Tunnel

Tunnel
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Victory - Reaction
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Hinterlands
Illustrator(s)	Brian Brinlee
Card text
2  When you discard this other than during a Clean-up phase, you may reveal it. If you do, gain a Gold.

Tunnel is a Victory-Reaction card from Hinterlands. It is the only card with this typing. It can be extremely powerful when it can be somewhat reliably discarded for free Gold, but is still often useful just for the benefit of 2  for only .

FAQ

Official FAQ

• This is both a Victory card and a Reaction.
• At the end of the game Tunnel is worth 2  .
• Tunnel's reaction ability functions when you discard it.
• You cannot simply choose to discard it; something has to let you or make you discard it.
• This ability functions whether you discard Tunnel on your own turn (such as due to Oasis) or on someone else's (such as due to Margrave).
• It functions if Tunnel is discarded from your hand (such as due to Oasis) or from your deck, or when set aside (such as due to Cartographer).
• If Tunnel would normally not necessarily be revealed (such as when discarding multiple cards to Cartographer), you have to reveal it to get the Gold.
• Revealing it is optional, even if Tunnel was already revealed for some other reason; you are not forced to gain a Gold.
• This ability does not function if cards are put into your discard pile without being discarded, such as when you buy a card, when you gain a card directly (such as with Border Village), when your deck is put into your discard pile, such as with Chancellor from Dominion, or with Possession from Dominion: Alchemy, when trashed cards are returned to you at end of turn. The key thing to look for is a card actually telling you to "discard" cards.
• It also does not function during Clean-up, when you normally discard all of your played and unplayed cards.
• The Gold you gain comes from the Supply and is put in your discard pile; if there is no Gold left in the Supply, you do not gain one.

Other Rules clarifications

• You can only reveal a given copy of Tunnel once per discard. That is, you can't discard one Tunnel, reveal it twice, and get two Golds.
• Due to Warrior's wording, if you discard a Tunnel to it, you can first reveal it, gaining a Gold, which then covers up Tunnel, causing Warrior to lose track of it, thus failing to trash Tunnel.

Strategy Article

Tunnel's reaction ability often cannot be utilized effectively, but 2  for only is still a good deal, and will often be bought in the endgame when you can't afford a Duchy. When you can discard it, however, free Gold is an incredible bonus. Many cards give you the ability to discard one or more cards. However, just because there is a card which discards doesn't mean Tunnel is a good early-game pickup. The key is to consider how many cards you have to choose your discard from. Horse Traders, for instance, without any card draw, only has 4 possible cards to discard from. As such, Horse Traders/Tunnel is often not a great opening unless you get lucky.

The best cards to pair with Tunnel are those that both draw cards and let you discard from any in your hand such as Warehouse, Vault, Young Witch, and Embassy—though Vault is often less powerful because it allows your opponent the ability to discard a Tunnel as well. The increased deck cycling is also very important as it allows you to find and play your Gold more quickly.

Finally, Tunnel is a decent, but not great defense against Militia and Goons. Getting free Golds is fine, but you have to have the tunnel in hand when you get attacked, which either requires your opponent to be constantly playing the attack or you to have a lot of Tunnels, both of which aren't great for you.

Forum Article Originally by Insomniac with feedback from the community

Introduction

Tunnel is a Victory/Reaction card worth 2  at only . But the victory portion of this card isn't the reason to pick up Tunnel(s) the reason you pick up Tunnel(s) is for its reaction. The reaction portion of this card allows you to when discarded gain a Gold from the supply.

When to NOT Tunnel

Probably the most important part of understanding Tunnel is knowing when you don't want to Tunnel. Tunnel is an incredibly fun card to play but you don't want to play Tunnel when there isn't discard on the board as you won't be getting any Gold from your Tunnels. Additionally you don't want to over do Tunnel on a board that does support Tunnel, but more on that later. Additionally if there is a strong curse attack or looter on board you'll probably want to ignore Tunnel as it will be another dead card in your deck.

