Clank Deck Building Game: Rapid Review
Information:
Mechanics: Deck-Building, Push Your Luck, Exploration
Player Age: 12+ Player Count: 2 - 4 (6 with expansion) PlayersTime to Play: 30 - 60 Minutes
Game Designer: Paul Dennen
Player Age: 12+
Game Designer: Paul Dennen
Rundown:
Clank is a deck-building game with a large mix of push-your-luck that comes through the board. In Clank you are adventurers exploring deep into the depths to gain the best artifact before you annoy the dragon too much and have to face his fiery anger. There are four currencies: the swords that will be used to slay monsters;
skill is used to buy cards to enhance your deck or for later use; boots depict movement over the board although some locations will be locked, will require extra movement or have monsters in between them, and players must end their turn at a crystal location; the last currency is gold. Unlike the rest of the currencies, this is a consistent currency and isn't discarded at the end of every turn.
Each gold is worth one point at the end of the game and can be used in the market locations to buy an extra bag (hold one more artifact) key (unlock locks) and a crown (activates certain bonuses on cards).
When players are exploring they will run into treasures such as monkey idols, minor secrets and major secrets.
The main treasure being the artifacts. If a player lands in one of these locations they can choose to gain the artifact, angering the dragon and unlocking the exit. Once gained, this is the artifact the player has, as they cannot gain a new one or swap the artifact unless they own a bag. When players make noise in the game they create clank which will build until a card with a dragon symbol enters the card row.
When this happens all the accumulated clank is placed into the dragon bag and drawn out based on the dragon's anger level. If the clank drawn is of a player's colour they will now take damage to the amount of their clank drawn. The game ends once all players have died in their exploration or successfully escaped.
Alteration:
This is a game with plenty of variability. There are many styles of gameplay so players can focus on gaining multiple artifacts, large amount of coins, or adding cards to their deck that have high victory points such as the secret tomes that cost 7 skill and give nothing but 7 points at the end of the game.
Clank is a flagship franchise for Direwolf and Renegade Games. So if you want more content after playing the base game there are multiple expansions that add new asymmetric characters and new boards to explore. There is also three sibling games; Clank in Space, Clank Legacy and, recently, Clank Catacombs.
Player-Count:
Out of the box the game can play up to four players, once you add in the adventuring party expansion the game reaches heights of six players. I haven't played at six players yet but at four players the game doesn't slow down, it maintains a good speed as there are more players depleting the card pool, angering the dragon and rushing the end of the game by leaving the cave with their artifact.
Interaction:
This game can be highly interactive as it is essentially a race. You are trying to get the most victory points possible than escape the level. Escaping will give you a bonus 20 points for leaving and every time you have a turn going forward you will activate the dragon and increase the amount of clank it is revealing. The forth turn will cause death to anyone still on the map.
There are also several cards that allow players to interact mainly in giving them more clank. The adventure pack expansion gave the players a new interaction in the form of react cards which can be used during the opponent’s turns to gain an extra card in their hand.
Determination:
- One of the first games to change deck-building, from purely being card based.
- Abundance of expansions.
- Less combo driven than other deck-building games but has different layers of planning than standard deck-building games.
- Fun push-your-luck race in pursuing the most treasure without dying.
Clank is one of the first games to change the formula for deck-building games to involve something more than cards. In this case, it is a board that players explore on. This was done to great effect, instead of focusing heavily on combos created by their deck players now have to focus on a range of currencies each turn to ensure they aren't stuck in one place and can benefit from the monsters that come into play. Focusing on one currency too much may see other players run off with the artifacts and the game lead. Clank has seen constant support that keeps players coming back and in my opinion, this is a must-buy and has earned a Go-To Golden Seal of approval as it simply does so much right. If you enjoy deck-building, exploration, or push-your-luck games then add this game to your collection if you haven't already.
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