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Author Topic: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 9  (Read 28839 times)

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DG

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please)
« Reply #25 on: November 01, 2012, 10:03:12 am »
0

I think the basic tunnel ethos is to get get tunnels out of hand and get gold into hand. This may seem obvious but it clarifies why some of the weaker tunnel enablers fail. When you just plan to discard your tunnel to militia attacks you are not getting gold into hand and you're relying on your opponents to let you discard the tunnel. A secret chamber is only discarding the tunnel but again doesn't find gold. This compares badly to warehouse type cards that not only discard the tunnel from hand but also find gold to keep in hand. Embassy, young witch, and vault all draw extra cards and again allow you to keep gold and discard tunnels.

Tactician does seem a strong tunnel card to me. You negate some of the penalty of discarding the hand when playing the tactician and could in fact turn that penalty into a bonus. The following turn you can use any helpful action cards on the 10 card hand, such as cellar, and gather up all the gold for spending.

Since some people have requested multi player comments, I would guess that tunnels are likely to increase the chance of an early 3 pile ending and can perhaps become more viable in a game with sustained discard attacks.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2012, 10:06:33 am by DG »
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WheresMyElephant

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please)
« Reply #26 on: November 01, 2012, 02:27:57 pm »
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I think the basic tunnel ethos is to get get tunnels out of hand and get gold into hand. This may seem obvious but it clarifies why some of the weaker tunnel enablers fail. When you just plan to discard your tunnel to militia attacks you are not getting gold into hand and you're relying on your opponents to let you discard the tunnel. A secret chamber is only discarding the tunnel but again doesn't find gold. This compares badly to warehouse type cards that not only discard the tunnel from hand but also find gold to keep in hand. Embassy, young witch, and vault all draw extra cards and again allow you to keep gold and discard tunnels.

Another way to look at this is, Tunnel decks tend to be composed largely of very strong cards (Gold, whatever you buy with your Gold), junk cards (Tunnels, Provinces, maybe your starting cards) and a few utility cards that hopefully don't take up much effective space. This is the polar opposite of something like a deck full of Silver, such as Double Jack; or a deck full of Coppers and IGGs, or whatever other fairly uniform deck you might name.

This means a few things. Sifters are of course more valuable in decks like this, even beyond the fact that many of them can trigger Tunnel. This is also nice against Militia/Goons since you're likely to have some junk you're happy to throw away (even if not a Tunnel) and some strong cards to give you a strong 3-card turn. Finally, unless you can draw huge hands or sift effectively you're likely to have very high variance: your Golds might all clump together or they might not. This can mean lucky Province buys very late in the endgame when both players' decks are shot, or it can mean getting screwed.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2012, 02:33:51 pm by WheresMyElephant »
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Powerman

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please)
« Reply #27 on: November 01, 2012, 04:28:00 pm »
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YW/Tunnel was the number 33 or so opening.  And probably the best non Witch, Mountebank, Masquerade, or Chapel.

I know Mint/Fools Gold was higher.  #3 or #4 maybe?

Ah true.  I forgets stuff with no CR.  But most of the top 30 are Chapel/X, anyway.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please)
« Reply #28 on: November 02, 2012, 03:16:07 am »
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Only if Tunnel is the bane. Otherwise, Young Witch/bane is often going to be better.

Wasn't YW/Tunnel an elite opening according to CR.com stats? I can't imagine that Tunnel was the bane in all of those cases.

When you open YW/Tunnel, you are essentially forfeiting your ability to get to $5 on the second reshuffle. But if you're just doing YW/Tunnel, then all of the cards that you need to buy are $3 or $4, so that's not a big deal. On the other hand, YW/bane isn't much better at getting to $5, bane depending. If they collide, then you're strictly worse off than with YW/Tunnel. If bane is a terminal Silver, then you have a decent chance of hitting $5 if they don't collide. If bane draws cards, then you're not as better off at getting to $5, and non-terminal draw has a chance of drawing the YW dead.

