Hello, I just discovered this game and enjoy it, but it appears dead. I'm not actually so concerned about that (although it's a bit sad) ... mostly I'm just kind of lost on how to progress. It seems like after tons of work I only have a tiny bit of gold and a single booster pack costs 150 gold? How can I grind out some gold as a new player to improve my collection a bit? Or is that impossible?

You can play clashes which have gold prizes. For the expert clash i think you might need a certain number of wins, but there is always the beginner clash. I enjoy the game, and will try to get some more people online, so this way of getting gold might become viable.