Tunnel is a card that I think is pretty poorly understood. I certainly know that my friend Adam is not a big fan of the card, and he has said that he feels confused by it often. So hopefully this little article will help to clear things up a bit. Let's dive right in, and look at the different modes Tunnel presents.
Tunnel as VP
The biggest thing to remember about Tunnel is that it provides 2 VP for 3 coins. In terms of coins, that's a more efficient rate than Duchy even, but of course cards tend to be more important than coins, and this is less efficient cards-wise. That hurts you both in that you have to use two buys on this rather than just one, and moreover because you will have to draw two junky cards every shuffle rather than one. Still, sometimes you just need points, and sometimes this is upping the total amount available to you.
I don't have any specific example games here, because it's just too ubiquitous and non-specific to really have - you get the idea though, it's just a green card like Estate or Duchy, just a bit between.
Tunnel as Defense
This is perhaps the biggest trap of all. Your opponent has discard attacks, and you think, aha, I can get tunnels, and then when they attack me, I will gain golds. The problem here is that gaining golds just isn't very good very often in this scenario. Essentially, what you are saying when you do this is, "If I gain enough Golds, my three card hands can beat you". Well, this is usually just a losing proposition. Of course, there are probably some exceptions, where there is just nothing to do, no way to draw, the game will be very long, and you can also leverage the victory part of the Tunnel. But these are going to be exceedingly rare, and for the most part, you would just rather be on the side of the attack, and in general, just having better stuff than a do-nothing green card. There is also, of course, no guarantee that any given hand gets attacked, so you have a pretty good chance of not getting your benefit - unless, of course, your opponent has built a consistent engine. In that case, though, you would almost always have been better served to build such an engine yourself! I will note that using Tunnel as a defense is probably more realistic in multiplayer, where you're much more likely to get attacked every turn - but I still wouldn't expect it to be good often.
I also don't have examples here, because I can't find any recent games of mine where anyone really did this. The word is more or less out now, at least at the high levels, but it wasn't always so, and you will still see quite a number of players falling for this idea.
The Headlong Rush for Gold-Flood
This one is ever-popular. The basic idea is to get Tunnels and enablers (discard outlets) en masse, to then acquire golds en masse, to then buy things. This strategy consistently gets way overrated. The first problem is that you need to get things to line up in the right order for this to work at all - and if you build it right, they usually will, but you're still hanging some non-trivial percentage for disaster. The next problem is that this is slow. First, you have to get Tunnels, which are cards that actively hurt your deck. The next shuffle, you get to start gaining gold, but you won't reap the benefits of that gold until the shuffle after that. So it takes a long time. Further compounding this, you actually need to get a lot of gold before you can do what you want. Typically, your enablers are going to leave you down a card. That means you'll need two gold and two copper in order to buy your province. It takes quite a lot of cards in order to get that set up reliably, even with sifting benefits. Keep in mind one alternative is always buy silver to buy gold, and that is going to be a lot easier on you to reach 8 coins in terms of needing golds. In order to alleviate this problem, you are going to need really exceptional enablers. The best by far are Storeroom and Embassy. They just let you see so many cards, and they provide additional economic benefits to lessen the burden of needing to get Gold Gold Copper Copper exactly. Even with these cards, the strategy is only a reasonably good baseline, not anything super amazing. Young Witch is another mention, but this is not because it's really a good enabler, but because the attack synergizes with the slog-like nature of the Gold Flood strategy to start with. With worse enablers, you should be quite leery indeed.
When you're building this deck, the emphasis should really be on the enablers far more than the Tunnels. The quick thing is that the enablers do something for your deck if they don't collide, whereas the Tunnels don't. They also accelerate your shuffles even when they 'miss', which is a big deal in this kind of deck. Furthermore, you just don't really need that many Tunnels. Getting a couple Golds per shuffle reliably and getting back round to them faster is simply a much bigger deal than potentially getting a higher number of golds per shuffle.
I have one example game here: http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150611/log.50a94f0ce4b07a80ae66d119.1434063461261.txt
You'll see I focus on getting my Embassies up much moreso than the Tunnels, and it pays very good dividends (of course, I was also absurdly lucky here). My opponent actually also plays pretty well (perhaps his first Duchy should be another Embassy - in general this is true anyway - but it is hard to criticize as he is so far behind and clearly needs to get rather lucky to have a chance), and his draws are more reasonable as a baseline here.
Tunnel as Payload
This is something I don't see very often, but it's I think pretty significantly the best use of the card. The concept is pretty simple: you build up a big draw engine, then you use a Tunnel to gain Golds to use as the economic finish. The nice thing about this is that a lot of your enablers are cards you already want to grease the wheels of your engine, you can use a single Tunnel multiple times in a turn, and you can use all your buys going forward on engine pieces, without needing to waste any just making money. Also, because engines draw so much, the speed both at which you acquire golds and at which you are able to reap the benefits of them is quite high.
