2-Player Monster-City Game Playtests

I spent a few solid hours creating and solo playtesting a prototype of my 2-player monster-city game today. I think its coming together fairly well, I made some early changes, but it seems like the game plays quickly, and with a lot of variety between runthroughs, which is a good recipe for one-more-time gameplay.

I'm a little concerned about:
A) strategy vs. luck - seems like sometimes one player just gets hosed.
B) ensuring that the game doesn't get stale over time - it needs a little more pop, that rare game-event that is exciting to hope for - the equivalent of shooting the moon, or a well-executed chess maneuver.

Also, right now, the Monster player is losing nearly every time, but I think I have enough knobs to turn to fix that eventually.

One thing I've started doing is taking a picture of the board state at the end of the game, along with a card with the result and game version (sort of like a little clapboard). For example:



I don't know if they will be useful artifacts in the long term, but it makes me feel more like I'm accomplishing something as I clear the board, change the rules, and start over.