hey there! Yes it’s hard to avoid Malifaux comparisons with a deck of cards. Not at all a bad thing :)
Glad you thought things went well! We aimed for speed.
The drawing cards IS mandatory. Wish we had more space! It’s to make sure you’re assigning cards if at all possible, keep players from just using one model, and provide plentiful cards for abilities.
They only move 8 because we felt that 13 was too far! Subjective though.