Deciding to Tunnel

Now that you have seen there is some discard on board you have to decide whether Tunnel is a viable option or not. Militia alone as a discarder is not incentive to buy Tunnel (as your opponent will simply ignore Militia at which point congratulations on your dead card). However cards like Warehouse, Young Witch and Storeroom are incredibly powerful Tunnel enablers. In other words you want to look for actions that allow you to discard and not or cards that force opponents to discard. In essence there are two main reasons you should pick up Tunnel: the first is for cheap  s in the end game and the other is for Gold production. For the   they work well as part of a 3 pile alternate VP strategy with Gardens or Silk Roads or as Late game   that is worth more than Estate for only more.

The reaction part is where you are going to need a few things:

1. A way of discarding cards as mentioned above.
2. A way to ensure Tunnel is in the cards you discard, while Oracle may trigger Tunnels the chances of it hitting Tunnel are fairly low especially as your deck continues to grow the longer the game goes on
3. A way to use the Gold that Tunnel provides you with. Because your deck will have more   (tunnels) and more gold then normal your deck will be high variance, thus sifter cards are the easiest way to ensure you get maximum use of your Gold.

Examples of cards to look for

The cream of the crop

1. Filter cards are the most powerful form of Tunnel enabler, the normal example being Warehouse, it's non terminal, draws 3 up front and discards 3 cards, this means it can activate your Tunnels even if it they aren't in your hand when you play the Warehouse.
2. Storeroom gets a special mention here as well, as it is a double discarder with a +buy. Later in the game the +Buy will be relevant if you manage to draw a bunch of gold into your hand. Early game the first discard will help you dig for your Tunnels that you don't have (and trigger those you already have), while the second discard will give you buying power for the turn and a second chance to trigger Tunnels. This is an incredibly powerful combo and one to keep an eye out for.

The Bigger picture

These are cards that enable Tunnel but you probably only want to be using one or two Tunnels to augment another strategy.

1. Young Witch - Young Witch enables Tunnel early on while junking up your opponents deck, the reason you want to only have 1 or 2 Tunnels here is because your opponent will likely be also playing young witch which means that you will be getting a junkier deck as well and thus the chance of colliding Young Witch and Tunnel will go down as the game progresses, therefore you want to use Tunnel as a 1 or 2 shot for a bonus   at the end of the game and an early game accelerant to help you get Gold and hopefully a few Provinces before your deck is terrible.
2. Tactician - Tactician engines are strong on their own and while a Tunnel won't hurt as a bit of a cute way to add Gold to your deck, any more than 1 will ultimately slow you down and end up causing you to have 9 card Tactician turns occasionally.
3. Alt VP - In games with Silk Road, running out the Tunnels is going to be stronger than running out the Estates as each Tunnel is worth 2  as opposed to 1 .
4. Cellar/Hamlet/Secret Chamber - While not particularly strong Tunnel enablers if you have a deck that is already capable of running Tunnels adding some of these to the deck is likely to add some staying power and more gold to your deck, these are sort of mini-enablers.

