I avoided vocab cards for a long time since I heard they are useless. But, last night, it came to me that they can be very useful for beginners (like me in German) because I can concentrate on just one word in Anki and then solidify that word through immersion.
Also, I watched this video this morning and it agrees with some of my thoughts: Sentence Cards vs Vocab Cards: In-Depth Comparison - YouTube
My advice is to never generalize what you’ll hear about learning. All opinions will always remain contradictory.
At some point at some time, any thing may come in handy. If you’ve discovered or defined a particular use case for a technique, method, approach, tool, that covers precicely what you want or need, why to allow someone’s opinions and preconceived notions talk you out of this? Explore, think, Trust yourself !
Great advice. Thanks! 
P.S. I learned a new word: preconceived.
I love vocabulary flash cards and I detest sentence cards (they’re too exhausting to review).
Right?! They’re almost certainly better but not only are they a slog, they take a lot longer to create. I wish I had the time/patience for them because I can see them working really well. I’ll stick with just reading, I think.