I've been seeking out deckbuilders after I finished my journey through Dominion. To be clear, I only played one expansion ( Dominion: Intrigue) which I enjoyed, but quickly burned out on as well - and never purused the numerous expansions after that (I know, I know - many were very good). Most recently I played the quite well integrated A Handful of Starsfrom <PERSON>, but along the way I've played a number of others - Ascension: Deckbuilding Game, Star Realms, DC Comics Deck-Building Game, Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game, Heroes of Metro City, Valley of the Kings- yes, more than a few, but certainly not every one. And after each one, I felt rather empty. Each were quite mechanical to me somehow - even formulaic like my many plays of Dominion eventually became.
I also played Trainswhich was fairly well received because of its integration of a board into game play - but the deckbuilding mechanic was the primary driver of the game. The board portion was to me at least, academic. I actually thought the more interesting aspect to Trains was the management of "waste" in the game. But the other cards were often enough direct pulls from Dominion - and why not? It was the father of all this after all.
At Gen Con, I routinely scope out games of interest, often based on very little information at all. Such was the case with CLANK! Although I was fully aware it was a deckbuilder, I was actually more attracted to it based on the box art - and admittedly (rather sheepishly) the theme of it being a dungeon crawler. As you can maybe suss out from my journey through deckbuilding, I was seeking a thematic deckbuilder (recognizing but never being able to actually get into Thunderstonefor whatever reason). I should mention here I own Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Setwhich I have certainly not explored enough yet - and I wouldn't call it exactly a deckbuilder. But I digress.
This brings me to my experiences with CLANK! I'm flatly thrilled with it. So much so that I felt the need to report my feelings - mainly as therapy for me to figure out exactly *why* I am thrilled with it. A bit of deconstruction is in order - which will also be an examination of the rules.
The game revolves around deckbuilding of course, but the main feeling is one of dungeoneering. If you've played the venerable DungeonQuest, you have a good measure for what CLANK means by dungeoneering: you are hoping to get into and out of the dungeon before all goes south for you. 304
It's an overall push your luck experience. It isn't nearly (and tragically) as deadly as DungeonQuest, but I feel the designer must have had DQ as a reference point. Because you will indeed find yourself pulled into "just one more treasure please" one too many times leading to (often enough) your inevitable regret that perhaps you should have headed up when instead you headed down. To me, this is certainly a significant part of the fun feeling generated by CLANK.
The deckbuilding aspect is almost mundane - use your cards to buy more cards. It has a conveyor belt display like DC Deckbuilder or Ascension and even some standard piles (one for swords - used to defeat monsters, one for boots - used to move about, one for gold - used to buy). So those aspects do not set it aside - but again indicate the designer knows his way around today's games. No, what sets this deckbuilder in a distinct class is the valuation of those cards. You see: you need all types of cards (nothing new there - that's just good tension in design), but the value of a card in the display I believe *changes* as play unfolds. What I need early in the game isn't what I really need later. Movement is always grand, but I really *do* need gold about midway through to obtain some room to hold another artifact or get the limited number of keys to allow efficient travel. Not to mention swords to help stop my own health from deteriorating.
And I should say here that the race feeling is very real. The first player to 'die' (yes, you can be eliminated in this game) sets the end game in motion - only 4 more rounds and all is at an end. What's worse, however, is in those 4 final rounds, you will most certainly be at risk of dying yourself. Here is where the title drop lands: certain cards generate (as a penalty) 'clank' - represented by your colored cubes placed aside (for the moment) in a display on the board. When the dragon is riled up (determined randomly by the conveyor belt of cards), those cubes are tossed into a bag and a few are drawn back out randomly. Each cube of your color is a single hit on your health. 884