HoD Tunnels + Kneel - Feedback Please!

Vale as restricted is interesting, as most people are running Pentoshi to survive the early game (where Hod tunnels is weakest). Cache and Preston have been suggested as being almost as good second choices, but the current consensus is on Pentoshi.

Three cities is odd too, as it makes city of sin a 2-kneeler at best, and denies the benefits of city of soldiers and a city besieged, but I can see what you're going for there.

Mainly though, I'd question the choice of wildfire assault. I'd say tunnels is one of the decks that comes out best after a Valar Morghulis, thanks to keeping cards alive back in shadows and the benefits of a buffed silent sisters coming out of shadows with double figure strength on the same turn as you Valar.

Kneel merged with HoD tunnels is certainyl not a new concept of course, though most tend to go for the Manor, plus for very kneel heavy decks stuff like Lion's Gate mixed with YKtWD.

Still, not saying this is a bad take on Tunnels, just a different one. Cool stuff.

Definitely knock it down to 60 cards though. Never go past 60 unless playing TLV.

I would drop Shadowblack Lane, Kings Landing, Pinch of Powder, Slander and Lies, Lashing Out, Coin Mint.

Thanks for the feedback.

I'm glad you pointed out Pinch, Slander, and Lashing; these are pretty much cards I wanted to try out but will likely get cut later.

My thought with Wildfire was that I could use that to get him down to a manageable amount of characters to kneel, if it gets out of control, while avoiding the loss of my heavy hitters with a blanket Valar. Still, I think you're right, and both ways warrant playtesting.

I'm a sucker for going over 60, but never by more than 4. Is this something that is just generally frowned upon or is there a real reason not to? I've got enough draw where an extra 3 (Tunnels will come out because of HoD, leaving it at 63 cards) shouldn't hurt draw too bad.

1st) you need more shadows (18 minimum)

2nd) you need more cities (city besieged at least)

3rd) you need redundancy.

i'll elaborate only on the last.tunnels is a simple deck but really good if you know what you re doing and make an efficient deck.the list you submitted seems like you scrolled down the deckbuilder and put 1-2 of every card that seemed useful.the cardpool has reached a state where you can have any tools you want to play.choose those that suit your style and play them 3x.

for example : i love location control.i play 3x condemned by the council and 3x pyromancer's apprentice in my tunnels.you could go with 3x terminal schemes and 3x im your writ small for suprise kills.or 3x harry the riverlands and 3x you 've killed the wrong dwarf along guild hall and stuff to maximize your kneeling potential.

whatever you choose please play them in larger numbers.experiment with the list you have and prioritise those that suite you the best.

and for the love of god PLAY THE SHADOWS JAIME!!! ;p

1st) you need more shadows (18 minimum)

2nd) you need more cities (city besieged at least)

3rd) you need redundancy.

 

i'll elaborate only on the last.tunnels is a simple deck but really good if you know what you re doing and make an efficient deck.the list you submitted seems like you scrolled down the deckbuilder and put 1-2 of every card that seemed useful.the cardpool has reached a state where you can have any tools you want to play.choose those that suit your style and play them 3x.

 

for example : i love location control.i play 3x condemned by the council and 3x pyromancer's apprentice in my tunnels.you could go with 3x terminal schemes and 3x im your writ small for suprise kills.or 3x harry the riverlands and 3x you 've killed the wrong dwarf along guild hall and stuff to maximize your kneeling potential.

 

whatever you choose please play them in larger numbers.experiment with the list you have and prioritise those that suite you the best.

 

and for the love of god PLAY THE SHADOWS JAIME!!! ;p

Thanks for the feedback re: the number of shadows cards. I've always been curious about what's the right amount, and I'll take from your post count you know what you're talking about.

Otherwise, I'll consider the other things you've mentioned, but I share a cardpool with another person, so that's why you'll see some cards missing (shadows Jaime, for example). I also prefer a little less redundancy. After I pump up the number of shadows, I'll see how this goes--and add more redundancy as needed.

