It's actually really simple to use tables to handle layout once you're used to it, like I said, it's what we had to do with email for a long time.
It does take some css, of course, but only width and max-width. That's basically it to turn a table responsive. Add the dir attribute and you can also control the stacking order of elements.
My point being, working in a constrained way (like with email) allows you to make the most of the properties available to you, and it turns out tables for layout (semantic issues aside) are easy to grok and work predictably and reliably.
