I agree. The patron spam would be less obnoxious if it wasn't so easy to do at the beginning of the game thanks to those two cards.

Seraphayel wrote: »

Pick Psijic as soon as someone picks Rahjin and you can in most cases completely ignore the Bewilderment spam. Only players that have no clue what they’re doing are spamming the patron anyway, especially when Psijik is in play.

This doesn’t mean that the cards you’ve mentioned aren‘t very powerful, they are. Should cost 6 Coin instead. Or maybe not grant 5 coin instantly, but 3 and then another 2 + agent kill on the combo.

There are several outliers in ToT that would require a readjustment (like Squawking Oratory and Pilfer should be contracts and not regular cards due to how strong they are).

Nevertheless, spamming the patron for Bewilderment is as nonsensical as is spamming Orgnum when your deck doesn’t support it (which it never does in the first 3-4 rounds). Players that do this already in the second round are just putting themselves in a losing position, even if they’re starting with one of the cards you’ve mentioned. Nothing worse than to have hands where you end up with three or four simple coin cards later on.

I don't find what you are writing to be true. Maybe that is obvious since I made this thread to complain about the strategy of getting a powerful card that then enables Rajhin button pressing.

I'll discuss your first point about Psijic in a way that is relatable. For example, your bring up Crow cards that are quite strong. Well, all you have to do is counterpick Rajhin and use the Patron button and you'll find just how little Crow synergies matter then. Right?

The problem regarding "counters" is that they can't always be viable solutions to game problems. One reason that they aren't always viable is because they may not exactly match up well against what an opponent is doing. For example, Time Mastery car represent an economic loss that helps enable an opponents strategy of filling a players deck up with cards that don't generate gold. Another thing that can happen is that the the counter cards may not show up in the tavern. It certainly is the case that the player with the first turn Pounce/Grand will have better Tavern control. There are also cases where one may not know to pick the counter. Especially when someone has second player disadvantage, it's not really good to pick Psijic. And once someone hasn't picked Psijic, the player going first will have the option to pick Rajhin as the last pick.

So yes, if your opponent get's a Sqwaking, then you just need to use the Rajhin button. It's easy, see.

If it isn't self-evident how powerful the strategy of Rajhin button spam is when up a powerful card, then I recommend giving it a try when being the recipient of a strong start. I know several top 10 players, all who have finished 1st in the season, and include myself in that tally, as players who find the very strong line of player of filling the opponents deck up with junk while being carried by a single card that let's one consistently purchase 8 cost cards on the next churn of their deck.

Personofsecrets wrote: »

If it isn't self-evident how powerful the strategy of Rajhin button spam is when up a powerful card, then I recommend giving it a try when being the recipient of a strong start. I know several top 10 players, all who have finished 1st in the season, and include myself in that tally, as players who find the very strong line of player of filling the opponents deck up with junk while being carried by a single card that let's one consistently purchase 8 cost cards on the next churn of their deck.

Back when I played comp more consistently, I hated running into top players specifically because of the large amounts of Rahjiin spam. Some of them conceded if I got the pounce first pick, probably assuming that I would spam it as well.