One thing I'd note from playing this deck is that the characters come in two halves:

First, there's the characters that have the shadow crest. Generally you want these as cheap as possible (s0 or s1), and as has been pointed out, you want more of these. You can actually afford to be a bit freer with duplicates than with non-shadows uniques, as failing all else a duplicate in shadows is still +1 str to all you characters.

Second, there's the non-shadows characters. These need to have very low costs for the most part, as you need to restore the weakness of setup that shadows cards give you, and because the lower the cost the more incredible value you're getting from Tunnels and its strength boost. Its fantastic to spend 0 gold on a refugee, or 1 gold on a Doubting Septa or income chud, and get a 4-8 strength character.

Because the deck is money hungry, I'd always be very disciplined with the cost of your characters. They have to be amazing (like Cersei shadow-kneeler) to be worth including if they have a cost higher than 1, in my opinion, as you're already including a tonne of cards that effectively cost at least 2 (i.e. the cost to put into shadows).

In play, I've almost always found you fight from behind in this deck. In turns 1-3 you'll be behind on power. Then you start to pull it back. Then some time in turn 6-9, you'll win. Because of this natural slowness, the toughest decks to take on are slow control decks that draw better than you (Bloodthirst Rivers is especially hard, I find). Deadly is a pain as well, as (to a lesser degree) is stealth.

Surviving the early game and dealing with weakness to keywords is key, and for that reason, its current consensus that Pentoshi Manor is the restricted to go for, though I'm still stubbornly using Pyromancer's Cache, despite the plethora of attachment hate there is out there. My reasoning is that attachment hate comes mostly out of targ, and HoD-tunnels is luckily pretty strong against targ decks.

Vale refugee, certainly, is an interesting choice, and I can see what you're going for - a big ass tricon character. However, if the refugee is kneeling to attack/defend, you still don't get that much mileage out of them, and you run the risk of not dominating in the first 2-4 turns simply by virtue of having to spend resources on gettign stuff into shadows rather than play.

You're both right with this one.

During playtesting, this deck flopped tremendously. (Although I did have one of those days where I couldn't draw a thing, which certainly didn't help. I lost four straight with this and then my buddy took it, played two, and proceeded to stomp me relentlessly.)

Asklepios, I completely agree with your assessment of the deck: I have to choose to go less shadows and be satisfied with minor pumps to already satisfactory characters (Cersei, Littlefinger, etc.), or I need to go more shadows and reduce the entire cost curve and only include a few necessary uniques.

Icarus, you're right too in that the deck doesn't really have a good identity. It's spread too thin with its intentions, which makes it completely unreliable. Relying on an incomplete cardpool also hurts; Twilight Market would be nice to reduce the shadows impact.

I've decided to table this deck for the moment, but I'll come back to it at a later time. I'm thinking I'll go full on shadows route with shadows-kneeling Cersei and a ton of weenies: Septa, gold-producers, Mountain Refugees, etc.

Asklepios, if you put together anything, let me know.

i play 12 1-costs + 4 0-costs non-shadows + 8 s2-costs in 32 characters.only 1 cersei,1 tyrion,1 jaime 1 littlefinger for bighitters.3 enemy informers and 1 janos round it up

"I'll go full on shadows route with shadows-kneeling Cersei and a ton of weenies: Septa, gold-producers, Mountain Refugees, etc."

be careful to first snow ...

I wouldn't let First Snow of Winter radically undermine your planned build.  You'll likely face it at some point, and unless you're running Counterplot, there won't be much you can do about it.  What's the alternative?  Playing a majority of high cost characters--in a Tunnels deck?!?

i just want to say play 0/1 cost and some 3 cost guy + big economy instead of 5 or 6 0/1 cost dudes because versus first snow + ROD it's auto loose ! you'll end up with 4 cards in hand and an empty board

First Snow is nasty, especially followed by RBD, but Breaching The Wall is worse!

