For me I do not have any impact to the new starter deck because I almost have been playing Gwent for a year. In fact, I like CDPR give some freebie to new players but there are a few suggestions that bother my mind and I would like to make some suggestion here.
The part that I do not like about this are:
1. Clear cut to give new powerful deck to new player only but not so recent new player give a bad taste to new player especially who start playing Gwent for less than 3 months. If those players are free to play player, then they easily to shift to a new account. while some players who already brought Yennefer journey and/or Thronebreaker reluctant to create a new account. Then, this like a punishment rather than rewarding to customers who already paid money while players who haven't paid win the most.
2. The way CDPR promote this freebie seem very quiet though. I mean the number of legendary cards are a lot -- 5-8 cards / deck. and players get all 5 decks!, do no need to even pick one. This is amazing. Last year I remember Blizzard give 1 deck to a return players who haven't been log in for 4 months only 1 deck but that Blizzard, an evil of ungenerous company. (Moreover, I heard from my friend that Blizzard start selling meta deck but limit players to buy 1 deck / account.)
What CDPR did here is 5 times (or more) greater than that and deserve some highlight. However, in order to highlight, the overall campaign should be better since the point#1 above can make some bad feeling. What I'm thinking are:
1. Make an event celebration and give away these decks to all players who start playing less than 3 months.
2. What's about players who were playing for more than 3 months? maybe give them some meteorite power to make 1-2 premium deck? (maybe 10000 meteorite powder)
3. or let players choose either 1 or 2 but not both.
Then, make this campaign like a celebration as well as promoting something else which CDPR can sell something, too.