Renegade Game Studio RGS0841 Clank Expeditions Gold and Silk, Mixed Colours

Clank! is a fun dungeon delving deck builder, that quickly develops as the game progresses.Your goal is to grab an artifact from the dungeon and return to the surface as quickly as possible, that's a lot easier than it sounds!I really enjoyed playing this game, took me a little while to setup because that's an important part of the game itself but the flow of the game is great.As you progress in your adventure your starting deck will grow, and it will grow fast!Why is it called CLANK!? One of the features of the game is called clank! This feature is a negative effect, you disturb the dragon, who isn't pleased to see you, that can damage you and eventually could kill your adventurer.The components are decent and functional, the cube (clank!) bag is a really cool, yet simple, idea. Throw in the deck building and victory point conditions will give you a tense, but very entertaining, experience.Once you've figured it all out, this'll likely become one of the favourites for game nights.

Deck building games have really come of age. As a long-time fan of Dominion (a great deck building game), I came across Clank a while ago. Reading the reviews on Board Game Geek - I found many mentions of the sequel Clank in Space coming out a couple of months later with those who had tried it at games events saying it was clearly better than Clank - with the game creators improving several rules to make a much more fun game. Well I can't compare the two because I took their words to heart and waiting for the new game to arrive.It is absolutely great fun. You play as thieves trying to move across the board and steal an artifact on the other side of the board. You then have to make it back to the starting location to escape with your loot. You buy new cards in a pretty similar way to Dominion, and those that know Dominion will be right at home with the base mechanics. Additionally some cards will have movement points that let you move across the board. Additionally there are three special types of cards where actions trigger if you have at least two types the same - meaning that once you start building your deck from the random 6 cards on offer (that get replenished) then you will often want to focus on one or two special types.Some actions make noise cubes of your colour, and when the enemy attacks, all the noise cubes are put in a bag and some random cubes drawn out dealing damage to those players.You need to get the most points - but you also need to get out in time. There are many different strategies you can employ:- Get a lot of money to buy things in the shops that help your run such as keys to open special routes across the board- Grab the first theft item as quickly as you can and get out as fast as possible (people who escape can draw damage cubes from the bag on their turn after they are safe, increasing the chances for remaining players to be killed off before they can escape)- Focus on building your deck to make clever combos- Buying expensive cards for your deck that score more points afterwards- Grabbing hidden treasure items around the board as you make your way over and backA bit of time to set things up, but it is very straightforward. I have played this with my boys, and also with other adults at my local board game social club and it was enjoyed a lot both times.Comparing to Dominion I would say it is a bit more instantly fun than Dominion but not as much regular replayability. I would bring Dominion almost every week (well Dominion plus expansions) but I would bring this every 2 weeks.The components are great quality - although the price is high it does feel like you get a good product for your money. There are also a lot of deck cards so you do end up with very different decks each time you play.I'm expecting to see an expansion come out in 2018 and I'll likely buy that when it does arrive.Update: There is now a free App by Renegade you can download that acts like a small expansion to the game. It's a mini-boss that gets triggered by one of three actions (the trigger actions seem to change each game, such as if you moved 3 spaces in the same turn) and if you click the action on the phone the mini-boss may trigger or not. Some results are bad (such as immediate boss attack) and some are good (such as heal one health), and some will be a choice (such as draw 3 cards if you add 3 noise clanks). Everyone in the game agreed that it made things more fun - although the music was a bit distracting so we had it on mute.

Clank is an absolutely wonderful game for 2-4 players.To keep this review brief;Setup - initial setup and restarting takes about 5 minutes. A little time consuming but not bothersome.Players - Can work well with 2, though the end-game situations can cause some lackluster victories. With more players, the game explodes with entertainment. It may be possible to play with more players, but you would need additional cards and clank-cubes.Game Length - anywhere between 20 minutes to 1.5 hrs from experience. Depends on experience of players and how dangerous the plays become. Some players are sly and quick, others are calculating and risky.Scoring - I would recommend having a phone/calculator or pen+paper handy just to make scoring easier, but ultimately it mostly just comes to counting tokens and values on cards.Overall, a wonderful game with many hours of fun and competition. I would also recommend the expansion, though don't feel the need to get both at the same time. This base game will last you many games.

This expansion gives:- Extra adventure cards, some very clever ones in the new pack.- 2 new double sided map modules- New boss mechanicThe new mechanic is that black boss cubes pulled from the bag go onto a 'scheme' which when filled will cause bad things to happen. 3 lines and an effect after each line is filled. For unfilled lines you can pay a cost to take a cube from the scheme, and cubes are used on some map squares and some new adventure cards to get nice effects. There are difficult difficulty levels of schemes, a nice mix.They also suggest an alternative mechanic where you can just buy the drawn cubes without the schemes to keep things more simple.It is easy to understand, and even people new to the game can cope fine as it just adds one new option to consider. The new maps all need black cubes (both sides) and maybe 1/2 the new adventure cards need black cubes. So unless you play the new mechanic you can't add much to the base game.I play Clank in Space regularly and so for me it's worth having, but I would have preferred if the map flip-sides were non-black cube themed to have more variety on base-only.Tips:- There is a free Renegade App for phones that has a mini-boss for Clank in Space, and it's really good.- If you want a game where people mostly all get out alive back to base, try drawing one less cube from each boss attack.- House rule - at each player's buy phase they can scrap the card at the end of the adventure row and add a new card to the start of the row (which does not trigger boss attacks). This stops the adventure row getting junked up with unwanted or unaffordable cards.