Gale Force Nine LLC | Tyrants Of The Underdark Boardgame (2021) Dungeons & Dragons | Board Game | Ages 14+ | 2-4 Players | 90 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

Three will let you destroy an adjacent enemy token, either from an opposing player or one of the white “neutral” tokens that litter the board in the beginning. The rulebook is often the first experience a player has with the game, so if its indecipherable, it's unlikely to lead to a positive experience. 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.

Tyrants of the Underdark Tyrants of the Underdark

In Tyrants of the Underdark (designed by Peter Lee, Rodney Thompson, Andrew Veen), each player leads a house of Drow in a section of the Underdark below the Sword Coast. 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. Cards are placed on the table in front of you, the resources are added to your resource pool, and any actions can be taken. Almost all of the reviews on Board Game Quest are from review copies of a game provided by the publisher.They chime in with the game’s core mechanics: the former tend toward providing influence and opportunities to promote your cards, whereas the latter deal more in raw power.

Tyrants of the Underdark - BoardGameGeek Solo Variant | Tyrants of the Underdark - BoardGameGeek

Below is a high level summary of the game; however, feel free to download a pdf of the official rules here.

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. Your Presence and ability to control the Underdark is represented by your forces: the troops and spies you’ve placed on the game map. Most have been exactly the kind of fun adventure or conquest titles you’d associate with the license. If you own the original and are looking to get the expansions, you have to balance the cost of the reprint versus the cost of finding the expansion and sleeves for all of your cards. It has several different dark colors that give the impression of a dark place, but the detail is lacking, especially when compared to the cards or to the detailed board that came with Lords of Waterdeep.