The key to playing this kind of deck is to get your engine up and running first, and add the Tunnel as a payload card. You also want to think about potentially limiting the activations of your tunnel - Gold is a card that is generally pretty good when it's free, but you don't always want more. It's important to keep your deck-size under control and your reliability up - and there's little point in making more money than you need. Furthermore, there are often going to be more opportunities on later turns.
Let's look at a couple of example games I played here:
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150427/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1430163648667.txt
Here, I get lots of enablers, because they will help get my engine firing anyway. I do take an early Tunnel and a couple of gold, as I need to get my economy up to get the Hunting Grounds I need. But I don't activate it every time, at least until I am getting into draw-my-deck territory. Because I have a high number of sifters, my deck is reliable, and when I get enough Hunting Grounds on-line, my deck explodes, closing out 6 Provinces over 2 turns.
http://www.gokosalvager.com/static/logprettifier.html?/20150507/log.514b5511e4b0b79c883b5e3b.1431010794761.txt
This game is a similar story. One Tunnel soon (in this case, I got to trash Hovel, which had me pulling the trigger sooner than I normally would). Pick up a forge to start coalescing, and then go to town. Forging extra Golds into Hunting Grounds is a big deal here, and while I do go a bit overboard in getting a zillion golds at the end (probably not really the best play), it doesn't really matter, as the game is just ending.
Showing posts with label Tunnel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tunnel. Show all posts
Friday, 26 June 2015
Monday, 4 May 2015
A Tale of Traps
Game Log
Setup:
First of all, I want to say I don't actually think this game was played particularly well, by any stretch, by either player. Indeed, the reason I'm posting this is that there were a number of errors being made which I see as fairly common even for players who are pretty strong. As such, I'm going to refrain from posting any images here which would show my opponent's name, as the point really isn't to shame him, but rather to try to point out these pitfalls so that you, the reader, will be able to avoid them. Obviously, you can figure out who it is if you really want to.
Trap 1: University
The University trap is very easy to fall into. There are lots of good and shiny 5-cost cards, and you want lots of them, so you go for it. The problem is, this is incredibly slow. You have to buy a Potion, buy a University, and only then can you start getting those 5s to pour in. A player who just went straightforwardly for buying those 5s the old-fashioned way is just going to be 5s ahead for several shuffles, and particularly if those 5s have an effect of improving your deck's ability to build itself (as is often true), perhaps just indefinitely. On top of this, as a village, University is a Necropolis - and that's card-negative, generally not where you want to be. Given all this, in order to make University worth it, you usually want some plan to make the game go late (often extra points) and/or ways to see those reshuffles quickly (i.e. deck-thinning). You do have some of that here (Tunnel and Island give more points, Spice Merchant thins a bit, Embassy and Margrave can help you draw). But the draw is pretty weak - only Margrave can combine with University to actually increase your hand-size, and then you are not doing it in a very potent way - the draw power is equivalent to Village-Moat. Yeah. So I really don't believe in University or the Engine here.
Trap 2: Opening Potion
This trap is a bit tough, and perhaps I shouldn't call it a trap, because it's very often correct. The thought is 'if I want cards that cost 2p or 3p, I should open potion'. And because you typically want those cards as soon as possible, this is indeed most of the time correct. But there are lots of exceptions. And I think this is likely one of those exceptions - if you want to go for the engine, I think you want to open Spice Merchant and defer those Universities for a while, as getting your deck thinned and spinning a bit is more important than loading up on those 5-costs super-fast (and indeed, you aren't so much slower anyway, as you are more likely to be able to just buy some 5s). A good example of delayed potion happened in a game this morning on Adam Horton's stream which can be found here.
Trap 3: Tunnel
People often like to rush for Tunnel+Enabler, thinking they'll gain lots of golds and get way ahead. This can sometimes be good, but generally it's quite mediocre, even with fairly decent enablers. More importantly, in doing this, you're playing a deck that is more like a slog than anything else - it takes an awful long time for you to get a decent number of golds out of this, and in the meantime, you have added a nothing card to your deck (and this is even assuming you do hit your collisions pretty well). In the long run, you do have a gold-heavy, fairly robust deck, and some extra points to boot. So it is generally like a slog, and not necessarily a great one. Of course, there are other ways to play the card. What doesn't make sense, though, is trying to get this to work in an engine. You're adding lots of non-draw cards to your deck, which makes it exceptionally difficult to draw your deck. Of course, the enablers usually sift you, so you may well still be able to have some ability to draw your important cards, but the point still remains that as you increase the number of cards you have in your deck, you decrease the chances of getting everything you need to come together. In this game, your draw isn't great, and especially given your few villages and mostly needing Embassy over Margrave to enable, you're eventually turning yourself into something near Province-per-turn mode. And keep in mind, you were pretty slow to get there. This really lowers your ability to reap the benefits of an engine.
