The other issue is that ToT seems fixed on having both upgraded and non-upgraded versions of cards in play. A few of the cheap bases are useless or only situational at best (looking at you, Warning Beacon), but the bases see more play because of it and allow longer games if they aren't completely one-sided. Star Realms sees bases and outposts with cost as low as 2 - and the cards' cost stops at 8. The issue, I'd say, is that the value of keywords is off to begin with. The numbers, based on other cards, make sense to some extent. It's also why Banneret can get away with 5 health taunt with 3 power from play at a cost of 9 and why a contract Shield Bearer costs 6 gold for effects "worth" 7 gold. So, it's not surprising to see a 1 health taunt agent costing 5 gold with the added combo bonus of -1 prestige (although, imo, it should either cost 4 gold or the prestige deduction should be moved to a play effect for it to make sense). Based on various agents, the "agent" keyword itself adds around 2 gold cost, charging additional ~0.667g for every health point. It's because they put an insanely high value on a card being an agent and even more on an agent having taunt. Except with Jeering/Prowling Shadow - that card is just poop.
You can also obtain more of the Rahjin ones AND there are more combos to have if they stick around so I don't think there's an imbalance present. Regarding the Banneret vs Stubborn Shadow - one costs 9 to get 5 health while the other is a mere 6 for 3. A simple fix like this could vastly improve the card (even though I still wouldn't take it 95% of the time). I'd like to see Jeering Shadow change the 1 health taunt to 2 health. (It would actually be an improvement not being a taunt simply because people would not bother removing it a lot of the time). I like Rahjin overall, but I would love an explanation from whomever designed this one card (and worse upgrade) as to why they made it taunt. The entire deck has zero power and a Patron power that adds zero power, so offering up utterly useless cards is terrible. In a deck where you want combo 4 having an Agent with ONE health is a terrible design.
Prowling Shadow, at a ridiculous 5 cost, adds a single gold coin but is even more poop because it's a more expensive card that, again, does next to nothing. And making it a taunter it's destroyed if the opponent sneezes harshly. When designing cards, I don't know why anyone would design a card that costs 4 and does nothing with ONE health. The Rahjin decks suffers enormously from Jeering/Prowling Shadow being a giant pile of poop. That way if someone heavily stacks into power, the opposing player can at least attempt to stack into counter play to somewhat even out the chances of winning which would then encourage the use of other strategies of win conditions. The logical thing to do would be to have a counter card for every builder card. It would be a great counter deck IF it was actually able to keep up with the immense ability to simply stack power. There are a lot of appealing aspects about the game, but they fly to the wayside in the wake of power building decks (specific cards) and essentially who gets the luck of the draw WHEN THEY’RE ACTUALLY ABLE TO PURCHASE THEM.īasically, once one player has a decent amount of good cards the game is already over because there is very little counter play to power building combos. I understand that this is a deck builder PvP card game and that a bit of RNG is necessary to facilitate that style of game, but the utter lack of counter play is outrageous.