you can probably determine who will win within the first few minutes.

This is a big part of the problem with a lot of these games, imo. The matches take too long to resolve, or have too much lead time to get to the part that's actually fun and dynamic. It's easy to criticize, but it's a genuine problem if half of any given match is spent either ramping up or winding down to the natural conclusion, with the other half being the game that everyone actually wants to play.