Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure

4th January 2022

It's a Tuesday and we're round Simon's for the first in-person game of the year!

'Here be dragons', is something you don't want to shout in Clank! Instead you'll want to silently tippy-toe around without waking the damn thing up, then steal its stuff and run! 

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NOTE: When we played Clank!, it was with an expansion that took the player count up 6 (Which was useful, as there were 6 of us!) and added characters with individual starting decks.

What's in a game?

• Board: The game board depicts a sort of side-on view of a fortress of sorts and an underground region known as The Depths​. This play area is filled with a dungeon network of chambers linked by a tunnels and many of these tunnels contain 1-or-more symbols related to movement, enemies and locks. Chambers may also contain spaces for tokens or have some effect such as healing. The entrance to the network lies in the top-left corner of the board.
  The board is also double-sided and features a different network on the other side.
  Banner: Used to place and store current clank tokens.
  Tracks: There's also space for a damage track for each player (Known as the clank track.) and the dragon's rage track. Finally, at the top, along the fortress' parapets is a countdown track.
  The expansion adds a supplementary board with 2 more player tracks an updated rage track balanced for 5-6 players.
• Cards: For a deck builder, Clank! doesn't have that many cards, I mean it's less than 200!
  Starter deck: Each player gets an identical starting deck of 10 cards. These cards each provide the player with some of the game's resource types.
  The expansion adds characters with unique starting cards.
  Dungeon cards: This is the most common type of card and includes normal cards and one-off cards as well as enemies, they all provide some sort of benefit. Dungeon cards will have a purchase cost (In skill points.) or value in swords (To be defeated with swords.) and may also confer VPs. Some cards include a 'dragon attacks icon, which triggers an attack by y'know... the dragon!
  Reserve cards: There are 4 types of reserve card and they are placed in piles face-up, reserve cards are essentially default cards and always available to purchase/fight if the active player can't afford something better from the dungeon deck. It's a mechanic which will be familiar to players of deck-builders.
• Market tile: This tile has space for all the game's market tokens.
• Tokens: Clank! makes use of a number of tokens.
  Artefacts: There 7 of these very important tokens, which score 5-30 VPs.
  Secrets: These tokens are divided into major and minor secrets. They usually confer some sort of bonus on to the player such as healing.
  Market tokens: There are 3 types of market items, backpacks and master keys provide some benefit (And some VPs.), while crowns flat-out score more VPs.
  Monkey idol tokens: These score VPs.
  Mastery tokens: More on these identical tokens later, suffice to say; they can be very important.
  Gold!: Cold hard cash, good for VPs in Clank! or buying items from the market.
• Meeples: Each player has a meeple in their colour, which is shaped a little like a... hooded thief?
  The dragon has its own oversized black meeple
  The expansion adds differently shaped meeples for the unique characters, it also adds a new dragon meeple.
• Cubes: Every game can be improved with the addition of little wooden cubes and Clank! scores highly in this department! During the game players will generate clank (Noise in other words.), when this occurs, players may draw the ire of the dragon and cubes are used to track this.
  Player cubes: Each player has 30 cubes in their colour.
  Dragon cubes: The dragon also gets cubes, 25 black cubes to be precise.
• Bag: Used in conjunction with cubes.
• Player boards: These are only used in the expansion and provide 6 different characters with different abilities for each player.

I'm a fan of wooden components, so it's always nice to seem them put to good use in a game. The meeples are the standout here, particularly the big ol' nasty dragons. The other components, the board, cards, tokens and tiles are of the usual quality you'd expect 

Clank features good, colourful artwork throughout, the board has a fairly unique look to it and is clearly illustrated, the cards and tokens also feature good artwork with well illustrated characters and monsters. 

The game uses a fairly small assortment of iconography and it's all easily understood.

