It’s a potent recipe, making you think on your feet, upping the ante as each new card becomes available, while still allowing you to decide how to shape your strategy. After a few plays I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was inherently stronger than the more conspicuous tactical maneuvering taking place in plain sight.

Later – A Reflection on Tyrants of the Underdark 1,941 Days Later – A Reflection on Tyrants of the Underdark

When I heard of Tyrants of the Underdark, a game designed by two of the designers of Lords of Waterdeep, and found out that the gameplay was a combination of a deck builder and area control using a board, I KNEW we had to play this game. Finally, how people act and react on the board for controlling and infiltrating locations will change game by game. Deckbuilding itself will also change how the game is played based on how you build the deck and which cards you can (and cannot) acquire.Your goal in doing so is to have a majority of troops in key locations that will score you points at the end of the game. Market cards are bought using “influence”, an ability gained by discarding certain cards from your hand. has more player interaction than Dominion, and the turns feel more exciting than in Marvel Legendary. In this deck building strategy game, 2-4 players each take on the role of a Drow House, vying to become the most powerful House in the Underdark. The other resource is power, which allows you to place troops on the game board, expand your forces across the map of the Underdark, manipulate happenings in the city, and assassinate enemy troops.

Gale force Nine LLC | Tyrants of the Underdark Boardgame

Yet it still stands strong by virtue of its variety, with huge flexibility in your strategy, your path to victory and the way you play your cards each turn. I think its a very good basis for a game, but between the desire for an easy game that can lure in dnd players, and a designer that doesnt seem interested in tightening the game up. As you can surmise, I still don’t adore Tyrants of the Underdark, but I have settled into a very cordial appreciation for its existence. It seemed partially because we didn't see many minions that allowed for extra card draws, which tend to bog these games down. Making early bids to secure sites is key because they give you extra resources and (if you fully control them) VP every turn.In Tyrants of the Underdark, you can deploy spies to areas of the map where you have no presence (i.