Alriight, my lovely readers, it’s been a while since I graced your screens with a new game review. Far too long, in fact! I know you’ve all been desperate, probably weeping into your empty dice bags, craving more two-player goodness. And you as you not know, one of my absolute favourite types of game is the good old deck-builder. And among those, a true gem stands out: Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure.
What’s not to like about it, honestly? It’s a delightful concoction of push-your-luck, shrewd strategy, outright thievery, and, most importantly, a dragon. What more could a board game enthusiast ask for?
Clank! is gloriously simple at its heart. You start with a basic hand of cards, just like everyone else, and with those, you plunge headfirst into the mysterious underground. Now, here’s the kicker: you need to be careful about making too much noise. Every time you’re a bit too clumsy or boisterous, you’ll have to chuck a “Clank!” cube into a designated section. As you play your cards, they’ll give you a certain amount of ‘buying power’. You can then use this to add swankier cards to your deck, making it more powerful. You also get ‘movement’, which, as you might guess, lets you, well, move. And finally, there’s ‘fighting power’, perfect for dispatching villainous beasties from the board, earning you sweet victory points, gold, or even forcing an opponent to make some noise themselves. The deeper you venture, the shinier the treasures you can snatch up. But here’s the crucial twist: once one brave (or foolhardy) soul snatches a valuable artefact and makes a break for the surface, the endgame officially begins. And after five nail-biting rounds, if you haven’t made it out, you run the very real risk of losing everything. Tense, isn’t it?
The Nitty-Gritty (Deep Down in the Dungeon)
Okay, that was a very brief overview, which, oddly enough, is part of Clank!’s charm. So, let’s delve a little deeper, shall we? You kick things off with a handful of ‘basic cards’:
· Scramble: Lets you move extra spaces but causes noise and has some buying power.
· Sidestep: Allows movement without making a peep but offers no buying power. Stealthy!
· Burgle: Doesn’t let you move an inch but gives you a decent chunk of buying power.
· Stumble: This one’s a right clunker – does absolutely nothing useful but forces you to add noise to the Clank! section.
Each turn, you’ll draw five cards from your deck and play every single one, tallying up your movement, buying power, and fighting power (if you’ve got any). You can do these actions in any order but let’s take them one by one.
Say you’ve got three movement. You can scurry up to three spaces, following the arrows on the board. Unless, that is, you stumble into a crystal cave, then you have to stop dead in your tracks. Unless, of course, a cunning card you’ve played says otherwise. Rules, rules, rules!
Now, let’s imagine you’ve got 5 buying power. You can use this to snag something from the market, adding it to your discard pile to be shuffled back into your deck when it’s empty. You can also buy cards that are kind of your basic cards but jazzed up. There’s ‘Explore’ cards for extra movement with a decent buying power, ‘Mercenary’ cards to give you some fighting oomph, and ‘Secret Tomes’ that do precisely nothing in the dungeon but are worth a whopping seven victory points at the end – utter gold, despite being otherwise useless!
You spend all your buying power, and then we’re left with fighting power. This can be used in two main ways. You can use it to battle the dangerous beasties that have appeared in the market – each offering different rewards, some beneficial for you, some a right nuisance for others. You can, as mentioned, bash that poor goblin over and over again. Or, when you’re moving, you might notice monster heads on some of the arrows you’re following. If you choose a path with one of these and don’t have the power to defend it (with your fighting power), you’ll take damage. Take enough, and you’ll be knocked out cold. Not ideal! And finally, there’s a rather cute little goblin that can be repeatedly pummeled for a shiny gold coin. Poor chap.
Speaking of your health, there’s a dragon to consider. The dragon attacks everyone at the same time, but only if a dragon icon is drawn from the bag. To begin with, your “Clank!” cubes will be massively outnumbered by the black cubes in the beautifully crafted bag. When a black cube is drawn, it’s discarded, and no one takes damage. But if one of your cubes comes out, you take a hit, and it goes onto your health tracker. Remember, a full health tracker is bad news, leading to unconsciousness.
Now, the board is cleverly split into two sections: a kind of shallow area and ‘The Deep’. If you get knocked out in the shallow section, you’re rescued by some helpful villagers (bless their cotton socks!), and you don’t lose any of your hard-earned treasures. But if you cross into ‘The Deep’ (the bottom half of the dungeon) and get knocked out there, you’re lost forever, along with any spoils you might have found. So, you might be thinking, “Why on earth would I ever go into The Deep?” Well, my friends, that’s where all the really shiny stuff is – the artifacts worth by far the most points at the end of the game. Tempting, isn’t it?
