As we all know, ever since tunnel drill was changed from destroying an artifact to dealing damage on fee, it has been a somewhat problematic card to say the least.
After the change, it did 1 damage on fee 2, but if tunnel drill was between 2 crownsplitter cards – a sort of "crew" ability for SY – it would deal 3 damage on fee 2. At 7 provisions this card just became a way better version of whoreson junior, as it was super easy to play tunnel drill between cleaver and one of his brawlers and slam a shitload of damage in one turn. SY dominated the meta after this change and the card was subsequently nerfed.
The nerf made it so that the fee damage was increased to 3 only if you played a crime during that turn. With no leader abilities or locations that play crimes on order, this effectively meant you had to play the drill then wait a turn before wiping your opponent's board, giving the opponent a chance to answer the drill. This was a fair solution, drill was still a powerful card and still saw play, but allowed for more interesting match ups and for other factions to come back into the meta.
Then, INEXPLICABLY, CDPR release sigi mastermind in the most recent expansion – arguably the most controversial card from the most recent batch. Mastermind lets you play 2 cards in one turn – something that CDPR try to avoid doing because of how incredibly powerful it is to play 2 cards in one turn in a one-card-per-turn card game (every time a card like this has existed it has been nerfed). The real problem is that it completely undoes the previous nerf on drill. Now you can play drill + any crime (the best combo seems to be to play drill and hemmelfart – who spawns a congregation crime on deploy) and you can now deal 3 damage on fee 2 the turn you play the drill…
Idk if CDPR just overlooked this or were too lazy to figure out a solution but honestly its just terrible. I already dislike SY as a faction altogether because of their uninteractive points (coins) and free carryover (again, coins), but this is just too much. I really hope this interaction gets nerfed soon as I believe it is unhealthy for the balance of the game.
TLDR; they buffed drill, then nerfed drill, then printed mastermind which effectively re-buffed drill…
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/gwent/comments/yg1578/i_need_to_rant_about_tunnel_drill/