Combos to look for

1. As mentioned above Storeroom/Tunnel
2. Also mentioned above Warehouse/Tunnel
3. Golem/Tunnel - Here the plan is to have enough Golems that you consistently draw them and one other action card. This means everytime you play a Golem you discard your deck, which in turn means you discard all of your Tunnels, that can be a devastating amount of Gold. In games with one or both players playing this you need to keep an eye on the Gold pile, it can empty. Note: Having multiple Golem target actions can still be powerful but it is more likely you want to be building an engine rather than clogging it up with Tunnel + Gold in this case. (Full article here: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=2620.0)
4. Cartographer/Tunnel - Cartographer looks at the top card of your deck and can discard any number of them there, this means that you get to dig four cards deep to try and trigger your Tunnels, like other sifters this can be incredibly powerful, the downside of this combo is that without a hand discard action you can be stuck with Tunnels in your hand and then that Cartographer looks a bit silly. (Full article here: http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=1760.0)
5. Vault/Tunnel - Vault loves Gold, Tunnel makes Gold, these cards love each other. With one Gold in hand a Vault gets you a Province. Vault allows you to discard cards and dig 2 cards so if you pull a Tunnel the chances of hitting a Province on your Vaults stays way up. An interesting counter point to this combo is that Tunnel works against Vault/Tunnel as well as Vault allows your opponent to discard cards to draw a card so even if you don't pick up a Vault you can trigger Tunnels on your opponents Vault making your hand and deck better. Similarly be wary of an opponent who has already bought Tunnel on a board where you want to play Vault.
6. Minion/Tunnel - Minion pitches your hand to get a new hand and multiple minions get you money and a new hand the standard minion/minion combo. The upside to this is that with a couple Tunnels in your deck (again likely one or two) you can grab some free gold while doing the generic minion combo. The other thing is that because Minion can be so game dominating in boards including Minion, your Tunnels will be triggered by your opponents. Since an opponent's Minion will cause you to discard your Tunnels Tunnel can also be run in a deck alternate to Minion as if you opponent is going for a minion strategy he will almost certainly be giving you Gold this way.
7. Venture/Loan/Farming Village + Tunnel - All of the first three cards reveal cards until they hit a certain condition (the first two stop on money and the latter on a action/money card). Of the three, Venture does the most of what you want. All of these cards allow you to discard multiple Tunnels and if you can control the top of your deck at all can occasionally allow you to setup a massive Tunnel trigger. With the former (Venture), it does the best of both worlds, skipping and triggering your Tunnels all the while finding and playing the Gold that your Tunnels have produced. Loan will trim the copper out of your deck early, should you so wish, but will inevitably become weaker once it only finds Gold. Lastly, Farming Village has the potential to put the Gold into your hand (being like a Venture without +), but has the problem that it stops on more cards than either of the first two, making it harder to Trigger your Tunnels.
8. Embassy - Embassy draws a whopping 5 cards and discards 3. This means that the number of cards you can look at with Embassy is 9 (4 from hand + 5 drawn) and you can discard up to 3 Tunnels. This is a particularily strong Tunnel enabler though will probably require a silver to buy and you don't want to buy too often on the opening shuffle as it will give your opponent a silver boost in his economy as well (while you will be unable to get a Tunnel on that first shuffle and will have to wait till the second shuffle)
9. Hunting Party - Hunting Party hates diversity; however, if you nab up at least 2 and probably 3 or 4 Tunnels and a big Hunting party stack you will likely be able to Trigger those Tunnels multiple times in the same turn creating for a huge surgence of Gold in your deck and while Hunting party may hate diversity, it loves Gold, in as many copies as you care to have.

Discard attacks

You should never rely on an opponent picking up a Militia to be a reason to trigger your Tunnel in fact Tunnel should deter most people from picking up Militia unless they haven't seen Tunnel before. However Tunnel will probably not deter your opponent from picking up a discard attack like Goons or Minion. In these cases (as detailed above for Minion) Tunnel can be a nice way to get Gold into your deck if your opponent is going to be reliably playing these attacks fairly often. However in the case of Goons you probably want to just be playing your Goons more often instead of clogging your deck up with Gold and Tunnels.

Engines

In an engine deck you don't want a lot of money or clog. However, sometimes your going to want Gold (especially if there is no action $ on board) In such cases picking up a Tunnel can be a way of doing this. To do this you are going to want cards that allow selective discard, and an engine that can reliably draw your deck. If you can set this up a Tunnel or Two can be an easy way to add Gold to your deck very quickly allowing you to transition into your endgame of multiple Provinces/Colonies a turn; similarly, the Gold can allow you to skip silver if your engine requires expensive engine parts.

Trash for benefit

In a deck where you can trigger Tunnel to get Golds, Trash for Benefit should be considered as a good addition to your deck. Remodelers for instance can turn that Gold you got from a Tunnel straight into a Province. Apprentice? Draw 6 Cards, Salvager? +. In an engine where you draw your deck every turn this can be your method for greening given the right trash-for-benefit, or it can be an integral part of your draw engine (Apprentice). Even in a big money deck it can help you hit the 2 province turn if you can remodel a Gold and still have G/G/S or G/G/G in hand.

How to play Tunnel

The number of Tunnels you want to pick up is going to vary based on the type of discard you have. If the type of discard you have is non-terminal (Warehouse/Cellar), You'll want to pick up a few more Tunnels than with a terminal (probably 4 or 5 at most). You want to make sure that if you are picking up that many Tunnels, you are countering it with at least an equal (and probably a greater) number of the discarders. With a terminal discard, you probably want to stop at 2 or 3. I personally like to stop at 3, as 3 Tunnels is worth a Province and allows you to be a tiny bit slower to the end game than your opponent (when your deck is much stronger). You almost never want to pick up just 1 Tunnel unless you manage to get a collision of your discarder and your Tunnel on your first reshuffle, as with 2-3 Tunnels your chances of colliding Tunnel goes way up.

