Clank! - Expeditions Silk and Gold: Review
Information:
Mechanics: Deck-Building, Push Your Luck, Exploration
Player Age: 12+ Player Count: 2 - 4 PlayersTime to Play: 30 - 60 Minutes
Game Designer: Tim McKnight
Player Age: 12+
Game Designer: Tim McKnight
Introduction:
Clank! has had many map packs. With the last two map packs they have streamlined the expansion to no longer include cards and simply have only the maps and their features. Are the maps any good though? Let's find out with silk and gold.
Spider Queen's Lair:
Between locations will be some webbing denoted by the Web tokens that can either be cut down with the use of a sword or avoided by an extra boot. Either of these actions will allow the player to gain the webbing token which is scored at the end of the game. There is a scored value hidden on the other side of the token.
Some rooms are now more guarded by the spider, causing webbed rooms. These rooms tend to hold Monkey Idols or Minor and major secrets. The webbed rooms will need the player to spend one sword to cut down the treasure when entering the location. Lastly, if the player has a high skill generating deck they can spend 8 skill on a turn to purchase one of the options from the web cache. After purchasing and gaining the reward (normally coins and tomes with health, boots and swords sprinkled throughout) the player will close off that section with one of their clank tokens.
Key Points:
- The swords become more useful, even if monsters don't come out of the deck.
- A new use for players that build decks with high skill points.
- More challenging to gain the major and minor secrets.
- Leads to better optimisation of decks for these obstacles and rewards.
Dwarven Mine:
The main focus of this map is gold. In certain locations, there are gold veins attached where players can spend two skill points to mine the amount of gold numbered (taking the gold from the reserve). They then place one of their clank to cover the vein signifying that it is depleted and no one else can go there.
After mining, players are no longer able to use boots for the rest of their turn. At the end of the game players will score bonus points based on the amount they mined throughout the game, starting with the majority at 20, 10 and then 5 points.
The map includes elevator shafts on the left side of the board that create an easy method of entering and exiting the depths at only the low price of one gold coin. Lastly, adding more aesthetic to this map is easy by using the new miner meeples included.
Key Points:
- More gold is available throughout the game.
- Interesting injection of area control.
- Easier to enter and exit the depths.
- Leads more to exploration.
Overall Final Thoughts:
- Easy additions to the rules, no addition to either map is too complex for newer players.
- Small but fun changes gives the players new challenges to plan for when building their deck and playing their turn.
This is an easy expansion to recommend as both maps feel unique while having their own challenges, while still being simple to explain and bring out with new and veteran players alike. The Dwarven Mine makes moving to and from the depths easier while still having a new area control portion for players to fight over. The Spider's Queen Lair instead makes the swords more valuable as you will constantly be combating this spider fiend to move through locations and gain treasures. It also rewards the players that focus on decks with high skill points as the web cache can now give players bonuses with tomes instead of simply purchasing a tome for 7 skill. Both of these are easy to incorporate maps with intuitive yet interesting rules that adds more variability to Clank!.
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