Been playing Tunnels as my main deck on octgn, and currently my event mix is 3 x Harry the Riverlands, 2 x There Are No Men Like Me and 2 x Condemned by the Council.

It hurt a lot letting A House Divided go, but I'm finding that while its a great tempo card there's more opportunities to play There Are No Men Like Me or Condemned by the Council

Characterwise I'm using Doubting Septas, Income chuds, Silent sisters, Jaime (of course), Syrio Forel, Shadowcats. Essentially I'm trying to keep the characters at cost 0, 1, s0 or s1. Going by that rule I ended up including Ser Gregor's Dog (which normally I'd consider only for an intrigue centred deck) and ended up with a 0-cost bicon that has high strength from the Tunnels!

The big hitters are Shadows Tyrion and kneeler Cersei, but I only use one of each, as the deck doesn't rely on them to close. In fact, if anything, it tends to be Silent Sisters with There Are No Men Like (them) that seems to be critical.

Draw currently comes from 1 Tommen, 3 GTMs, 1 Mander and Jaime, and thats all. Restricted is Pentoshi.

Aside from pentoshi, I'm running 1 Alchemist's Guild Hall, 2 Kingdom of Shadows, 3 Goldroads. I've dropped the Seas, which is a weird feeling, and gone zero influence. Keeping to just 13 locations has left me room for 7 events, and for a nice and high 40 characters. Basically, each time a 0 or 1 cost character is played thats another 5-8 strength on the table, so I want to make sure I have a lot of them.

Plot deck is cities, as tempting though rivers are, a City of Lies opening is just too good. With experience I'm starting to spot the decks that open Fear of Winter, and against them I lead with A City Besieged instead. All in all, I run 5 cities, VM and Retaliation. Considering swapping out Retaliation, but not sure yet. The city cards, especially the kneeler, have won me games over and over, so I don't mind committing to them.

The deck craps all over HoD-Dragonpit, laughs at Dothraki hordes, gets very nervous but usually stops Bararush, is a little troubled by Martell Rivers, and is decimated by Stark murder-decks, especially if Breaching the Wall happens, though actually the biggest annoyance against those decks is when they play high cost stuff and I can't Harry them.

i just want to say play 0/1 cost and some 3 cost guy + big economy instead of 5 or 6 0/1 cost dudes because versus first snow + ROD it's auto loose ! you'll end up with 4 cards in hand and an empty board

Sure, but don't forget all the Shadows guys are printed cost 2+X. That helps a lot against First Snow, and also means you have to account for that on the gold curve.

retaliation does nothing for the deck.if you feel good enough in the plot game,go with forgotten plans as the 7th plot.otherwise cersei's scheme and rule by decree are good fits too,depending the number of rivers played in your meta.tunnels just won my country's regional (24 people) by the way! 

retaliation does nothing for the deck.if you feel good enough in the plot game,go with forgotten plans as the 7th plot.otherwise cersei's scheme and rule by decree are good fits too,depending the number of rivers played in your meta.tunnels just won my country's regional (24 people) by the way! 

You're right: I think at the time I added it, it had just come off restricted and I was excited by it being a 4/8/2 in a deck that doesn't mind going second.

I like the two options you suggest, though scheme's Claim 1 always puts me off a little,strong effect though it has. HoD tunnels generally doesn't need to kneel opponents to have enough strength to get through challenges, and though getting more unopposed challenges is always good you get the same effect more or less by winning a claim 2 military challenge then pulling off a claim 2 power challenge, which with HoD Tunnels will always have enough power on the opposing house card to give that 2 power.

RbD isn't a bad idea, but I sometimes worry about it hitting myself instead, though i guess its a strong call in this meta for any non-Rivers deck, just to weaken the Rivers decks. I think I'll take your advice and switch to that.

Here's my 2 cents

Here's mine:

http://www.cardgamed...hod-tunnels-r82

Not sure how you post to this forum rather than the deck list, but there we go