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[Insomniac]

Tunnel

Introduction
Tunnel is a Victory/Reaction card worth 2VP at only 3 coins. 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, 1 is for cheap VPs in the end game and the other is for Gold production. For the VP they work well as part of a 3 pile alternate VP strategy with Gardens or Silk Roads or as Late game VP that is worth more than Estate for only 1 coin 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 Tunnel provides you with. Because your deck will have more VP (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.

Some 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 2 Tunnels to augment another strategy.
  3) 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 YW and Tunnel will go down as the game progresses, therefore you want to use Tunnel as a 1 or 2 shot for a bonus VP 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.

  4) 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.

  5) Alt VP - In games with silk roads running out the Tunnels is going to be stronger than running out the estates as each Tunnel is worth 2VP as opposed to 1.

  6) Cellar/Hamlet/Secret Chamber - While not particularily 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 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 2 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 +1 but has the problem that it stops on more cards than either of the first 2 making it harder to Trigger your Tunnels with


  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 - Like all things 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. Similarily 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? +$6. In an engine where you draw your deck every turn this can be your method for greening given the right TfB, 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 Tunnel 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 Tunnel then with terminal and is probably 4 or 5 at most. You want to make sure that if you are picking up that much Tunnel you are countering it with at least an equal (and probably a greater) number of the discarder.  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 one 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/Governor).


As the title mentions any and all feedback is welcomed and appreciated! Thanks for taking the time to read this article.

[sandstorm]

I think you have a good solid base here.  One of the main points that I think you are missing is that Tunnel is actually never a dead card on any board.  The reaction can be but those 2 points can still be very important.  Like all alt vp cards the presence of Tunnel can provide engines more time to catch up to BM strategies since there are more points available on the board.  And even in standard BM games when it gets down to duchy dancing and you hit $3-4 do NOT auto grab an estate when Tunnel is sitting there.  I often have this problem 

[yuma]

Perhaps mentioning that while not enough to be a combo on its own, adding a cellar, hamlet or even a secret chamber to a deck that already is running Tunnels can be even more Golden.

[ftl]

You should mention Minion/Tunnel. It's a little better than straight Minion. Oasis is good too.

Maybe talk specifically about how many cards a given sifter "looks through" to discard tunnels - it's not immediately obvious why Oasis (draws only one card!) is a better at activating tunnels than Cartographer (draws one and looks through 4!) but it's because Oasis looks through 5 cards to find the tunnel. YW and Vault look through 6, Cartographer/Harvest examine 4, Warehouse examines 7, Storeroom examines 8(!!), Oracle only examines 2, the spy variants only examine 1, and so on. Cellar 4, Hamlet 5, Secret Chamber 4, etc.

Maybe mention its use as just an alt VP which gives 2 VP. Remember to buy it over estates in the endgame! It's obvious but people forget it.

[dondon151]

YW/Tunnel is arguably more powerful than Warehouse/Tunnel and maybe even Storeroom/Tunnel, and I don't think that Golem/Tunnel and Tactician/Tunnel are particularly "good" combos.

Golem/Tunnel takes a long time to get up and running and requires a lot of support: one thing that tends to happen in Tunnel games is that you draw a lot of $7s as Gold/Gold/Copper/2 VP cards and sifting/drawing are required to get to $8 more reliably.

Tactician/Tunnel almost necessarily precludes double Tactician decks: the only cards that synergize with Gold gains are Salvager and Remodel/Expand (which requires villages). You have a reach of 4 when discarding Tunnel with Tactician; that's great, but when you draw your Tactician hands with lots of Golds, you can't use the Tunnels that you draw unless you want to give up your current turn with another Tactician, and if you decide to use the big hand, the Tunnels don't do anything. I mean, you're not going to hit $21+ without support. Even $16 is kind of a stretch.

I think you missed one of the best uses of Tunnel, which is increasing the total Treasure quantity very quickly and with very little cost in a firing engine. Draw your deck, discard 2 Tunnels using something like Oasis or Hamlet or what-have-you, and bam: your deck is $6 richer. With no trashing, you only need 3 Tunnel discards for your deck to make $16. Instead of buying Gold + engine piece, you can buy a $5 + engine piece. It's kind of like Hoard or even Haggler in this purpose, but so much better because 1) it's cheaper, 2) you gain Gold as you build the deck (whereas with Hoard, you're in that stage where your deck is slowly deteriorating), and 3) it's worth 2 VP in the endgame.

[gman314]

Mention discard attacks. Most of the time you shouldn't get Tunnel if you'll only be discarding to a Militia once through their deck, but if your opponent is playing a Goons every turn, then Tunnel is worth getting. Minion gets special note here and Margrave does too: Having 6 cards to choose from helps discard Tunnels.

On an idea similar to Golem, you also have Venture, Loan and Farming Village.

[Mic Qsenoch]

Embassy should get a mention.