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How's it play?
​Setup

• Players: All Players should take their meeple, matching cubes and starting cards. The cards should be shuffled into a face down deck and a hand of 5 should be drawn.
• Board: Choose a side to set out the board on.
  Artefacts: These are placed in their designated spots face-up.
  Secrets: Shuffle the major and minor tokens into their respective stacks and place the allotted amount into their spots face-down.
  Market tokens: Place the market tokens on to the market tile face-up. The crowns must be placed in order or descending value with the 10 at the top.
  Monkey idols tokens: All monkey idols are placed face-up in their allotted spot.
  Mastery tokens: place these in a face-up stack next to the entrance.
  Dragon: Place the dragon on to its starting spot as specified by the player count.
  ​Clank cubes: Players must each put some cubes on to the banner, how much is dependant on player order.
• Reserve cards: Put out all four types of reserve cards in face-up stacks.
• Dungeon row: Shuffle the dungeon cards into a face-down deck and deal 6, this becomes the dungeon row.
• Dragon bag: Put all 24 black cubes into the bag.

On to play
The objective in Clank! is to grab an artefact from the depths and escape the out of the dungeon alive! A player cannot leave the dungeon without an artefact neither score points.
Play progress in traditional clockwise order during Clank! and the active player plays cards from their hand to generate resource pools which they can then utilise to perform associated actions.

• Play cards: The active player plays cards from their hand, some may have special actions but for the the most part it means that 4 types of resources are generated.
  Cards may also generate a negative resource called clank, for each point of clank generated, the player must put a cube in their colour on to the banner space on the board.
  ​Move: Each point of move allows the active player to move their meeple through a tunnel to another chamber, if the tunnel contains any movement icons, then the active player must the additional move cost. It is possible for the active player to move through more than 1 chamber. There are some chambers that immediately stop a player for the turn, some are one-way and some require a master key to pass. Some tunnels will also have enemy icons; more on these below.
  Once a player has moved to a chamber, they may perform the action there, typically that's pick up a token, although some chambers have other actions such as healing.
  It's worth noting that players can only carry 1 artefact unless they have bought a backpack which allows them to carry an additional artefact, nor can they discard an artefact. Collecting artefacts and certain tokens advance the dragon along its rage track, making it more dangerous - and more damaging.
  Fight: These points have 2 uses, they can be spent to defeat an enemy card that has appeared in the dungeon row to discard it and gain its reward or they can fight the enemy that is always available in the reserve cards, the reserve card enemy is never discarded, although the reward is earned.
  Alternatively, some tunnels contain enemy icons, to move through these tunnels will cost fight points, if a player cannot or will not spend the required fight points then they take damage instead and add cubes from their supply to their damage track.
  Skill points: These can be used to buy cards from the dungeon row, which go into their discard pile and will be eventually shuffled into the player's deck
  Gold: Unlike the other resources, gold is not lost at the end of the turn and accumulates over rounds. Gold is worth VPs at the game end but can also be used to purchase items from the market (Provided the player is in the market space.).
• Draw: Once the active player has finished their actions, they draw cards to take their hand up to 5.
• Dungeon row: If any cards were bought or discarded from the dungeon row, they are refilled from the dungeon deck. If any of the cards drawn display the dragon attacks icon... then the dragon attacks!
• Dragon attack: When the dragon does attack, take all the cubes that players have placed on the banner (From generating clank.) and put them into the bag and give it a good shake.
  Cubes must then be blindly drawn from the bag. The position of the dragon meeple on its rage track will determine how many are drawn and it will be 2-5.
  Each black cube pulled can be ignored but each coloured cube drawn is placed on its pertinent damage track. Thus the more 'noise' a player generates, the more of their cubes go into the bag and the greater the chance of them taking damage.
• Damage: When a player takes damage, the cube drawn from the bag is placed on their damage track and as you'd imagine, when the track is filled... it's not good news and they are knocked out! What happens next, well that depends?
  If player is knocked out while in the depths, then it's over for them, they are both out of the game and out of the scoring! Harsh!
  If a player was in the upper levels of the dungeon, then generously-spirited local will come and rescue their unconscious forms. The player is out of the game but will score as normal after the endgame.
  In either case, the first player knocked unconscious will trigger the endgame if it hasn't already been triggered.
• Escape: If a player acquires an artefact and escapes the dungeon, they acquire a mastery token which is worth 20 VPs! Furthermore, the 1st player to escape will trigger the endgame, provided it hasn't already been triggered. After this, they are essentially out of the game.

