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Moxonomy

Tunnel

InstantRed mana

A piece of tribal hate aimed at a subtype that mattered for exactly one era of the game. When this was printed, Wall was load-bearing technology: the defender-shaped blockers of the period (Wall of Wood, Wall of Stone, Wall of Ice, Wall of Fire) were the premier ground-stall tools, and red, the color least able to grind through that stall, got the cheap pry bar for a single mana. The rate was never the issue. What dates the card is its target restriction, a window onto a design philosophy that treated narrow hate at a steep discount as a fair knob to turn, on the assumption the metagame would always hold enough Walls to make the trade pay. As the subtype stopped being load-bearing and defender migrated onto creatures of every shape and color, a spell that touches only things with the Wall type found less and less to point at. The no-regeneration rider belongs to the same moment, spending a line to shut a door a modern Wall would never think to open: sensible only in a world where regenerators were live concerns rather than rules trivia. Restriction and rider trace back to the same bet, that hating out a single creature type for one mana was a reasonable exchange for the narrowness. It survives as a snapshot of that wager, not as a card that still has work to do.

Tunnel (sum)
SUM · #181uncommon
Oracle Text

Rules text

Destroy target Wall. It can't be regenerated.
Legalities

Format Status

Standard
N/A
Pioneer
N/A
Modern
N/A
Legacy
Legal
Vintage
Legal
Commander
Legal
Pauper
N/A
Brawl
N/A
Historic
N/A
Alchemy
N/A
Timeless
N/A
Standard Brawl
N/A
More formats
Old School
Legal
Premodern
Legal
PreDH
Legal
Pauper Commander
N/A
Oathbreaker
Legal
Gladiator
N/A
Penny Dreadful
N/A
Duel Commander
Legal
Future Standard
N/A
COMPETITIVEBRAWL
N/A
TLR
Legal
Printings elsewhere

Other printings

11 sets
Show all 11 other printings
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