So in summary, I can only think of a relatively small set of banes that I would open with YW with Tunnel on the board (things like Scheme, Lighthouse, Swindler). Otherwise it depends on the kingdom, but I'd usually open YW/Tunnel. One last thing to consider is that if you're running YW/Tunnel is that 1) you'll have a sizable VP advantage over the player not strongly contesting Tunnels, and 2) you can green earlier on Duchies with the knowledge that Tunnel discards will be gaining Gold even late in the game and YW can filter through a couple of dead cards.

Just because it rated as a good opening, doesn't mean it was the best possible. Young Witch/Tunnel is a strong combo. People going for that often beat people not going for it. Given that you open Young Witch/Tunnel, you're more likely to be going for that strategy. This beats people who don't go for it. But it doesn't necessarily mean you beat people who go YW/Tunnel but open bane first. Best opening stats can't accurately reflect opening bane, so they're not that helpful here.

There is a YW/Tunnel bot in Geronimoo's sim. It's probably not optimized, but try adding in a bane (say Herbalist -- a pretty bad bane), and it should beat the built-in bot.

It's not about getting to $5, since you don't care. It's about blocking the curses and winning the curse split, which is more important than getting an early gold, since the game is going to go longer anyway, because of the curses and the fact that YW isn't the best at turning golds into provinces, since it's only a 2 card sift.
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DG

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please)
« Reply #29 on: November 02, 2012, 09:51:13 am »
+1

Quote
It's about blocking the curses and winning the curse split, which is more important than getting an early gold

A great many games can be won with early gold and losing the curse split. I wouldn't try it too often though.
« Last Edit: November 02, 2012, 09:52:45 am by DG »
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Qvist

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please)
« Reply #30 on: November 02, 2012, 12:16:27 pm »
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Nice article we should include in the wiki IMO.
I also included a list of cards that can trigger Tunnel.
http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Tunnel

Insomniac

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 4
« Reply #31 on: November 05, 2012, 02:26:29 am »
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This has now been updated, looking once again for feedback, (I'll add the table from the wiki later, nice table Qvist!)
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dondon151

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 4
« Reply #32 on: November 05, 2012, 03:32:44 am »
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Your table is missing Jack of All Trades.
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Qvist

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 4
« Reply #33 on: November 05, 2012, 03:36:22 am »
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Your table is missing Jack of All Trades.

Thanks for the heads up.

ipofanes

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 4
« Reply #34 on: November 05, 2012, 05:00:12 am »
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Quote
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.

I tend to think of Golem not as an action enabler but rather a (halfway) consistent drawer of great cards. Especially in messy curser decks I like to buy two Mountebanks and up to three or four Golems. Tunnel doesn't really hurt in that combo. Of course there are decks where Golem shines in an engine, especially by villaging cantrips when there are no Villages around, a bit like Throne Room/Procession/King's Court does.

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Mic Qsenoch

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 4
« Reply #35 on: November 05, 2012, 09:28:44 am »
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I think it would be useful to try and list the combos in order of strength. This is subjective, but I think its pretty clear that Golem and Cartographer are not elite Tunnel enablers and shouldn't be listed before things like Vault or Embassy.

I also disagree with stopping at 1 or 2 Tunnels with Young Witch. Gaining Gold in a Curse heavy game is a huge boost to your economy, so I want to give myself the best chance possible of hitting a Tunnel with my YW. And the VP is very nice in these games.

Also, why are Warehouse and Storeroom repeated in the combo section, but Young Witch is not?
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brokoli

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 4
« Reply #36 on: November 05, 2012, 10:17:57 am »
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This has now been updated, looking once again for feedback, (I'll add the table from the wiki later, nice table Qvist!)

You didn't mention Trash for benefit, which is a very important thing IMO.
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Insomniac

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 4
« Reply #37 on: November 05, 2012, 03:17:12 pm »
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This has now been updated, looking once again for feedback, (I'll add the table from the wiki later, nice table Qvist!)