Trap 4: One Copper Trasher
I have to give credit here for pointing this one out to Stef, the longtime top player in the game. Here's the deal: usually, you only want one copy of a copper trasher (Moneylender or especially Spice Merchant, as here). This is because you're going to run out of fuel for them fairly quickly, and there's diminishing returns on these cards, as you get to trash a lot fewer cards per trasher with each successive one. However, in games where there is some trash-for-benefit card, getting the second one gets much, much better, and is very often the thing you want to do. Here, I was the player who overlooked this: I slam lots of silvers and only one Spice Merchant. This is fine, but given my Butcher strategy, getting the second SM just seems a good bit better.
As for how the actual board goes? Well, in the game, my SM+2 Butchers was fine enought o overcome the wonky kind-of-engine from my opponent. In general, though, I am not sure which way to turn between Margrave-based BM, Embassy-based BM (picking up tunnels at the right moment), or 2SM+1-3Butcher BM.
Setup:
First of all, I want to say I don't actually think this game was played particularly well, by any stretch, by either player. Indeed, the reason I'm posting this is that there were a number of errors being made which I see as fairly common even for players who are pretty strong. As such, I'm going to refrain from posting any images here which would show my opponent's name, as the point really isn't to shame him, but rather to try to point out these pitfalls so that you, the reader, will be able to avoid them. Obviously, you can figure out who it is if you really want to.
Trap 1: University
The University trap is very easy to fall into. There are lots of good and shiny 5-cost cards, and you want lots of them, so you go for it. The problem is, this is incredibly slow. You have to buy a Potion, buy a University, and only then can you start getting those 5s to pour in. A player who just went straightforwardly for buying those 5s the old-fashioned way is just going to be 5s ahead for several shuffles, and particularly if those 5s have an effect of improving your deck's ability to build itself (as is often true), perhaps just indefinitely. On top of this, as a village, University is a Necropolis - and that's card-negative, generally not where you want to be. Given all this, in order to make University worth it, you usually want some plan to make the game go late (often extra points) and/or ways to see those reshuffles quickly (i.e. deck-thinning). You do have some of that here (Tunnel and Island give more points, Spice Merchant thins a bit, Embassy and Margrave can help you draw). But the draw is pretty weak - only Margrave can combine with University to actually increase your hand-size, and then you are not doing it in a very potent way - the draw power is equivalent to Village-Moat. Yeah. So I really don't believe in University or the Engine here.
Trap 2: Opening Potion
This trap is a bit tough, and perhaps I shouldn't call it a trap, because it's very often correct. The thought is 'if I want cards that cost 2p or 3p, I should open potion'. And because you typically want those cards as soon as possible, this is indeed most of the time correct. But there are lots of exceptions. And I think this is likely one of those exceptions - if you want to go for the engine, I think you want to open Spice Merchant and defer those Universities for a while, as getting your deck thinned and spinning a bit is more important than loading up on those 5-costs super-fast (and indeed, you aren't so much slower anyway, as you are more likely to be able to just buy some 5s). A good example of delayed potion happened in a game this morning on Adam Horton's stream which can be found here.
Trap 3: Tunnel
People often like to rush for Tunnel+Enabler, thinking they'll gain lots of golds and get way ahead. This can sometimes be good, but generally it's quite mediocre, even with fairly decent enablers. More importantly, in doing this, you're playing a deck that is more like a slog than anything else - it takes an awful long time for you to get a decent number of golds out of this, and in the meantime, you have added a nothing card to your deck (and this is even assuming you do hit your collisions pretty well). In the long run, you do have a gold-heavy, fairly robust deck, and some extra points to boot. So it is generally like a slog, and not necessarily a great one. Of course, there are other ways to play the card. What doesn't make sense, though, is trying to get this to work in an engine. You're adding lots of non-draw cards to your deck, which makes it exceptionally difficult to draw your deck. Of course, the enablers usually sift you, so you may well still be able to have some ability to draw your important cards, but the point still remains that as you increase the number of cards you have in your deck, you decrease the chances of getting everything you need to come together. In this game, your draw isn't great, and especially given your few villages and mostly needing Embassy over Margrave to enable, you're eventually turning yourself into something near Province-per-turn mode. And keep in mind, you were pretty slow to get there. This really lowers your ability to reap the benefits of an engine.
Trap 4: One Copper Trasher
I have to give credit here for pointing this one out to Stef, the longtime top player in the game. Here's the deal: usually, you only want one copy of a copper trasher (Moneylender or especially Spice Merchant, as here). This is because you're going to run out of fuel for them fairly quickly, and there's diminishing returns on these cards, as you get to trash a lot fewer cards per trasher with each successive one. However, in games where there is some trash-for-benefit card, getting the second one gets much, much better, and is very often the thing you want to do. Here, I was the player who overlooked this: I slam lots of silvers and only one Spice Merchant. This is fine, but given my Butcher strategy, getting the second SM just seems a good bit better.
As for how the actual board goes? Well, in the game, my SM+2 Butchers was fine enought o overcome the wonky kind-of-engine from my opponent. In general, though, I am not sure which way to turn between Margrave-based BM, Embassy-based BM (picking up tunnels at the right moment), or 2SM+1-3Butcher BM.
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