Hello, please let me bring "new player point of view" into discussion. When player starts Gwent, he is behind in everything in comparison to players, who already play Gwent. Collection of cards (especially good ones), experience, possesion of resources (scraps, ore, reward points ...). New player has quite hard time to win his duels, so he is happy when it ends at least by loss 1:2 rather than 0:2, because that way, new player can slowly but steadily gain round win after round win to get 6 won rounds (no matter if they came from 6 lost matches) and get his 2 reward points together with minor resources on the way like 15 ore for first 2 won rounds and scraps for first 4 won rounds. If opponent is playing into second round after he won first round of match, it is threatening complete stall of new player effort in that current match, because if game ends 0:2, there is nothing to gain except experience. Even if player is talented, without resources, he can not do much in Gwent.
I am quite content with how Gwent duels go and I find "tacticizing" about 2nd round natural and rational. You can at example check how is going current world chess champion match between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana. There are colors swaping after each round and general approach in chess is to win with white and draw with black. That is quite similar principle to Gwent duels with rounds. I am pretty sure, that similar tactic would be present in every game, that is played in series of rounds, where roles are switched after every round.
Do not disregard some tactic just because it is "employed by everyone". It may be, that it is the most efficient, the most useful tactic ever possible and forcing change on it would just throw away everything established in past and going into new waters just for the sake of change similarly like throwing away years of Gwent beta experience and jumping into unknown (untested) waters of Homecoming. That means, I like Homecoming, but I am very much convinced, that game should remain in beta status for at least some time instead of being promoted as released out of beta.