[Games] Clank!

[Kyle]

Thanks again to Phoebe for giving me a gift certificate for Christmas to my local gaming store, which I used to buy what might be my favorite board game that I've gotten in the last five years.



This game is fucking great. It's a exploration board game that uses deck-building to determine what and how you will explore the dungeon. The premise is that you're all explorers that have to delve into a dungeon which contains a sleeping dragon. You need to try to find artifacts (worth varying points) and escape the dungeon with them. But as you explore, you make a lot of noise which can wake the dragon ("Clank!"), which can trigger attacks.

Deck-building games are great, but they way they incorporate this into the board game aspect is great. You have different cards that give you different abilities to either fight, move, or buy more cards. At the beginning, everyone starts with the same shitty deck, but as you acquire other cards, your possible hand becomes much more robust. As you explore the dungeon, you find other "secrets" (major and minor) that give you additional abilities (healing, teleporting, etc.). Finally, there's another mechanic whereby you add blocks (coordinated to your color) to a bag which contains a bunch of black blocks (the dragon's color) and some of your opposnents' blocks. These represent when you've made too much noise in the dungeon. Every so often the dragon is awakened and attacks- at which point to randomly draw out a set number of blocks from the bag. If your color is chosen, you record that as a hit against your health.

Here's the beauty of the game, though: it's so intuitive to play. When I first opened it and saw twelve different types of pieces and chits and markers and coins-- I thought, "This is going to be a trainwreck." But once you start playing, it all makes sense from the very beginning. There was very little learning curve, and at no point did I think we'd messed something up in the rules. They are so well-tuned and, even though you have three different mechanics in the game (deck-building, board events and the dragon attacks), they all go together perfectly. My nine and ten year olds understood it fine. I recommend watching a youtube "how to play" video (we watched one that was ten minutes), but it's not necessary.

An awesome game. Thanks again, Phoebe!

Here's a picture of me and most of my sons playing mid-game: