070575
Another mantis god starter deck going into the finale, but I never did get any mycologists that run so the duplicates I had didnt get to be overpowered (Mantis god is admittedly a great starter deck for smoother runs, especially when going for certain achievements like the last one I'm missing):
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2887799399
Though one of my technically most efficient decks was actually 15 cards, but that one was a specifically interesting one because of the chosen starter deck. If interested I have the shot of that one, but if you haven't unlocked what most consider the "egg deck" yet, it could be a spoiler:
The egg deck can be a difficult starter because the eggs wont actually hatch into anything of much use until you fulfill set requirements for what you possess in your deck. The dots on the eggs will light up as you complete requirements for these eggs, when they are fully lit up they can then become something rather interesting (though perhaps not worth this level of effort). The requirements are a creature from each tribe, and a creature with 1-5 for their health/damage. Any combination works, like an amalgam counts as any tribe (once) and is a 3/3 standard to it can be a wild card for tribe but also ills both requirements for the 3 slots. That is what makes this deck so uniquely challenging and why 15 cards (including the two pelts i still had) were actually about as efficient as i could be for that considering trader is the best way to have a wide selection and full control of card selections. All that context out of the way, the actual deck for that one:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2784997431
however... if you really hate struggling with some of the rng of this, save scumming (basically cheating) is possible at certain key moments that can GREATLY shift rng into your favor. Ill list the few i can think of at the moment.
Campfires: If you have a ringworm, adder or long elk you can try to get the survivors to eat them from the very 1st campfire by making them stay at the fire the 2nd time, if they dont eat the unit, smash escape and go back to main menu, as the autosave doesnt occur unless the unit is eaten or you finish the event and take the card off the campfire, so reload and place the actual card you want to upgrade with no fear of it being lost, and if the campers do eat it, all campfires after that are a free 2 upgrades.
Path switching: If you come to a fork in the road and a totem or card selection is one way and maybe a campfire and something else is the other, you can "check" what cards or totems are offered, and if nothing appears to you, pick nothing and again, escape out and again go down another path, this is also viable for the creature cave events, letting you nearly triple your chances of getting a card with multiple buffs on it.
Map rerolling: one of the biggest ones you can do is this. After you beat a boss you can look at the new map to see if you like it, (make sure you do not get up from the table or it will auto save) if not, again escape to the menu and load back into the game. You should be standing where you just beat the previous boss and when it transitions an entire new map layout will be displayed, this can help you reroll the map over and over until you get a layout of events you need.
This also works on all encounters if you felt you made a mistake, main menu and redo the fight, this will NOT shuffle your deck so if you have a bloated deck and no useful cards until the back you are just screwed as some fights will become just 100% unwinnable with your current hand dealt.
When you're picking cards, try evaluating them for their potential to choke you on the starting hand. I don't want to put words in your mouth here, since I don't know exactly what you're doing, but you don't need a bunch of moose bucks/dire wolves/grizzly bears/turkey vultures. You want multiple low-cost, high utility cards that work in a variety of situations, and very few cards that you can't cast turn one.
Synergy is really good (i.e., cat sigil on the black goat) but not necessary. A one-cost card that does an average job at two-three unrelated things is a great card, because it's useful in a wide range of situations.
E.G., warren, beehive, skink are great utility cards even before you put more sigils on them. Why? All three of them will face tank anything for a turn and then you'll still have a card left over to sacrifice on the following turn. Buffing their stats and putting sigils on them will only make them even more useful.
If you want to have a killer card, buff mantis god to 2/1. There's your turn-one killer right there, it only costs you one squirrel, and you haven't even put any sigils on it yet. Better yet, put your mantis god sigil on a skink and buff the skink's stats. Its tail will win fights for you.
Corpse Eater is a great way to massively increase utility on high-cost cards like dire wolf or grizzly because you can just drop some weak blocker like a squirrel or skink and then boom you have a dire wolf the next turn and didn't have to pay for it. And, incidentally, corpse maggots are a great utility card on their own for the same reason. You could just put a nice sigil like pack rat or unkillable on the maggots to make them a great card in their own right.
As few as possible. Barely enough to handle boss second phases. The fewer cards you have, the more consistent your performance will be. For the first boss you might need to be careful how low you go, but for bosses 2-4 you pretty much can't go low enough, you'll always have more cards than you want. So pack your good sigils onto as few cards as possible, find your worst card and take two buffs at the campfire -- it'll either die, or it'll become a good card.
The key is totems. Get the insect head the moment you can, and for the body hope for : rabbit, bees, hoarder, fecundity, unkillable, or ant spawner. Of course you also need to get your hands on as many insect cards as possible. A worker ant is a must, mantis or mantis god of course if you can get one. Cockroach, maggots as well as bee hive can be very useful.
If you can't get an insect card then prioritize cars that give bonuses, or that can be interesting to sacrifice. Check the path ahead though, you're sometimes better off getting a so-so card rather than being overburdened with cards that you can't easily use because of their cost.
So ant deck, insect totem, get insects when you can, boost them up.
Ant deck was a struggle when I was starting off the mod. Did fine with the other decks as I went up in challenged.
But the mod forced me to finally learn mechanics I never learned before in the main game. It's crazy how totem spawns inherit abilities from the parent card. An ant deck built properly is terrifying to deal with.