Dungeons & Dragons 74001BFM Tyrants of the Underdark Strategy Board Game - D and D Drow Drizzt

I had been looking at this game for a few years, waiting for my kids to be old enough (they are now 8 and 10). Finally bought it to play over Christmas. I had been a bit disappointed with the last few games we tried (including Settlers of Catan and Super Dungeon Explore), so I was not expecting to be blown away by this. However, I have been really pleasantly surprised, ... we have all really enjoyed it. It is quick and easy to learn (although the rules could be a tad clearer; although there are only a few pages to read). Our first game took about 2.5 hours to play and we had the rules sorted by about 20mins in. Other games since then take about 1.5 to 2hrs, but the time flies by! It is really good fun. There are so many strategies / ways to pull ahead, that no two games will ever be the same. My 8 yr old daughter can hold her own and enjoys playing. We have still only used half the deck cards too - so tons more yet to explore with it. I would definitely recommend it, if you are looking for a fun strategy game that the whole family can play.

I have played this game only as a two player so far and it plays brilliantly, though cannot wait to try it with 3 or 4 players.It takes the concept of Deck building and area control and marries them together in this superb game. Whilst very easy to learn to play, the mechanics offer numerous strategy's to win. On top of that there are 4 half decks to play with, The Drow and the Dragon half decks are used whilst you learn the game, however these on there own provide masses of replaybility and winning options. Mix in that there are a further 2 half decks waiting for you to master just keeps things fresh and exciting. Some say this is 60% deck building and 40% area control, but believe me you want to keep all your point options alive.The theme of the game was a little irrelevant on our first game, but now we use the name of the cards when we play them and this really helps you get into the theme.My only minor gripe is that perhaps the production could of been a bit better.This is a must buy and with upcoming expansion about to be released this is staying in my collection. Excellent game.....

Well designed and easy to learn. Set it up in 5 mins ,read instructions and started playing 2 player game. First game including setup and learning took 1 5 hour. Good fun and can see many variations for the future.

This game is one of my favourite all time boardgames mixing in elements of games like Dominion (deck builder) with elements akin to Risk or Lords of Waterdeep.

Bought as a Christmas pressent for someone.. he loves it

Excellent - an easy 5 stars, to note i sleeved the cards from new as my Lord of the Rings deck building game cards would be falling to bits now had i not done the same and you will want this game to last!Enjoy!