[HiveMindEmulator]

I don't think Golem or Cartographer alone make good combos with Tunnel. The only good 2-card Tunnel combos, imo, are Embassy, Vault, Young Witch, Warehouse, and Storeroom. You have to be able to draw and then discard from your hand, and you need a way to actually use the Gold effectively. It's easy to just focus on the discard requirement, but you really need all 3. Most of the time, to put this together, you need more than one other card. I think these 5 cards are really the only ones that give you everything you need.

The other situation I really like Tunnel in is in heavy cycling engines as a way of adding economy late. If you cycle through your whole deck nearly every turn and are using a Hamlet or Cellar or something, it's easy to just add one Tunnel to infuse 1 or more Golds into your deck for the rest of your turns.

Another thing to emphasize is that you almost never want to open Tunnel. I see people do this a lot, but it doesn't make any sense. The chances of hitting the Tunnel right away are low, and then you basically lose $2 of value on whatever you buy on the turn you draw Tunnel compared to Silver.

[ftl]

Young Witch/Tunnel seems like a reasonable open though.

[eHalcyon]

"Overdue" should be "overdo".

I remember that there was a chart somewhere on f.ds examining which cards are the best Tunnel enablers.  Specifically, it looked at how big of a search space it had.  For example, Vault has a search space of 6 cards.  Warehouse hits 7 cards.  SC hits 4 cards.

You might want to mention briefly the use of Tunnel as alt VP, not just reaction.  The neat thing about Tunnel is that its two parts are applicable to different parts of the game.  The reaction is early/mid game when you care about gaining gold.  The 2VP is late game, when the extra VP could be the decider.  Even without the reaction I would happily pay $3 for 2VP in the end game.  Even without the VP I would happily pay $3 for the reaction if there is support.  The fact that the two portions are applicable to different phases of the game means that it does not need to be priced higher.

[brokoli]

I agree that golem and cartorapher are not really good combos for tunnel, and that embassy deserves a mention.  Cards like oasis and horse traders are really good with tunnel if you have a large hand (non-terminal draw and wharf/tactician).

Also, a thing you should absolutely mention is tunnel with Tfb. Apprentice loves tunnel because it can easily trash gol for +6 cards, and with your large hand you will easily discard other tunnels more often to get more golds. Remodel loves tunnel because can trash gold for province. Bishop and Salvager are very good with tunnel too, I once pulled off a sort of golden deck with bishop, tunnel and secret chamber.

[Asklepios]

You should mention Minion/Tunnel. It's a little better than straight Minion. Oasis is good too.

Though a little weaker than Minion + other cards in a minion-based engine, as the gold gets in the way of hand cycling.

I think its also worth emphasising the reduction in early tempo that adding a tunnel causes. Every time you draw Tunnel WITHOUT the discard enabler, its weakening that hand. And for the Tunnel to speed your game overall, you need to activate it and gain gold at least a couple or three times per Tunnel, disregarding the VP value of the Tunnel itself.

So, for example, while Warehouse / Tunnel and Vault / Tunnel are fantastic, because they also help speed your acquisition of provinces, combos like Cellar/Tunnel and Hamlet/Tunnel are too slow to cut it on their own.

Tunnel is very often a trap card, worth considering only for its late game opportunistic 2VP for $3. Its definitely not a must-buy just because it appears alongside proactive discarding, but rather needs careful consideration of the ratio of likely benefit in gold to loss of early pace.

[Insomniac]

Thanks for the feedback guys I'll work on gettin this updated a little later today (after work).

[SirPeebles]

Thanks for the feedback guys I'll work on gettin this updated a little later today (after work).

With this much feedback, you'd be better off discarding the whole article.  Then you'll be Gold.

[GendoIkari]

Thanks for the feedback guys I'll work on gettin this updated a little later today (after work).

With this much feedback, you'd be better off discarding the whole article.  Then you'll be Gold.

That won't work. The article is already in cleanup phase.

[Captain_Frisk]

Hunting party might also deserve mention.  Hunting Party + a terminal with + buy can easily discard the same tunnel multiple times in the same game.  It's definitely not an every time thing, but it's on the same level as golem.

[GendoIkari]

Hunting party might also deserve mention.  Hunting Party + a terminal with + buy can easily discard the same tunnel multiple times in the same game.  It's definitely not an every time thing, but it's on the same level as golem.

I definitely don't think it's on the same level as Golem, mostly because you have to have at least 2 Tunnels in your deck just to get anything at all. Playing a Golem in a certain deck guarantees 1 Gold per Tunnel in your deck (except Tunnels in your hand). Playing a Hunting Party, even in the exact right deck, is at best 1 less Gold than the number of Tunnels that you have, and most likely you'll need to play more than one Hunting Party just to get it started.