You didn't mention Trash for benefit, which is a very important thing IMO.

Added.
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jomini

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 4
« Reply #38 on: November 05, 2012, 10:07:00 pm »
+1

Another possible enabler is top deck control. Something like Courtyard, Count, Mandarin, or Haven can put a Tunnel back on deck top/into next hand so you can:
A. Have a second shot at pairing it with your discarder this shuffle (or vice-versa).
B. Increase the odds that Tnnl gets paired with your opponent's discard attack.
C. Smooth out your coin distribution, 4 golds and 1 buy likes being able to Haven back a gold for next turn.
D. Sometimes move dead tunnels from hand to deck top where you can discard them (e.g. Count/Farming Village/Tnnl is vastly better than just Farmv/Tnnl).

These aren't combos themselves, but they can definitely tip a marginal case towards going Tunnel.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 4
« Reply #39 on: November 06, 2012, 12:44:59 pm »
+4

Nice update. Looks a lot better than the original. The main comment I still have is one that I have for a lot of articles: your section on "deciding to Tunnel" reads more like a list of combos than an explanation based on fundamental concepts augmented by examples. The way I would have organized it is as follows (I was planning on writing a Tunnel article myself but didn't have the time):

-----

There are 2 main reasons to go for Tunnel: for the cheap VPs and for the reaction. The cheap VPs are nearly self-explanatory -- just get them in the late game or use it as a pile to empty in a cheap-VP rush along with Gardens or Silk road. The reaction is a little more complicated. It may not be immediately obvious, but you need 3 things to make the Tunnel reaction really work for you:

1. A way of dicarding cards -- this is the obvious one

2. A way of making sure that Tunnel is one of the cards you discard -- it doesn't help you to discard 2 cards every turn with Oracle or something if you never actually get to discard Tunnels.

3. A way of leveraging the Golds you get into something good -- this is the most subtle, but still very important. If you're buying Tunnels, your deck is going to have more Golds and VP cards than usual, and fewer Silvers and action cards. You don't have a high density of good cards, but rather a high variance in card value, and you want cards that leverage this, like sifters.

There are a few cards that give you all of these functions in one, and thus make good two-card combo strategies with Tunnel:

 - Heavy sifters: Warehouse, Embassy, Storeroom. These cards give a discard from hand (1), help get Tunnel in a postition to be discarded by drawing before the discard (2), and offer sifting to help collect the Golds together while dumping the excess VP cards (3).

 - Vault. [You wrote this one already. The key is that while it's a little weaker at (2) than the heavier sifters, it's much better at (3), which makes up for it.]

 - Young Witch. Young Witch goes about accomplishing (3) in another way. It's not great at turning Golds into Provinces, since you need 2 Golds and 2 Coppers in 6 cards which will likely also include Tunnels and Curses, but since it drags the game out with the Curses, you can often still get to that point. Of course, if you can find a better way of accomplishing (3), like Remodel or Salvager, that can definitely help.

The example of using a late-game TfB card with Young Witch brings us to the next idea: using multiple different kingdom cards to cover all your needs. Here you get (1) and (2) from Young Witch, and add in Remodel or Salvager to provide/strengthen (3).

An illustrative example is using the Horse Traders/Tunnel "combo". At first glance, you might think that Horse Traders + Tunnel makes a good strategy. It certainly covers (1). The problem is that it's pretty bad at (2) and terrible at (3) -- you need to draw HT and TWO(!) Golds in a 5-card hand to buy a Province, which is no easy task. But clearly there's a synergy here. You can turn this into an actual strategy by adding something like Stables or Lab. By providing non-terminal draw, they help get Tunnels in a position to be discarded (2), and by increasing handsize, they make it easier to turn Golds into Provinces (3). In a six-card hand, you just need a HT, a Gold, and 2 Coppers, which is much more easy to manange. The strategy should thus be something like opening HT/Silver to hit a few early 5s to get your Stables/Labs, then start buying up Tunnels.

