Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure Review

Intro

Clank! A Deck-Building Adventure throws you into the boots of a sneaky thief trying to steal artifacts from a very cranky dragon's lair. It's one of those games that takes two familiar concepts—deck building and dungeon crawling—and smooshes them together in a way that actually works. For 2-4 players, expect about an hour of gameplay that sits comfortably in the medium complexity range. With a solid 7.77 rating online and a handful of awards including Mensa Select, this 2016 release from Dire Wolf clearly struck a chord with gamers.

The basic idea is simple enough: build up your deck of cards to give you the resources you need to venture deeper into a dangerous dungeon, grab some loot, and get out before the dragon roasts you alive. But here's the twist—every misstep creates clank, noise that makes the dragon angrier and more likely to hunt you down.

How It Plays

You start with a basic deck of ten cards that give you the three main resources: Skill to buy new cards, Swords to fight monsters, and Boots to move around the dungeon board. Each turn, you draw five cards, play them all, and use what they give you to do your thieving.

The dungeon is laid out on a board with different rooms connected by paths. Deeper rooms have better loot but more dangerous monsters. Your goal is to grab a major artifact from the depths and make it back to the surface alive. Along the way, you can pick up minor treasures, fight monsters for rewards, and buy new cards from the dungeon market to improve your deck.

Here's where the clank mechanic gets interesting. Many cards and actions generate clank, represented by cubes you add to your personal clank board. When the dragon attacks—triggered by various game events—you put all your clank cubes in a bag and draw some back out. Draw a cube that matches your color? You take damage. Accumulate too much damage while you're still underground, and you're dragon food.

The deeper you go, the more valuable the artifacts, but also the more the dragon attacks. It's a classic push-your-luck setup where greed can literally kill you. The game ends when someone escapes with a major artifact or when all players are either out or eliminated. Points come from artifacts, treasures, and certain cards, so the sneakiest thief isn't always the winner.

Highlights

The clank system is genuinely brilliant. It creates this constant tension where you want to play powerful cards and move quickly, but every bit of noise brings you closer to danger. It's thematic and mechanical at the same time—you really feel like you're trying to stay quiet in a dragon's lair.

The deck building feels more focused than in pure deck builders like Dominion. Every card purchase is driven by what you need for your current dungeon situation. Need to fight that goblin blocking your path? Better grab some sword cards. Want to reach that juicy artifact before your opponent? Time to invest in movement. The dungeon board gives your deck building real purpose.

Speaking of the board, the spatial puzzle adds a layer that most deck builders lack. You're not just optimizing your deck in a vacuum—you're navigating a real space with blocked paths, one-way passages, and rooms that require specific resources to enter. Planning your route becomes as important as planning your deck.

The game does an excellent job with escalating tension. Early on, the dragon barely bothers with you, so you can explore and build your deck relatively safely. But as players grab artifacts and venture deeper, the attacks become more frequent and deadly. That shift from peaceful deck building to frantic escape creates a natural story arc.

The variety keeps it fresh too. Different artifacts spawn in different locations each game, the market cards change, and players develop completely different deck strategies. Some focus on fighting, others on speed, and some try to minimize clank entirely. All approaches can work, depending on the dungeon layout and what your opponents are doing.

Criticisms

The biggest issue is player elimination. If you get knocked out early, you're sitting around watching other people play for potentially 30+ minutes. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it stings. The game tries to mitigate this by giving eliminated players some points based on how deep they got, but that doesn't make watching from the sidelines any more fun.

The randomness can occasionally feel unfair. Sometimes the market offers amazing synergies, and sometimes it's full of cards nobody wants. More frustratingly, the clank-drawing mechanism can swing wildly—you might escape unscathed after making tons of noise, or get punished hard for a single mistake. Most of the time it feels exciting, but occasionally it just feels random.

There's also a potential runaway leader problem where a player who gets ahead early can snowball their advantage. If someone gets deep into the dungeon first, they often have access to the best artifacts and can start triggering dragon attacks that hurt the players still building up their decks. The catch-up mechanisms are limited, so falling behind early can be hard to overcome.

Conclusion

Clank! hits that sweet spot for players who want something meatier than pure deck builders but not as complex as heavy dungeon crawlers. If you enjoy games like Dominion but wish there was more theme and player interaction, this is probably perfect for you. The same goes for dungeon crawler fans who want something that plays faster and smoother than the typical four-hour slogs.

It's particularly great for groups that enjoy a mix of strategy and excitement. The deck building gives you plenty of decisions to make, but the clank system and dragon attacks keep everyone engaged and create those memorable "oh no" moments that people talk about afterward. Just make sure everyone's okay with the possibility of elimination, and you've got yourself a winner.