SY is far from OP, ive played, won and lost a lot of games, SY has no effective engines which arent quickly killed, locked or banished by opponents. Scoiatel in particular, not only has extreme synergy boosting but removal as well, there's nothing in Syndicate that can compete. To win with syndicate at high ranks requires lucky draw for you, and shit draw for your opponent.
Bounty mechanics arent useful. Once a card has a bounty, you need removal to kill it. There is only one Graden. Caleb Menge costs money.
Crime cards and Intimidate mechanic are not powerful. Say you have 4 intimidate cards on the field, and play 2 crime cards over two turns. Thats +8 bonus over... how many turns in total? Did you count the fact most factions bring out big monsters WITH REMOVAL too?
What about Monsters getting +4, +5 PER TURN from consuming Ruehin, Detlaff or any of the deathwish respawn with boost units.
The profit mechanic is not useful either. 1 coin translates to 1 effective power point, you can use that for damage or for boosting. Any coin-gathering cards you play can easily be killed or locked by meta cards from other factions, and even if you hit 9 coins, thats 9 effective damage. As if thats useful against a charge-counter boosting deck which constantly gives +1 charge to damage output units, that can do anything from 4 to 12 damage or more per turn?
To win with Syndicate, you need an absurd amount of locks and removal just to survive. The Syndicate engines just arent good enough. Im losing interest in pursuing Syndicate because im pretty sure I have the strongest syndicate deck possible and I still get destroyed by other factions when they get their engines running. I'll probably go back to Starcraft 2 lol, and return when the game has thousands more cards and metas to choose from. Right now Scoiatel is the strongest faction, period.
I only started winning reasonably when I included 2 alzurs thunder, Bekkers rockslide, three locks (Dorregaray of Vole, Aguara and Kurt) and I think one other 6 damage removal. Doesnt leave a lot of space for actual Syndicate cards huh?
Honestly, at first I thought you were being sarcastic, saying SY is weak and implying ST is better than SY. But when I read fully, I understood that you are serious. Lets go over where SY is insanely OP and what may be the mistake you are doing.
I am assuming that you are an young new player who still isn't fully familiar with SY and how it should be played and give you idea/advice on how to play it effectively. (I am also not a pro player, but currently in Rank 3, my best till now playing SY. Previously I reached Rank 3 once with Brouver, that was before SvalBlod was given a ton of testosterone. After 3 seasons of trying and failing to even touch Rank 5 with ST, I reached with ease Rank 3 playing SY)
Bounty - If you want to kill the Bounty unit for free, yes, there is only one option, Graden. But there is a unit called Executioner who is also ridiculously powerful when combined with Bounty units. Caleb is not the only unit who can put a bounty on an enemy. You should use Caleb as late as possible and use Witch Hunter and Slander (crime card, which gives you 3 coins and when you put a Slander on a 5 power card, deploying Executioner, you can kill that card and get 5 coins back. How freaking insane is that?) to begin with. Build at least two units with Bounty with those 4P cards and then deploy executioner and kill them both and having more coins also after that.
Imagine the frustration of an MO player who plays Foglet and you put a bounty on it. The the MO player plays Pugo and you put a bounty on the Pugo. Now kill the Pugo with Graden and boost him by 10 points and get 9 coins in hand to summon Radanian Ship. You should throw in Swindle too (an excellent proactive play which will allow you to wipe the opponent's board). Bounty is so oppressive that I feel bad to play it and moved on to trying something else. It is that OP. If you don't accept it, you will realize what I am saying when you face a decent SY opponent.
Initially when I tried, I had bricked Graden a few times, but with good planning of bounty units, deck-building and mulligans, you can always get him to work.
I agree that Intimidate sucks and to get good amount of value you have to play a lot of low tempo turns. Just forget about intimidate and just add good crime cards: Swindle, Slander, Dip In Pontor, Eavesdrop (and initially, before you master coin management, Pickpocket). Do not try to make Intimidate work. If you get any intimidate proc, it is good, otherwise, don't depend on Intimidate units as a main win-con.
Ruihen you say? Just seize him with Phillipa. Botching, Octvist, Ruihen and even Bearmaster (yes, that 1 power card, which will make the opponent's resurrect special cards bricks) are all Phillipa's tasty targets. You may say 'but she uses all coins'; yes, she does; slowly you will learn to manage your coins.
Charges can be interacted. Charge units can be locked/killed/seized/banished, effectively making the charges' worth as 0 points, but coins are uninteractable!
Killing opponents' unit with SY is the easiest. You have bounty, Phillipa, the brothers, DipInPontor and even Boris. You are saying that SY is so weak that you want to add neutral cards. I would say that you are adding too many neutral cards that you are making your SY deck weak.
My advice would be to plan your deck and learn to manage your coins well. Blindly add Slanderx2, Witch Hunterx2, Witch Hunter Executionerx2, Caleb, Graden, The Brothers, Phillipa and some profit Crime cards and before you know it, you would have ranked up easily to a much higher rank. If you still need help, share your deck in this forum and ask for advice. Good Luck.