I've seen quite a few threads detailing the importance of tempo, card advantage, and draw probability, and they are absolutely correct; You will not win very often if you don't have at least an elementary understanding of these concepts. However, there is one more aspect to the game that I feel needs to be included...
Your Hero's health total is a resource! By this, I don't necessarily mean that you can spend life to create an effect, although in some games this is possible. Indeed, even within the currently limited card pool of SE, we have Blood Frenzy (although this is more a passive auto-include than a conscious choice) and Supernova (where 5 of your own health is arguably part of the casting cost).
Like a lot of other people on this board, I've spent many years playing M:TG. Black is, was, and always will be my favorite mana color in that game, and this has had an effect on how I view life totals in CCGs, tabletop RP, and even MMORPGs. It boils down to this: You're not dead UNTIL IT HITS ZERO. This sounds like an obvious and pointless observation, but too many times in this game have I witnessed someone making bad play choices based on the fact that they're trying to never take even one point of damage. They feel that taking damage somehow means they're losing, and this isn't necessarily the case. Taking damage early in the game so that you can reach a comfortable position later is acceptable; sometimes this is even par for the course with some deck types, e.g., a Nishaven deck running no allies.
Continuing with the Nish example, if your opponent casts Fire Snake first turn, followed by Brutalis second turn, most of the time your response should not be to cast Rain Delay in fear of taking damage before you can remove them. Each of these allies only does 1 damage, and while this damage can EVENTUALLY add up, this early in the game it is mostly unimportant. It's better to wait until they have more potential damage on the board. A prematurely played Rain Delay can actually cause you to take MORE damage up until you can wipe the board with Nish's ability, as you will then be taking damage from even more allies on turns 3 and 4.
I'm 90% sure there was more I intended to say in this post, but I watched the new Melanie Iglesias flipbook after typing the previous sentence, and now I've lost my focus.
TL;DR - Damage you take in the early game is not as important as the damage that takes your opponent to zero.
EDIT: Look to BlanketEffect's comment on page 2 for his helpful completion of my original idea.
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