just got my first card drop since the 'anti-idling' patch...

Heh, I didn't spend the $2 for that card drop. What I mean is that I later realized I had spent enough for 2 card drops but didn't receive either until next morning. I knew that was going to come out wrong.

Are you playing another game while this is going on? Because that doesn't sound right to me.

I left awesomenauts running all night while I slept and woke up this morning to 8 spankin' new cards in my inventory.

I have had this same experience, both when idling and when actually playing the games (I try to do the latter as much as possible, but a lot of cards have been added in a short period of time). I'll get a card drop pretty quick (30 mins sounds about right), and then either a very slow drop rate or sometimes nothing. I noticed yesterday that, like you, restarting a game seemed to "reset" something allowing a new card to drop again in a reasonable window of time (30-60 mins).

I'm not sure what to make of this. A couple games have not seemed to require restarting to get the drops in a reasonable amount of time, but CS:GO took me 5-6 hours and two restarts for 3 drops. I've put in 4-5 hours for the 3 drops I've so far gotten from Awesomenauts. Either Valve has changed the way drops are being made, or perhaps Steam's ability to keep the card server connected to us is extremely flaky right now because of the sale.

It's always been like that though. More games at one time = much lower drop rate.