This is an example of the more general strategy of going for hand-size increasing + discard from hand. The discard covers (1), and the hand-size increasing covers (2) and (3). You can do this with 3-card-combos like HT+Stables+Tunnel, or you can take it more to the extreme and build a full-on deck drawing engine for the hand-size increasing, and use a discarding engine piece (Cellar, Hamlet) for discard.

Other cards provide multiple functions, but need some help to complete a strategy. Examples include Cartographer (1,3), Minion (1,2), etc...

-----

I'm not trying to re-write the article for you here, but the big point is that if you start with the list of things you need, you give a whole big picture to look for, than can explain how all the good (and even marginal) enablers fit in. I feel like if you incorporate this big-picture concept early on, then along with all the other content and examples you have, you'll have a really good article.
« Last Edit: November 06, 2012, 12:46:33 pm by HiveMindEmulator »
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Insomniac

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 9
« Reply #40 on: November 13, 2012, 12:35:21 pm »
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As mentioned in the title I updated this nov 9. and am now adding it to the wiki
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PitzerMike

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please)
« Reply #41 on: November 14, 2012, 04:18:44 am »
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YW/Tunnel was the number 33 or so opening.  And probably the best non Witch, Mountebank, Masquerade, or Chapel.

I know Mint/Fools Gold was higher.  #3 or #4 maybe?

Also there's a number of Trading Post openings high up there.
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Drab Emordnilap

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 9
« Reply #42 on: November 14, 2012, 05:54:11 pm »
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The thing with Horse Traders/Tunnel is that it makes it really easy to empty the Duchies, as opposed to the Provinces. With the extra points from the Tunnels, you can will a three-pile rush.
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HiveMindEmulator

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 9
« Reply #43 on: November 14, 2012, 06:19:56 pm »
+1

The thing with Horse Traders/Tunnel is that it makes it really easy to empty the Duchies, as opposed to the Provinces. With the extra points from the Tunnels, you can will a three-pile rush.

Unless you have an opponent helping you 3-pile, I don't think you can do it fast enough. This kind of thing can work with Duke or Silk Road since you have 2 options: end early on piles if they compete for the Duchies/Silk Roads, or get an obscenely high score in 25+ turns. Tunnels are worth only 2 points, so they don't give you that second option. So your opponent simply has to ignore you, play a solid strategy and get most-to-all of the Provinces.
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theory

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 9
« Reply #44 on: November 16, 2012, 05:49:03 pm »
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Apologies -- I meant to post this on Wednesday but entered the wrong date for it to publish.  Well, it's up now :)
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Insomniac

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 9
« Reply #45 on: November 16, 2012, 05:56:57 pm »
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Apologies -- I meant to post this on Wednesday but entered the wrong date for it to publish.  Well, it's up now :)

Thats exciting, I've never been on the front page :)
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Rishkar

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 9
« Reply #46 on: September 14, 2021, 08:31:30 pm »
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So, I shouldn't use duchess and poacher as my tunnel enablers?
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Nashvon

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 9
« Reply #47 on: October 07, 2021, 09:37:56 am »
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As I understand it, we are not supposed to use them.
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ato.gurkan

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 9
« Reply #48 on: October 11, 2021, 04:36:16 am »
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I think Rebuild should get a mention as well. Since they interact in more than one way, I do not feel qualified to comment in detail; but I have seen Tunnel/Rebuild to be dominating on some boards.
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CaptainTheo

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Re: Tunnel - (Feedback please) -- UPDATED NOV 9
« Reply #49 on: November 01, 2021, 05:56:34 pm »
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I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned Dungeon, which compared to Warehouse draws and discards an extra card in total and on the second turn you get 5 cards instead of 4 to discard from, and the fact that it's spread over two turns means you are much more likely to have Tunnel in your hand during that time.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2021, 05:57:43 pm by CaptainTheo »
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