Learning to live with Illeria's curse

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about cursed problems in game design.  It was based on an amazing talk by Alex Jaffe.  His thesis was that some games are impossible to make, because they have contradictory goals.  I realized that Illeria had a curse, as my goals are:
1) the characters should have interesting and diverse abilities,
2) games should be evenly matched, such that in-game strategy and luck determine the winner.  
These goals are contradictory, because the more interesting the abilities are, the more likely I am to create rock-paper-scissors type scenario (i.e. no ability is universally the best, but each ability is at a great disadvantage against certain others).  When this happens, games will not be evenly matched.  Instead, the winner will be determined by the characters each player brought - a party of rock-characters will almost always beat a party of scissors-characters.  However, thinking about it more, I suspect the curse is not as bad as I initially thought.  

My current hypothesis is that the strength of this curse (i.e. the winner being determined mainly by the characters one uses, rather than in-game effects) is proportional to how much abilities synergize with one another, and how much abilities have hard counters.  By "hard counter" I mean that that an ability X is a hard counter to ability Y if X always beats Y, as opposed to a "soft counter," where X has an advantage against Y, but X can still lose (hard vs. soft counters are really on a spectrum).

By my definition, Magic the Gathering is perhaps the most cursed game I've ever played - that is okay, since making a deck is the funnest part of the game.  The curse is so strong because cards alter the rules in crazy ways, so much so that you can build entire decks around them.  For example, I once made a deck based around the card "Humility" (which makes every creature on the battlefield super weak) and creature enchantments (which makes my characters stronger); this deck would shut down decks based around strong creatures, but almost always lost to decks that dealt direct damage or destroyed enchantments.  I think hard counters are probably required when you have strong synergies: if there is a combination of green cards that is super strong, and there aren't hard counters, then everyone will play green; however, if there are hard counters, then players can win by playing an anti-green deck.

This curse is weaker in Warhammer 40k (at least it was when I used to play).  There were a few synergies, though nothing as strong as Magic, definitely nothing you'd build an army around.  This was partly because no abilities had global effects (as opposed to a "Humility" card), nor can I remember effects that would double a character's power.  I think most counters are medium to soft.  For example, a large squad of infantry had the advantage against a small squad with tank-busting guns, but the smaller squad could win with enough lucky shots.  Most of the counters occurred because there can be vast differences in the strength of characters.  For example, if I was battling an army of tanks, I'd bring a few infantry with big guns, but if I was battling weak infantry, I'd want a lot of weak explosions - the weak explosions would do little against tanks, and the tank-busting guns would be wasted on weak infantry.

In Frostgrave, the curse is hardly an issue (at least I think, I haven't played a ton).  You really only get two interesting characters - your wizard and apprentice - which limits the possibilities for synergy.  Henchmen characters differ mainly in how strong they are, so rock-paper-scissors dynamics don't seem possible.  For example, a barbarian will usually beat and infantryman, but there isn't a character who beats a barbarian but loses to an infantryman.  Additionally, there is a cap on the henchmen's power, and a limit to how many characters a party can have, so that you can't have a horde of weaklings or three giants.

Where does Illeria fall on this spectrum?  This is something I need to monitor, but I think it is somewhere between Warhammer 40K and Frostrgave.  My characters will have different stats (e.g. health, armory, attack), but I don't think a strong character will be more than two or three times as strong as a weak one.  Thus, it is unlikely that a strong attack would feel wasted on a weak character.  That said, some characters can summon a swarm of weak creatures - I'll need to keep an eye on this, and if it causes problems, I'll make summoners create fewer but stronger creatures.  I have a few abilities that might count as hard-counters, such as anti-magic or anti-archery auras - I'll also need to keep an eye on these, and ask myself if they are necessary.  The characters have two ways of protecting themselves: armor (their defense against most attacks) and spirit (their magic defense).  This could also create a medium- to hard-counter system, as heavily armored characters are weak against attacks that ignore armor.  I'll need to keep an eye on this too; I suspect that the armor/spirit protection system will inevitably create a curse, but the curse's strength will be proportional to how protected characters can be.  I don't think that the abilities will create huge synergies, though I will keep an eye on character buffs, as they could create problems.  And, the win conditions usually involve capturing territory, which should make combat slightly less important.

All in all though, I don't think I'll ever make matches 100% even, and I don't think I should aim for that.  Mostly I want to avoid games that are so lopsided that it obvious who will win on turn one.  If Illeria's curse ends up between Warhammer's and Frostgrave's, I'll be quite happy.