Well, as thrilling as this is, I remain unconvinced that TR/X doesn't greatly increase variance. I get that TR/X (3 or 4) are both crappy strategies in the main. I'm not actually saying I'd play a TR/X strategy unless we are talking scenarios where my odds of winning have dipped below 20% in a mirror, but it does increase the variance.
Yes I know, there are currently high variance strats, like TR/Chancellor, I'll even play them from 4th position if I lose the distribution (e.g. I have an opponent or two ahead of me who hit 5/2 with a witch out and I get 4/3). There just aren't as many of them.
Now BB makes a good point, if we compare the best outcome from X/X or silver/X; TR/X needs to be substantially ahead. I think he's wrong in downweighting the play the big card sooner aspect of things; we pay 2 coin more for a royal seal which saves us, on average 2x as many hands till play as a forced shuffle. Half the jump from a 3 coin treasure to a 5 coin treasure is nothing to dismiss. Also, note that while I'm using golds & plats as handy big value cards, there are other ones out there that can have more pronounced effects - e.g. bank, goons, hoard (say with great halls), forge, etc.
We can disagree about how much variance TR/X adds to the game, but it is there and it is another thing that makes 4/4 openings higher variance than 4/3.