Deckbuilding meets area-control

We've been wanting to try 🧝🏿‍♀️ Tyrants of the Underdark for a long time now. Actually I think this was my birthday present either 1,5 or 2,5 years ago, but we somehow didn’t get to it. 🙈 It is a rare mix of game mechanics: A deck-building game with an emphasis on area control! 😮

The deck-building is mostly what you know from other games of the genre: you start out with 10 very basic cards, but as you play you can buy new cards that go to your discard pile. When your deck runs out, you reshuffle your discard, getting access to those new cards. 

7 of your starting cards generate Influence 🕸️, which is the currency of the game for buying cards. 
The other 3 generate Power 🗡️, which is for the area-control element.
Of course the cards that you can get have all kinds of additional abilities.

On the game board there are a bunch of sites, connected by routes. For 1 power you can put down a troop next to somewhere you already have presence - or alternatively you can assassinate an enemy troop for 3 power. This is not very cost-effective, but it is essential in some situations. 🧐 Your main goal is to control sites - there are some big sites that give ongoing bonuses during the game, the rest is just for end game scoring. At setup there are neutral troops also seeded on the map, so you can’t just expand without resistance.

A nice touch is how the full deck for the market is made by mixing two smaller decks. There are Drow, Dragon, Elemental, Demon, Undead and Aberration cards, so each game you have a mix of two, giving games a specific flavor. 👍

💭 At first I wasn’t that much into the game, I thought it was maybe a bit too simplistic. But I quickly started to enjoy the fast nature of the turns. You just play all 5 cards you have, act, then the turn is over. It is cool though as you slowly improve your deck, and tactically take over parts of the map. The map actually scales with the player count: e.g. with 2p you ignore the left and right areas and only play in the middle. It becomes a zero-sum game, but remains enjoyable nonetheless. 👍