I'm going to start off with being totally honest here. Tyrants of the Underdark is my favourite deck building game.
Perhaps it's best to explain what a deck building game is. If you are already familiar, feel free to skip to the next section. Deck builders are games where the player has a deck of cards that they improve over the course of the game in an effort to have an impact on the game being played, in their favour of course. From your deck you draw you hand, the cards you will be using for your turn. After cards have been used they go into a discard pile and when your deck runs out, the discard pile is shuffled and it becomes your deck again. There can be various methods of gaining cards into your deck but the most common one I've come across is a market that you buy cards from and add to your deck, often by way of your discard pile. In this way you can add better cards to the pool of cards you can draw from and use. What the cards ultimately do is dependent on the game you are playing.
On to the game itself. Tyrants of the Underdark puts you and 1 to 3 friends at the head of a drow house in, you guessed it, the Underdark, a very dark world beneath Faerun. Look up the dungeons & dragons setting The forgotten realms for more information on that. You employ other drow and all manner of creatures to take control of locations all over (under?) the place. Controlling sites and cities will earn you victory points at the end of the game but the most important places can award you victory points every turn you have full control of them. Speaking of victory points, there are many ways to get them so there are multiple strategies that can lead you to victory. The most straightforward is the aforementioned control of territories. Killing enemy troops will also yield VP's and that has the added advantage of reducing your opponent's presence on the board. Another major way to collect points is to "promote" cards. You'll need to play a card that allows you to do so which makes you able to remove another card from your hand or discard pile (depending on the ability allowing you to do this), effectively thinning your own deck, and set it aside into your "inner circle" pile. That allows you to use the higher of the two points values of the card. Every card has 2 values that you count at the end of the game. The "in-deck" value and the "inner circle" value.
Cards that you buy from the market can have a multitude of abilities. The 2 basic ones are Influence and Power. Influence allows you to buy/recruit new cards. Power allows you to place troops, assassinate enemy troops or remove an enemy spy. Most cards will have one of those 2 attributes. Outside of those two anything goes. Whatever the card says, goes.
Earlier I mentioned spies. Spies are placed using cards that allow you to do so and these cards must be acquired through the market. These cards will allow you to a) place a spy, b) remove a spy to gain some ability for the current round, c) either of those actions. Spies are an interesting feature because they are a little bit trickier to get rid of than troops but not by much. They do block an opponent from gaining "total control" of a site just like a troop unit would.
The market consists of 2 different decks, each with it's own theme. There are 4 in the box with the base game. More are available as expansions. This allows you to mix and match depending on what type of game you'd like to play.
All in all this is a very strategic game that any board game enthusiast should try. What I like most about it, however, is how well I feel it captures the spirit of rivaling drow houses.
If you have games you'd like me to talk about let me know and if I've played it I'll go for it, if not I'll see if I have easy access to it. Also if there are aspects of games that you feel I'm not covering please comment and I'll do my best to rectify that.
My other posts:
https://www.publish0x.com/amateur-gamer/new-game-related-blog-vampire-the-masquerade-v5-xjmmjvl?a=X7axG91ney
