For example, they wrote
"Also, rows in the front and back would ALWAYS grant a different buff when a unit is placed there."
So, here is not smoke and mirrors. It clearly says that rows in the front and back would always grant a different buff. They could not uphold their promise. It's not a tragedy, mind you. It's like when you go to a restaurant and they tell you that the pizza is going to have on top true italian mozzarella. If that's not the case you might be disappointed...
In their letter they didn't say they would remove: one bronze copy, one row, armor, full Moon, crew tag, strengthen abilities, swap, reveal card in hands... Instead they chose to address the community concern with respect to RNG. Alas, one of the few thing that's still present is Create, they added quite a lot of damage X random units and added few highroll cards. They revolutionized everything, but kept the one thing they promised to address.
Smoke and mirrors wasn't meant to indicate there was ambiguity in the initial HC announcement. The smoke and mirrors comment was meant to indicate what was said ultimately boiled down to, "Oops, we acknowledge we may have screwed up. We're sorry and promise to do better.". The rest of it was.... filler.
In any case Create probably isn't at the top of the list of issues. If anything stands out for that label it's the replacement of frequent R1 dry passing with not giving two shits about CA in R1 until you have 4 or fewer cards in your hand. Great solution.