[Captain_Frisk]

Hunting party might also deserve mention.  Hunting Party + a terminal with + buy can easily discard the same tunnel multiple times in the same game.  It's definitely not an every time thing, but it's on the same level as golem.

I definitely don't think it's on the same level as Golem, mostly because you have to have at least 2 Tunnels in your deck just to get anything at all. Playing a Golem in a certain deck guarantees 1 Gold per Tunnel in your deck (except Tunnels in your hand). Playing a Hunting Party, even in the exact right deck, is at best 1 less Gold than the number of Tunnels that you have, and most likely you'll need to play more than one Hunting Party just to get it started.

Golem requires potion, and either a lucky buy on 4P, or waiting a long time. 

[GendoIkari]

Hunting party might also deserve mention.  Hunting Party + a terminal with + buy can easily discard the same tunnel multiple times in the same game.  It's definitely not an every time thing, but it's on the same level as golem.

I definitely don't think it's on the same level as Golem, mostly because you have to have at least 2 Tunnels in your deck just to get anything at all. Playing a Golem in a certain deck guarantees 1 Gold per Tunnel in your deck (except Tunnels in your hand). Playing a Hunting Party, even in the exact right deck, is at best 1 less Gold than the number of Tunnels that you have, and most likely you'll need to play more than one Hunting Party just to get it started.

Golem requires potion, and either a lucky buy on 4P, or waiting a long time.

True, I was really just referring to the effects of having a Golem-Tunnel deck vs having a Hunting Party-Tunnel deck, not so much saying that the Golem version is easier to make work right as a whole.

[KingsSkort]

Tunnel can be really powerful with TfB. With a strong engine, you can gain and bishop 3 or 4 golds per turn.

[Serialian]

I would mention a short sections about do nots for playing against a tunnel. Specifically that discarding attacks may inadvertently help your opponent and to make sure that you are gaining more benefit from them than your opponent.

It seems obvious, but I think a lot of us had the 'oh yeah' moment when they played their goons and the other player got a gold for our trouble.

I'm not high enough ranked to be an expert, but I would guess that Goons and Minion can still be worth it depending on the board, but militia and margrave a player should be highly cautious about.

Thief, pirate ship or noble brigands I think might be a wash, you might trigger a gold, but you are playing against a gold filled deck and it might work if other enablers are present.

[HiveMindEmulator]

Young Witch/Tunnel seems like a reasonable open though.

Only if Tunnel is the bane. Otherwise, Young Witch/bane is often going to be better.

[dondon151]

I would mention a short sections about do nots for playing against a tunnel. Specifically that discarding attacks may inadvertently help your opponent and to make sure that you are gaining more benefit from them than your opponent.

In most cases, I don't think that Tunnel is actually a good deterrent for discard attacks. If I've built a firing engine and can play Militia every turn and my opponent has not built an equally competitive engine, I will gladly play Militia as much as I can even if he gains a few Golds in the process. I would be a bit more cautious with Margrave (especially multiple Margraves) because the opponent is more likely to discard his Tunnel and also benefits more from having a Margrave of his own (relative to Militia).

In the absence of self-induced discard, the engine player doesn't want a Tunnel because it introduces a dead card in his deck for a very inconsistent benefit.

The problems with picking up Tunnel as defense are that 1) it's a dead card when it doesn't get "hit" by an attack (e.g., discarded by Militia or Thief) and 2) you don't get to see the Gold until the next shuffle. It does a very poor job on its own at straight up countering discard attacks.

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.

[Powerman]

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.

YW/Tunnel was the number 33 or so opening.  And probably the best non Witch, Mountebank, Masquerade, or Chapel.

[SirPeebles]

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?

[DG]

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.

[WheresMyElephant]

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.

[Powerman]

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.

[HiveMindEmulator]

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.

[DG]

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.

[Qvist]

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]

This has now been updated, looking once again for feedback, (I'll add the table from the wiki later, nice table Qvist!)

[dondon151]

Your table is missing Jack of All Trades.

[Qvist]

Your table is missing Jack of All Trades.

Thanks for the heads up.

[ipofanes]

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.

[Mic Qsenoch]

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?

[brokoli]

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.

[Insomniac]

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.

[jomini]

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.

[HiveMindEmulator]

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.

[Insomniac]

As mentioned in the title I updated this nov 9. and am now adding it to the wiki

[PitzerMike]

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.

[Drab Emordnilap]

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.

[HiveMindEmulator]

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.

[theory]

Apologies -- I meant to post this on Wednesday but entered the wrong date for it to publish.  Well, it's up now

[Insomniac]

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

[Rishkar]

So, I shouldn't use duchess and poacher as my tunnel enablers?

[Nashvon]

As I understand it, we are not supposed to use them.

[ato.gurkan]

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.

[CaptainTheo]

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.

[Awaclus]

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned Dungeon

Probably because the article and almost all of the replies were posted before Dungeon was released.