Well I ended up finishing the Limitless Speed deck and a RoL/Hope deck for FG grinding... and I'm not really seeing the time cost/benefit work out. Still feels extraordinarily grind-focused to me. Guess it's not my cup of tea! Oh well.
Well, you might not win a lot of FG games, but you can get electrum from selling upped cards that you win. Most of the money I make comes from the cards, not the actual games. And there are PvP events, including weekly tournaments, that you can join if you don't feel like grinding all the time!