Our first Clank! experience

Confession time! We have never played any Clank! games before. 🙈 Have you played any?

I always had them on the radar as they are very well regarded, but was perhaps afraid they’d be too simple? Anyway, Clank! Catacombs got my attention! Having modular tiles instead of a board, so every game can have a unique layout? I knew it was time to dip our toes into Clank! 💪

After our first plays I have to say I’m a fan. It has a really awesome dungeon crawler feel to it - but with euro mechanics! The modularity and amount of cards make it very replayable. I love drawing stuff and seeing what I get - like a new map tile, or a secret or prisoner tile.😁 This sense of exploration is the biggest strength of Catacombs.

It plays like a usual deck-builder.🧐 Throughout the game you’ll be buying cards from a moving market so you always see different things on offer.

The main information on your cards are the 3 “resources”:
🥾 Boots allow you to move around in the dungeon
🟦 Skill is the currency used to buy new cards
🗡️ Swords are similar to Skill - you use it to defeat monsters in the market row. Instead of gaining the card, you discard it for its effect.

The goal is to grab an Artifact from the depths and run back to the entrance alive. And of course, you have to have the most points at the end! 🏆 So you have to make the best of your dungeon delving. You could get knocked out and get 0 points though so…😅 Don’t be too greedy! (Source: I was greedy once or twice 😂)

An important mechanic of the game is “Clank” - the namesake of the game. Some cards make noise so you have to place cubes on the central board. Whenever a card with a Dragon icon enters the market row, you throw those cubes into the bag and the dragon attacks (in the form of pulling cubes from that bag). If your cubes are drawn you take damage! If your health track is completely full, you are knocked out. There is a fun solution to player elimination though - players who already escaped or died draw cubes from the bag instead of taking their turn. This speeds up the remainder of the game so those still alive have to be quick.

I think this is immensely fun for all kinds of gamers. I can really recommend it😊