Shattered Destiny – Tunneling

Greetings HEXers, and welcome to the Gen Con preview of our brand new mechanic in set 2, Shattered Destiny—Tunneling! Tunneling allows you to build up a hidden force that then surfaces onto the board to surprise your opponent in various ways. This ability will be appearing exclusively on the Underworld races of Dwarves and Shin‘hare. Both of these races spend most of their lives beneath the surface: the Dwarves in mines and caverns in pursuit of the perfect tools of destruction; the Shin’hare dwelling underground after being banished from the surface for their overly aggressive nature.

Tunneling works as an alternate cost to play a card. For any troop with Tunneling, you may pay the Tunneling cost of 2 Resources to put them “underground,” so long as you also meet any other threshold requirements on the ability. Your opponent can see that cards are underground, but cannot see what those cards are. At the start of each turn these cards will receive a Tunneling counter, and once they have gained counters equal to the Tunneling number they will enter play FOR FREE!! Troops that enter play this way will be able to attack the turn they surface as though they’ve been in play as well. Tunneling is a great way to invest a few resources early for bigger turns later.

Excavation Hulk is quite simple but plays an important role of the Tunneling mechanic. When we conceived Tunneling, we knew that the best part of the mechanic was its secrecy, so we made sure to provide plenty of troops with the ability. That way it isn’t easy to decipher who exactly might be lurking below the surface. Let’s take a look at what will be popping up on your opponent.

Tunneling is born from our ability to expand the digital aspects of the game and what TCGs can do. Fissuresmith demonstrates that there’s more to just Tunneling that playing a troop for a lower cost. This card lays a trap for your opponent that they must always be wary of, or else lose their best troop for a small price of 2 Resources. Then you get a troop of your own to boot!

Shin’Hare have also lived a life filled of death and sacrifice, some have found ways to elude the former and prosper in the latter. Minion of Yazukan is another way we get to take advantage of the digital environment. When your opponent destroys him, he comes back two turns later, but even stronger.

Just because a troop has Tunneling doesn’t mean you have to tunnel it! You can tunnel Scraptech Brawler and when he surfaces you will have three extra resources to spend, or you can just play him and he ends up being free so you can continue playing other cards during your turn. For example, if you were to tunnel this on turn two, once he surfaces you could have up to 8 resources to fill the board with a robot army, or perhaps that Eternal Guardian to protect the rest of your troops.

I present to you the Tectonic Megahulk! He is quite the powerhouse, coming in at a cool 10/10 with Crush, but his resource cost is very restrictive. Thankfully, his Tunneling ability allows you to cheat him into play much more quickly, with each Dwarf and Robot speeding up his surfacing by a turn. Once this troop hits the board, it is difficult to answer and can seal the fate of many opponents. Just imagine the look on an opponent’s face as this begins unearthing below their feet to destroy his hopes of victory.

Well that is it for our preview on Set 2’s Tunneling mechanic. We are super happy with the set and hope you all find it as enjoyable to play as it was to design. One of my favorite ways to use tunneling is to try to tunnel multiple troops so that they all come up at once for a huge swing! Players will have their first chance to experience Set 2 Shattered Destiny and tunneling this weekend in our Gen Con league area and demo booth #601. Come say hi and check it out if you are in attendance. We always love to mingle with fans and talk about Hex and our passion we hope to share.

-Dan Clark

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