This has been the case now for too long and needs addressing. Put them back to the way they used to be so new players can learn the game and enjoy it.
It's gone on too long without being addressed. I have 14 new/returning players in my guild that are all new to ToT, and all of them have become disallusioned with the feature purely because of the difficulty of the novice players... it's putting up a roadblock in their progress to learn the game.
I thought surely this can't be, but I went and tested myself. Yup, I can easily beat masters, proficient and expert players using simple strategies, but the Novice players are like super computers that build their decks better, use the patrons to apply pressure much earlier and with serious effectiveness etc.
This has to be changed, or you've effectively killed the mode. No wonder the leaderboards are the same players each week (at least they are on PS), because the same players are the only ones playing the game because it's just not accessible to newer players at all with this bug in place. Whatever you guys did to "fix it" in the first place, just simply reverse it until you have a better solution, because as it stands, you've killed the mode, and it won't be long until you have only a handful still playing...