I enjoyed it. Even when it wasn't my turn, the theorycrafting on what crowns I could get, what crowns my opponent will get, how to best utilized and combine crown powers in order to counter what my opponent could throw at me was a lot of fun. I have some minor niggles, but these are more like observations than complaints, and I'm pretty sure the exploration part of the round will rectify it.
CROWNS: I don't think it would be unreasonable to say that not all crowns are made equally. Even without the lucky dice roll on my first match, gravity vs. bird isn't exactly a fair match up, gravity has both far more direct damage potential, area of control, and defensive capabilities than being able to summon and control birds. This can be pretty easily balance by placing the more powerful and versatile crowns in harder to reach places in the Mad Castle. The power of crowns also segways into my next niggle...
CROWN STATS: After Kit performed the bone reversal that won them the match, I noticed a way for NRDL to potentially recover and nullify the effects of the crown of bones and suffocation on himself via a wombo combo utilizing all of his crowns. But when I checked his stats, I saw he had a d4 for control meaning it would be practically impossible for the combo to actually succeed since it requires high precision. And for a game where the idea is to stack up and combine different powers to get new and creative effects, having the option to kneecap that possible creative ability in exchange for a physical stat boost seems... wonky. Especially considering that most crown effects work off of potency and are generally more effective than just using regular weapons. It's a match-up between sword and gun vs. pillar of gravity and giving someone the bends so hard their heart explodes, and I'll say the latter two are both more likely to win, and be more interesting to watch as well.
You could have each crown have a specific potency and control instead, as a way of correcting the previous problem as well as balancing the more versatile crowns and giving more use to the less useful ones. So the crown of birds for example can have something like D6 potency and D8 control, in order to balance out the more limited use, while something like the crown of gravity could get something like D10 power but D4 control. More power, but in a uncontrollable matter. This runs into the issue of needing to apply power levels to all the crowns, and I know you got like, 50 of them, but I think it would be a good way to balance out the game.
Well, that or just have control and potency permanently be d6, since that's the simplest way of ensuring all crown abilities stay useful for the rest of the game.