CLANK!

Players: 1-4
Game Time: 60 min
Ages: 12 and up
Complexity: Medium
Strategy: Medium
Luck: Medium
Deck-Building Board Game
Detailed Game Info
Download Official Instructions

CLANK! is a brilliant deck-building, press-your-luck board game for up to four players.  In the game, you sneak into an angry dragon’s mountain lair to steal precious artifacts. Delve deeper underground into the dragon’s lair to find more valuable loot. Acquire cards for your deck and watch your thievish abilities grow.  Be quick and be quiet. One false step and CLANK! Each careless sound draws the attention of the dragon, and each artifact stolen increases its rage. You can enjoy your plunder only if you make it out of the depths alive and with more loot than your fellow adventurers!

If you are familiar with deck building, you’ll have no trouble playing Clank! Each player starts with a ten card deck and draws 5 cards at beginning of each turn. For your turn, you’ll play all the cards in your hand. Each card will give you boots, skill, or swords, or some combination of each.

Skill will allow you to purchase new cards from the market and add them to your discard pile and shuffle them in as the game goes along. The more skill you have, usually, the better cards you can buy.  Boots allow you to move from room to room. Rooms are connected with white lines and there are sometimes special rules for those lines. Some lines will only go one way, some will need a key to pass through, or there could be a monster in the way. There are also Crystal Caverns which will stop your movement for the turn, and those can be really tough to avoid when you are quickly exiting the dungeon! If you have enough boots, you can dive deep into the dungeon to get the most valuable artifacts.  The last basic icon is Swords, which will allow you to defeat monsters from the market row. These monsters can give some hefty rewards, such as extra movement, cards, skill or money.

Play will continue until players collect an artifact and escape, or suffer ten damage and become dragon food. The end game condition is when someone is killed by the dragon or someone escapes. When that happens, their piece is put on the top of the dungeon trap and play continues as normal. When that player’s turn comes around, instead of their turn, you resolve a dragon attack and add some extra cubes. This continues for 4 turns and anyone left in the dungeon is eaten.

Again, if you are familiar with deck-building board/card games, CLANK! will be easy to learn in minutes.  However, if you have never played a deck-builder, CLANK is probably one the best games you can play that will introduce you to deck-building mechanics.  Don’t worry – we will teach you what you need to know.  It will be worth it – trust me!  This game is extraordinarily tense and fun.  You have just as much fun when you lose as when you win.  Watch one of the videos below for a general introduction.