Clank! is a deck building adventure where players try steal treasure and escape before the dragon wakes up and kills them all.
Designer(s): Paul Dennen
Artist(s): Rayph Beisner, Raul Ramos, Nate Storm
Publisher: Dire Wolf, Renegade Game Studios
Clank! is a competitive deck building, racing game series. And the Deck-Build Adventure was the first in the series (released in 2016). The goal of Clank! is to collect what you can and gain points while balancing the need to escape from the gangers of the dungeon.
This is a common fantasy setting that is commonly associated with dungeons & dragons. But unlike Dungeons & Dragons, Clank! is all about doing better than all the players at your table and potentially leaving them behind for dead. After all, if they are dead, you can go and grab their treasure later, right?
Clank! is a game where the risk is directly correlated to the reward. The farther you go from the entrance, the better treasure you can find but the more difficult it is to get back. Clank! is a light deck building game perfect for any group ready to delve a dungeon.
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Gameplay Overview
This is a general overview to provide context for the review, not an in-depth how to play. Some rules may be glossed over or missing.
A quick disclaimer before I begin, I have played only a couple of games of Clank! A Deck Building Adventure. I have played at multiple player counts and with my deep love of Deck Builder, I think I have a relatively good grasp on the game. You’ve been warned.
Clank! Game Flow
The game flow of Clank! consists to a player phase and then an upkeep phase that could potentially harm the active player. Then play will proceed clockwise with each player getting a chance to be the active player and participate in both phases.
The goal of the game is to get the most points through artifacts, loot, gold, and valuable cards. And you do need an artifact to get out. The game will end when all players are either knocked out or have escaped the dungeon. Yes, this game does have player elimination. Be careful not to get knocked out in the depths or you’ll be stuck there forever.
Setup
The setup of Clank! is both easy and sort of a lot. I was not expecting there to be so many set up steps in a deck builder. Especially one with a dynamic market. To start, each player will choose a color and get all pieces of that color and a 10-card starter deck (containing burgles, stumbles, sidestep, and scramble). Players start with 5 cards in hand.
The game board is where most of the setup occurs. Several tokens need to be placed out on the board as they will show you the goals and direction of the game. The tokens include artifacts, a major secret, market items, monkey idols, and mastery tokens. A pool of gold tokens is place next to the board.
The dragon is a big part of the game. After all, it is the main way that players can get knocked out. There is a dragon marker for the rage track and dragon cubes that will be a pool next to the board.
There are some cards that will have consistent accessibility. They have their reserve cards placed next to the board. The other cards to deal with is the dungeon deck. A market of 6 cards will be placed out for players to purchase from.
It both is very simple but also can be a lot considering the sheer number of tokens and cards. There are 50 board tokens in the game … that is a lot.
Concept:Game Cards
Most cards in your deck will generate some sort of resource. This can be either skill, swords, or boots Skill is used to acquire new cards to your deck from the Dungeon Deck market. These could be items that will help get more skill, swords, or boots.
While the dragon is the main villain of the dungeon, there are also smaller monsters inhabiting your cave. And they are hostile. I mean, you invaded their territory brandishing a sword, can you blame them? Swords are used to fight monsters that can appear in the Dungeon Deck market. Why defeat monsters? Well, some can give you loot bonuses such as gold.
Boots are the simplest of the three. Boots let you move around the dungeon. Seems easy! Some paths will need more than one boot to be traveled on. Some might need swords in addition to boot, or perhaps a key.
Player Turns
The Plan
The plan is where players can take actions using the cards in their hand. There are several actions that a player can take on their turn including: acquire a new card, use a device, fight a monster, buy from the market, move through a tunnel, gaining gold, or going Clank!
Acquire a new card uses skill to pay for cards from the dungeon deck. Use a device uses skill to activate a device in the room with your player pawn. Fight a monster uses swords to kill monsters in the Dungeon Deck. Buy from the market allows a player to spend gold to get a market token.
Gaining gold feels obvious. Going Clank! will cause a player to put a clank cube from a player’s personal supply into the Clank! area of the game board. This will be important in The Mark phase.
All cards in hand must be played but you can use as many resources from those cards as desired. Any leftover resources (skill, swords, boots) are wasted at the end of the turn. Playing cards will make a player use unwanted cards. The game doesn’t want you to have an easy time exploring this dungeon after all!
The Mark
If any cards were bought from the dungeon deck during a players turn, the market will refill during the mark (at the end of the players turn). If a card comes out with a Dragon symbol, the dragon attacks!
All cubes in the Clank! area of the board and put in the dragon bag. Cubes are pulled equal the rage of the dragon. Any colors revealed does damage to that player. So, yea… a random draw on another person’s turn can hurt you. Rude!
Who Will Like it?
Clank! A Deck Building Adventure is a fun game for those who like dungeon crawling, deckbuilding, random pulls, and don’t mind getting eliminated. There is also a fair bit of resource management that players will have to do to survive.
What I Think
What did I like?
I do love the risk versus reward aspect of Clank! The deeper you go into the dungeon, the higher the rewards typically are. But that means you have a longer path to get back and away from the dragon. This can be fun to push your luck, so to speak, and go for something that might be a little crazy.
What didn’t I like?
There honestly is a little too much going on for this game considering the difficulty range I would put it in. Having to balance three resources and four different point options feels a little too thinky.
And given the randomness of a deck-builder (i.e., drawing your hand), management resources can honestly be a bit difficult. Not getting the right cards, or combination of cards can make it difficult especially since you are buying more cards, you must consider all the resources.
Also, I am not a huge fan of player elimination. Especially if a player can be eliminated on other players turns due to the randomness of a dragon attack.
My Take
While I think Clank! has potential to be a great deck-builder, I do find it lower on my list of games. I love the concept and some of the execution but something about the game just doesn’t click for me in a way other deck-builder do. But I am still happy to have tried it out!
Breakdown
Rulebook/Learning the Game
Reading through the rulebook, there was some interesting choice made that I don’t know if I agree with. There were also some questions that came up that could not be answered by the rulebook.
The two major points that stick out to me is that the example is formatted in a way to show you the cards but not in the game setting. It is more abstracted, which can work but I prefer seeing the example on the table itself.
The biggest question that came up is what do you do with Clank! cubes that are drawn from the bag? Each black cube is set aside, colored cubes deal damage, undraw cubes stay where they are. But what happened to the black and colored cube that were revealed? Are they removed from the game? Or do they go back to their general supplies? Or do they go to the Clank! area on the board?
They go the space on the bottom of the board that marks players health. This shows how many attacks a player can take before being killed. While this might have been said in another area of the rulebook, this was not apparent to me. The black cubes are removed from the game.
First Play
The first game we played ended in everyone dying. We were all greedy and no one escaped as the cave collapse. One player did get taken out a little early due to back luck on dragon attacks and having an unfortunate draw that gave them quite a flew +1 Clank! they could not avoid.
This was a little struggle because having one player not really doing much while everyone else was playing didn’t feel great. But that’s just how luck goes sometimes. And how player elimination goes.
Rating
5/10
Clank! does have a lot going for the game but I would probably choose other deck builder first. For that dungeon feel with a dynamic market I would go to Tyrants of the Underdark, for a racing feel I would pick Quest for El Dorado, or I would just play Trains because I’m obsessed.
*See my rating scale Here
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