The dragon, bless its scaly heart, gets steadily grumpier as the game progresses, drawing more and more of those precious Clank! cubes out of the bag while you, of course, add more and more noise to it. If you pick up certain tempting items in the dungeon, the dragon’s rage will escalate, meaning even more cubes are drawn with each attack. When someone nabs an artifact, the dragon’s rage will increase. It truly is a delicate balancing act between how deep you can venture and still manage to escape being extra crispy.
Once you’ve grabbed enough loot that you reckon you’re on for a win, you start legging it back up. Anyone who makes it out gets a nice chunk of victory points towards their final score, and from that point onwards, the dragon attacks every round, probably rather peeved you’ve robbed his hoard. After five turns of this frantic escape, the game ends, and anyone still wandering lost in the dark automatically drops to 0 health, whether they’re in the shallow section or the deep. So, if your friend suddenly starts making a break for it, it might be time to skedaddle yourself!
This game boasts so many wonderful combinations of cards that play together beautifully to help you out. It has hidden secrets, such as precious dragon eggs that are worth loads of points but, naturally, increase the dragon’s rage level. There are monkey idols to grab that are worth points and don’t take up valuable bag space, and if you’ve purchased a certain companion, they’re worth even more! There are cards that are incredibly powerful but force you to throw in a load of Clank!, and then there are cards that let you remove it again. It really is a beautifully crafted and superbly balanced game. It’s so good, in fact, that there’s another edition called Clank! Catacombs, which the missus and I promptly snapped up just because the original is that good. There’s even one set in space! I haven’t played that one yet and don’t own it, but honestly, every time I see it, I give it the side-eye like a greasy pizza after a night out, licking my lips and thinking it may be a gift from above.
Two Players (A Bit of Bother for Two)
So, how does this game fare with just two players? And how does it differ? Well, the dragon is a bit grumpier to start with than in games with more players, meaning more of your precious Clank! cubes are drawn from the bag sooner. But beyond that, there isn’t a massive difference. Other than, of course, keeping a very close eye on your sneaky, backstabbing… I mean, loving companion or friend, who is definitely not looking at you at the bottom of the map and thinking, “If I leave now, there’s no way they’re getting out.” And that exact scenario has certainly not happened to me multiple times due to my carefully planning wife. And I have definitely not been knocked out multiple times to her utter delight. Ahem.
It plays really well with 2, 3, or 4 players (yes, I’ve played and owned this one long enough to actually say that this time!). The only main difference is the overall game length, but even that’s somewhat mitigated by the ‘once the first person exits the dragon attacks every round’ rule. All in all, it is waaaay up there amongst my all-time favourite games.
Tips and Tricks (Stealing Like a Pro)
· A big problem for me is that I often get carried away buying loads of powerful ‘buying’ cards and completely neglect my movement. This becomes a massive problem in the late game when I can afford every card in the market but can’t actually move and escape! So, a big tip from me: well, don’t do that. Movement is pretty damn important in this game.
· Look for synergies between cards. Loads of the companions will allow you to do extra things if they’re played when you have other companions this turn. For example, drawing extra cards, healing a hit point, gaining gold – that sort of thing. So, definitely snatch up those companions when you can!
· Speaking of companions, many of them also work brilliantly with various shiny baubles you can find lurking about. Remember those monkey idols? Well, the archaeologist companion is worth a chunky load of points at the end, depending on how many of those little guys you manage to round up.
· The Lost Tomes may seem a bit useless while you’re in the dungeon, but once you’re tallying up victory points, they’re worth 7 each! If you manage to snag a few, you can really rack up those numbers.
· There is a market in the middle where you can buy various bits. One of those is a backpack. The backpack allows you to carry a second major artifact. If you don’t have one, you can only carry one. And as the artifacts vary wildly in victory point totals, from a measly 7 points up to a whopping 30, if you can snatch, say, a 20-pointer and the 30-pointer, you’ve got 50 points before we even start counting the points from the cards you’ve earned! Get in!
· But the biggest tips are probably the most obvious ones: Don’t make too much noise, and don’t get caught in the deep at the end. A successful expedition nets you a hefty chunk of points if you can make it out on your own. But even being knocked out in the shallow section of the map means you get to keep your stuff, so you still have a chance to win. If you are knocked out in the deep section, however, you lose everything. Gutting!
This is genuinely one of my earliest board game purchases. I still own the first edition of the game, and it honestly remains one of my absolute favourites. The balance, the synergies, the push-your-luck element – it all culminates into a beautifully crafted gaming experience. Highly recommended! The boards even double sided with a completely different layout on the other side