That's it for the most important rules I think. There are of course lots of exceptions thanks to cards from the dungeon deck but there's no need to go into them here.

Endgame
There are 2 ways to trigger the endgame.
It can be triggered by the 1st player to acquire an artefact and leave the dungeon or the 1st player to be knocked out.

In either circumstance, the player who triggered the endgame places their meeple on the countdown track. Then when they become the active player, all they do move their meeple along the track. This will trigger a worsening dragon attack every round for the next 3 rounds, then on the final round the dragon will knock out all players who are still in the dungeon, regardless of whether they are in the depths or the upper levels.
After this, the game goes to scoring, players who did not acquire an artefact or who were for any reason knocked out while in the depths do not score any points! Points may be accumulated from the following sources:

Artefacts score 5-30 VPS.
Tokens acquired.
Card with VP values that players bought.
Gold; each gold scores 2 VPs.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
Clank! has an unusual mix of deck-building and push-your-luck mechanics and it's the push-your-luck element that interests me the most. Clank! makes use of this mechanic in several aspects of the game.

Firstly, there's a definite push-your-luck element to generating clank. Players will obviously want to minimise how much clank they add to the banner and lessen the chances of their cubes being pulled when the dragon attacks. Having said that, lessening the impact of clank may slow a player's progress, sometimes generating clank will give a bonus, the question is; is it worth it? how much do you want to push it. There's also a contextual angle here, if you see other players are generating a lot of clank, that means it should be safer to generate a little bit of clank yourself. If the opposite is true, they you'll need to be even more careful.
The most obvious use of push-your-luck is when collecting an artefact. Every player needs to collect 1 but there's quite a spread of VPs. The higher scoring artefacts are found lower down in the depths. Getting one and getting out will be more risky, but more rewarding. Compounding this is the rule that you can't drop an artefact once it's been picked up. There's no hedging you bet here, if you want a higher value artefact, you have to go for it. It's basically stick-or-twist.
This also ties in with the game's other aspect of push-your-luck.
The countdown mechanic adds an interesting wrinkle to all this, dramatically altering player priorities and objectives. If the countdown is triggered by another player, you'll find yourself wondering whether you can get one last scoring token before heading to the top or not - probably better to run? The penalty for getting caught in the depths is catastrophic and that 20 VP mastery token is pretty good.
Conversely, if you're the player who has an opportunity to escape the dungeon and trigger the countdown, should you do it? Or should you try and get more points? It might seem like a no-brainer, but is it?
Chances are the first player to get out didn't go too deep and got a lower value artefact. The combined value of a mastery token and a 5 point artefact is still less than the highest value artefact and I'm sure this is no coincidence, I put it down to well balanced scoring. Rushing to get out and put pressure on other players may work or it may not​.

The deck-building aspect in Clank! is light-ish and fairly straightforward, which I think is a good thing because it can have quite the influence on a player's turn. There's little in the way of card combos and mostly all the cards stand on their own. The only trash cards (And they're not really trash.) are the secret tomes, which score 7VP at the game end but otherwise clutter up a deck.

This brings me to perhaps the only niggle I have about the deck-building and Clank! 
In most deck-builders, it's all about buying more cards, either to improve your deck or score you points and Clank! is unlike those deck-builders. In Clank! your needs may change from round to round; in a particular round you may want to move a lot, in the next you may want fight points and sometimes, the cards may just not give you what you need. 
Sure, in most deck-builders, the cards will screw you over but somehow it can feel worse in Clank! It can be frustrating when you don't enough quite have the movement you to reach an artefact for example and feels like nothing is going on. It's not a dealbreaker though and I guess learning to adapt as much as possible is key.

Otherwise, Clank! is hard to fault. Colourful with an interesting theme and mechanics, not too tricky to learn, reasonably fast to play and with a dramatic endgame. What's not to like.
If you like deck-builders or push-your-luck games or both​, Clank! is worth a try.