Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure

Why Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure.

Clank! puts deck building on a board and gives it a heartbeat. Each player is a thief sneaking into a dragon's dungeon to steal an artifact and get out alive. You play cards from a hand of five to move through the map, fight monsters, and buy better cards from a shared market, exactly like Dominion in structure. The difference is noise: many strong cards and actions make you add cubes of your color to a bag, and whenever the dragon is provoked it draws cubes from that bag, dealing damage to whoever they belong to. Greedy play is loud, and loud play gets you killed.

The race structure fixes the pacing problem that pure deck builders have. Once one player escapes the dungeon, the dragon attacks every turn and the others have a few rounds to get out or lose everything. So the game has a natural arc: build a deck, dive deep for the good artifact, then sprint. The deeper artifacts are worth more, and the temptation to go one room further is exactly calibrated to ruin plans.

It plays in under an hour, seats four comfortably, and is easy to teach to anyone who has seen a deck builder before; kids who like the dragon-and-dungeon theme pick it up fast. Interaction is indirect but real, since you are sharing a market and a dragon. If Dominion feels like a spreadsheet to your group, Clank! is the same idea with a pulse. Clank! Legacy and the space variant exist for groups who want more, but the base box is the one to start with.

No paid placement. No sponsorship. We chose it on merit. The Amazon link funds the lights - if you'd rather buy direct from a local game store, find one via BoardGameGeek.