This review is written after playing the game two player more than twenty times and having also played four player. While I did not purchase this game from Amazon, I do have my own personal copy of the game. With that out of the way, onto the review. Tyrants of the Underdark is a competitive deck building and area control game for two to four players and, while I believe this amalgamation of game types has been explored before to a limited degree, it is my first foray in to this mash-up of genres.So, what is a deck building game some of you might ask? The basic premise is you start the game with a small deck of cards that let you do the most basic of actions in the game which are to either buy new cards from a shared marketplace or place/assassinate troops on the board in Tyrants. Your exact starting deck comprises of seven cards that give you one unit of money each and three cards that let you place troops or assassinate a troop (it takes three of these deploy symbols to assassinate a troop so it is unlikely you will be using them for this most the time), so ten cards in total. After shuffling them together you will draw five cards and, on your turn, you will use them to buy cards and deploy troops (you can play as many cards from your hand as you want, generally you will play them all as you will discard your hand and draw a new one at the end of each turn). As an example, let's say we drew a hand consisting of four money and one deployment - with this we can deploy one troop (more on that later) and buy a card or cards up to a value of four from the marketplace. The cost is displayed at the top each card and you replace any bought card with a new card from a face down deck and then continue spending any money you may have left. These cards all generally have much more powerful abilities than your starting cards and this deck building portion is a huge part of the game's strategy. There are also two common decks you can buy slightly upgraded versions of your starter cards that give you two of a resource instead of one. Every time you buy a card you put it in your discard pile so, when you run out of cards to draw, you shuffle it into your deck and have a chance to use it.It is worth giving special mention to the market deck itself as it is one of the features of the game giving it a good amount of variability. When you get the game it comes with four forty card market decks (refereed to as half decks) of which you choose two to make an eighty card deck for your marketplace during the game. Each deck has a theme and can have a relatively large impact on how the game plays out with them throwing different mechanics into the mix. The four separate decks mean there are six possible combinations and any future expansions will increase this number (there is a much delayed expansion due out very soon that adds two new decks taking the combinations from six to fifteen).The area control portion of the game consists of trying to capture key points on the player board while stopping you opponents from doing the same. The game starts by getting you to place a single troop on one of several spaces on the map (denoted by having a black background) where no other player has already place a troop. After this every time you use a card to place troop(s) you can do so if you have adjacency (or a card informs you that, in this case, you don't need it). You have adjacency when you have a troop in or directly next to a space on the board, so you tend to start by moving out from your initial position towards notable places on the map. Another way to gain adjacency is to deploy a spy to an area through a card. Spies do not follow normal rules for placement and can be placed anywhere you don't already have a spy, although you are limited to five of these figures (however spies can be recalled and reused, plus enemy players can only return spies to your supply and not kill them). Spies are an excellent way to spread out, but also help a lot with hindering your opponents ability to score on the map which I will come to later. At some point in the game you are going to start using adjacency to assassinate troops on the board, be it a neutral troop (troops that don't belong to anyone, but just get in the way on pre-marked points on the board) or another player's troops.The object of the game is to score more victory points (VPs) than your opponent at the end of the game which triggers when one player runs out of troops to place (after play continues back to the player who went first) or, much more rarely, when the market deck cannot be drawn from. VPs are gained in a variety of ways, each card you have in your deck is worth a number of points shown in a card shaped rectangle at the bottom of the card, but you also have the ability to promote a card through another card and increase the points the card is worth to the value in the circle at the bottom of the card. The trade off from promoting is you can no longer use the card and it is put to one side. On the one hand it can be an efficient way to remove poorer cards, such as starter cards, from your deck and increase the odds of drawing better cards, however these cards are not worth many points. On the other hand you can promote high cost cards for big point rewards, but lose their powerful abilities from your deck. The balance and timing of the mechanic can win or lose you the game.Looking at the map for VPs each named area has multiple spaces for troops and a number associated with it. You score the listed number on an area if you have control of it at the end of the game, which is to say if you have more troops of your colour inhabiting that space then any other colour (including neutral troops). If you have total control of an area, which mean you have filled every space in that area with your colour of troop and there are no opponents' spies there you will gain an extra two points when scoring that area. At the end of the game you will also score one victory point for every troop you have in your trophy hall, you get these by assassinating them on the board, although there are a few cards that can take troops out of your trophy hall so it doesn't always work out that one kill is one point.Throughout the game you can also pick up extra victory points in a few different ways. If you control one of the main cities on the boards you get to take a token off it which will give you extra money each turn, but if you have total control of it you can flip the token and you will also earn one to three (depending on the city) victory points each turn you have total control of it. Certain cards will also give out victory points based on certain conditions (for instance one card give a victory point for every three cards you have promoted whenever you play it).Despite the length of my description, the game itself is relatively simple and intuitive to pick up for anyone with a modicum of experience in modern board games and I'd guess most people interested in this type of game would be playing relatively smoothly within an hour. The thing is that you really should try it out as it is an excellent game that seems to have flown a bit under the radar for a lot of people. The games tend to be tense and close affairs that have not once felt like they have been won through luck. There are multiple strategies that feel balanced with people adapting and re-adapting to what their opponents are doing. Replayability is high thanks to what I initially saw as a gimmick, the half decks - I can't stress enough what an impact different decks can have on the game and its strategies. As an example you may find a lot of assassination going on on the board if you are playing the Drow and Dragon half decks, but play the other two deck together instead and you may find yourself lacking the cards to effectively assassinate your opponents' troops and having to consider other approaches.Combining the board play with the card play has also worked really well here. While neither part of the game is the pinnacle of what has been done in the genres they are both deep enough to make the game very interesting when they are combined, but simple enough that the game doesn't become bogged down in rules. It feels like attention has been paid here to make the game fun first and foremost rather than a case of trying to show off with extraneous mechanics and shout 'look how clever we are'. Another point of note is at how well the game scales thanks to the board shrinking for smaller numbers of players and thus keeping the conflict to the forefront.So it's all great, right? Well, no it has a few issues which relate to the title. The first problem, and my personal biggest issue with the game, is that the quality of the cards supplied with the game are flimsy to say the least. Given this is a big part deck building game and the amount of times you will be shuffling those cards it is kind of unforgivable they are so poorly made. I sleeved all my cards due to this and would expect if I didn't I would have some very damaged cards by this point. There are over 250 cards in the game so it might be worth factoring in that cost on top of the initial price if you go for the game. For me it shifts the game from an OK price range to an uncomfortable one.The next problem is aesthetics, from a basic point of view everything is pretty much dark purple and not overly appealing compared to most new products. It isn't really an issue for me as I tend to judge a game on how it plays rather than how it looks, but I know it could be an issue for some. I'd also point out that the colours chose for the player's pieces are relatively close together in pairs (black and dark blue plus red and orange) which may cause issue with some, especially if you suffer from colour blindness. The pieces themselves aren't great either, but they are functional and, given the number of them (220), it probably would have bumped the price up to make them look better - personally I prefer them to cubes. If you're big on theme you may also be disappointed, for me it is a great game with an Underdark theme tacked on.In conclusion I fully recommend the game and if you can get past the negative points above I very much doubt you will be disappointed in the game either. So the game may be an ugly duckling, but that duckling tries its hardest to be the best friend it can be, while the swan just tries to bite you...