iTunes Smart Playlist w/podcasts - not picking up all episodes

Question

Using iTunes for Windows from Microsoft Store. Would rather not use 3rd party programs if there's a way to do what I need with Podcasts.

Summary -

1. I have a lot of mp3 files (~1000) from different albums all tagged with the genre Example and the artist Streams.
2. I want to listen to them on my Apple devices using the Podcasts app because I like how Podcasts manages episode playback more than Music or Books.
3. I don't have enough device room to synch all of them at once, so I'd like a smart playlist of about 200 episodes from the Example genre / Streams artist with a play count of 0 so as I play them, those episodes get replaced with episodes with a play count of 0.

All my episodes are tagged with:

• Album = (there are about 200 program streams)
• Genre = Example
• Artist = Streams

Here's what I did:

1. Imported them into iTunes as MP3s, where they came in as Music and then I changed the media kind to Podcast via Song Info/Options/Media Kind, which made them show up in Podcasts.
2. Created a smart playlist with the following
   • Match podcasts for all of the following rules
     • plays is 0
     • genre is Example
     • artist is Streams
     • limit to 200 items selected by Random
     • Live Updating checked.

Here's my issues:

1. Unplayed list only shows 85 episodes when I know there are 200 (in fact there are ~1000). I spot-checked episodes and they are all tagged with genre Example, artist Streams, media type is Podcast and play count is 0.
2. When I sync the list to my device (iPhone), the sync completes but the episodes don't show up in Podcasts - all.

Any suggestions? I have thought of putting them on a media server and building an RSS file but I don't want to deal with building security layer, etc if I don't have to. I know, GitHub but a lot of that stuff is hobby-kit and the thought of that integration time makes me logy.