Misc. thoughts

When Tunnel is on the board you shouldn't fully ignore it. Even if the board isn't conducive to the reactional portion of Tunnel it is important to remember that Tunnel should be favoured over Estate in the green phase as it is worth 1VP more at only 1 more cost.

Works With:

• Card Sifters
• Card Discarders
• Not over doing it

Conflicts With:

• Colony Games
• Curse / Loot Attacks
• Super quick silly boards (Jack of all Trades/Governor).

Cards that can trigger Tunnel on your turn

Five card hands are assumed to make the table sortable. The last column shows the change of the other two columns if you have more or less cards in hand.

Card	up to X Tunnels	out of X cards	Hand size dependant
Cartographer	4	4	-/-
Catacombs	3	3	-/-
Cellar	4	4	±1/±1
Count	2	4	-/±1
Duchess	1	1	-/-
Embassy	3	9	-/±1
Hamlet	2	5	-/±1
Harvest	4	4	-/-
Horse Traders	2	4	-/±1
Inn	2	6	-/±1
Ironmonger	1	1	-/-
Jack of all Trades	1	1	-/-
Lookout	1	3	-/-
Minion	4	4	±1/±1
Navigator	5	5	-/-
Oasis	1	5	-/±1
Oracle	2	2	-/-
Scrying Pool	1	1	-/-
Secret Chamber	4	4	±1/±1
Spy	1	1	-/-
Storeroom	8	8	±2/±2
Survivors	2	2	-/-
Tactician	4	4	±1/±1
Vault	6	6	±1/±1
Wandering Minstrel	3	3	-/-
Warehouse	3	7	-/±1
Young Witch	2	6	-/±1

Card	Condition
Adventurer	all Tunnels you've not in hand until it finds 2 Treasure Cards
Golem	all Tunnels you've not in hand until it finds 2 Action Cards
Hunting Party	all Tunnels you've not in hand until it finds 1 Card you've not in hand if you've at least one Tunnel in hand
Loan	all Tunnels you've not in hand until it finds 1 Treasure Card
Rebuild	all Tunnels you've not in hand until it finds 1 Victory Card other than Tunnel
Sage	all Tunnels you've not in hand until it finds 1 Card costing or more if you've got at least one Highway, Bridge or Princess in play
Venture	all Tunnels you've not in hand until it finds 1 Treasure Card

Antisynergies

• Lack of above.

Trivia

Official card art.

In other languages

• Czech: Tunel
• Dutch: Tunnel
• Finnish: Tunneli
• French: Tunnel
• German: Tunnel
• Italian: Galleria
• Japanese: 坑道 (pron. kōdō)
• Spanish: Túnel

Preview

Tunnel is a crazy card that does something when you discard it. This includes discarding it to actions like Inn, discarding it to attacks like Militia, and also discarding it without ever having it in your hand, due to actions like Adventurer. Just look for the word "discard" and study the FAQ, once it's available. It does not work with Chancellor, that's the only tricky part. The "clean-up" bit is to make sure it doesn't make Gold just due to discarding your hand at the end of your turn.

What you get for your troubles is a Gold. In a Tunnel-heavy game, you may see the Golds run out. And when you're not discarding Tunnel, it's a Victory card, so you'll be happy discarding it. That Victory card is worth 2   for a mere , and well if that looks crazy, consider exactly how powerful Estate is.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Hinterlands Previews #5

Tunnel was never officially previewed due to a leak at Essen, but Donald X. later released this text anyway.

Secret History

At one point the main set had a card that had you draw a card if you discarded it. It was too wonky of an ability for the main set, and the card was bad anyway, so I cut it. When Hinterlands became its own set, I made a new card with that ability, this time a Witch variant. I ended up cutting that one because I didn't want two ways to get Curses in the set, and preferred Ill-Gotten Gains. Late in the going, I wanted something else in the set that was exotic, and decided to try another do-something-when-discarded card. This time I had you gain Gold rather than draw cards, which slightly reduced possible confusion. It was immediately popular, but there was the question of what the top should be. It had to be simple. It couldn't be say + because then this would be flat-out worse than Silver in most games that had no combo. It was +2 Cards for a bit, which seemed okay.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Hinterland Cards