Digging
Cards that search through the deck until they find cards meeting some description are sometimes said to dig for those cards. Typical "digging" instructions usually follow this structure:
- Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal [X]. [Do something with X.] Discard the other revealed cards.
Digging cards are distinct from both sifters and deck inspectors.
Examples of digging cards
Cards in italics have been removed.
- Dominion: Adventurer digs for two Treasure cards and puts them in your hand.
- Intrigue: Saboteur digs for opponents' valuable cards and trashes them.
- Alchemy: Scrying Pool digs for a non-Action card, and then puts all revealed cards into your hand.
- Alchemy: Golem digs for two Action cards and plays them.
- Prosperity: Loan digs for a Treasure and optionally trashes it.
- Prosperity: Venture digs for a Treasure and plays it.
- Cornucopia: Fortune Teller digs for opponents' dead cards and leaves them on top of the deck.
- Cornucopia: Farming Village digs for a playable card and puts it in your hand.
- Cornucopia: Hunting Party digs for a card that's different from the ones in your hand and puts it in your hand.
- Dark Ages: Sage digs for a card costing
or more and puts it in your hand.
- Dark Ages: Rebuild digs for a Victory card and Expands it.
- Guilds: Journeyman digs for cards other than the one you name, and puts them in your hand.
- Nocturne: Ghost digs for an Action, sets it aside, and plays it twice at the start of your next turn.
- Nocturne: War digs for a card that costs or
and trashes it.
Strategy
Digging draw cards have a number of advantages of "vanilla" draw cards (i.e., those with +X Cards); they're usually able to skip over junk top-decked by deck order attacks, they're able to ignore the -1 Card token, and they often have a farther reach, though usually with a decrease in the total number of cards they can draw, making them similar to sifters in that respect. On the other hand, they can sometimes skip over cards you actually want in you hand, and they don't actually get rid of the -1 Card token. Given that they usually hunt for a specific type of card (Action, Treasure, not a duplicate of a card in your hand), digging draw usually requires that you structure your deck in a way that most takes advantage of them.
Digging Attacks are usually on the weaker side; since the ability to seek a specific card in your opponent's deck is a fairly potent one, they're hampered with restrictions, either being non-stackable (Fortune Teller) or giving your opponent a consolation prize (Saboteur). However, if played consistently, they can be quite annoying to your opponent.
