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Tyrants of the Underdark
Two great games glued together, and the glue actually holds.
Designed by Peter Lee, Rodney Thompson, and Andrew Veen · 2016
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One of the cleanest deck-builder and area-control mashups you can buy, as long as you don't mind a little knife in the back. The theme is paper-thin, but the math underneath is sharp.
Best for: Couples and small groups who want strategy with teeth in under 90 minutes
What it is
Here's the pitch. You're a Drow house clawing for control of the Underdark, and you do it two ways at once. You build a deck of monsters, cultists, and demons, and you push little troops onto a map to control places like Menzoberranzan. Most deck-builders just hand you bigger numbers each round. This one lets you spy on rivals, supplant their troops, and assassinate units off the board. The two systems talk to each other, and that's the whole magic trick.
The catch
Now the honest part. Reviewers agree the theme is wafer-thin. Outside the lovely card art and a little flavor text, you're really just running a tidy points engine, so D&D fans hoping for a story get left in the cold. The bigger catch is interaction. There are no instants and no cancels, so when someone assassinates your troops or drops a spy, you watch it happen and do nothing. Conflict-averse players hate that. The board art is drab and the box is an awkward shape.
Who it's for
So who's this for. If you like Dominion but wish it had elbows, or you bounced off Clank! wanting something meatier, this is your game. It plays clean at 2 right up to 4, turns stay quick, and the swappable card decks mean it doesn't go stale. Just bring people who can take a hit and keep smiling, because someone will gut your board position and grin about it. Worth owning.
What other players say
This write-up is grounded in real reviews and player discussion, not just one opinion. A few worth reading:
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