How do you succeed with Melitele/Priestess?

I've been trying Pajabol's Melitele list from last season, as well as some single and double Priestess decks, but i have to say i'm not sure how these are supposed to work well?

Deck list for reference: https://www.playgwent.com/en/decks/0b094fc3295c8c86e8a0d295524a5b0b

In particular, paja's Melitele list.
Your only real engines are Germain, Snowdrop, Istredd, Siege Tower.

You have limited engines. Like really limited.

Germain is slow as crap and you have to factor overswarming in a long round.
Snowdrop nearly always gets removed, locked, or reset, and ends up primarily just providing carryover as she's almost never allowed to stay at her huge boosted level, if she ever gets allowed to even get there.
Istredd is only a card draw against anything with control. If you aren't sure of your opponents deck and believe you can gamble and get more than one draw Istredd is really nice, but that's a gamble and against many decks it never works.
Seige Tower is good with Crew, if that ends up sticking.

Sure, this deck with Melitele is generating decent points throughout the game, primarily thru her Maiden form, since the RNG with Mother isn't usually kind.
And Priestess is getting huge charges/boost.

But that means you need to get to r3.

Any good opponent will push you really hard in r1, and if they have control and points, will beat you r1.
And then guess what they do in r2?

They bleed you until you either have to play Melit and/or Priestess in r2 to avoid getting 2-0ed.
If you got unlucky with your mulligans/draws in r1/early r2, that might not even be enough to stave off getting 2-0ed.

Basically if you face a deck with no control, sure, playing with your own cards (which is what these shuffle decks are) is fun and you probably win.

If you face any control, or something greedy that needs to be controlled?
Nope. You have ZERO control. You just watch helplessly as your opponent removes the shitty engines you have, or runs wildly out of control on their side since you can't do a thing.

I realize i'm obviously bad at the game, and paja is a Gwent god, but HTF did he reach absurd MMR with this deck last season.
It honestly feels horrible, to play.
Oh, and are you facing NG with any kind of milling cards? Might as well just forfeit to save yourself the time.