Clank! Catacombs Review

Designed by Paul Dennen. Published by Dire Wolf Digital. For 2-4 players (there is an expansion for up to 6 players). Clank Catacombs.
This surprisingly was my first ever 'Clank!' experience and it was so much fun that we (my wife and I) agreed that we need to find a copy for ourselves post-haste!! So, what did we enjoy so much.

Gameplay

The gameplay for Clank Catacombs should be quite familiar to those of you who have played Clank before; if you are like me and have never played a Clank game before then I will explain how it works quickly. Each turn you draw 5 cards from your own deck and play these down in front of you using everything there to buy new cards, move your character on the map or if you have a stumble card add Clank (which is kind of like noise) to the Clank area.

There is a common draw display section where 5 cards are always on display that you can buy and add to your own decks. As a card is bought by a player a new card is drawn to replace it, if the new card has a dragon symbol on it then the dragon attacks. When the dragon attacks Clank cubes in the Clank area are added to the bag and then a number of cubes are drawn that matches the dragons current aggression level, if your colour Clank cube is pulled out this is added to your health track and you lose some health. If your health track ever reaches the end you are out/dead.

There are ways to mitigate Clank on the cards such as cards that read "when played -2 Clank" and some other powerful cards may make you put Clank in. You can use your cards powers in any order you choose which means making combos is easy to pull off and can make you feel very smart at times. You may also build up cards with attack symbols on; these allow you to battle any enemies in the row and take benefits from defeating these or allow you to move along paths with monsters on without taking damage.

Moving around the board is very satisfying. On the map there are lots of different things, the main objective is that you must collect at least one artifact before you are allowed to escape from the dungeon. The issue being that the first artifacts that come onto the board have low scores (I think the first one was worth 5 points) and the later ones are worth a lot of points (maximum of 25 if I remember correctly). Each time a player collects an artifact the dragon becomes angry and moves along it's anger track. The only time this does not happen is if a player collects a silver artifact.

Also on the map there are other cool things to interact with, such as, prisoners that you can rescue along the way that give various points at the end depending on which prisoner/s you free, tomes of knowledge that each give you a card worth 7 points at the end but, have no powers on them so can affect your deck building if you get the too early on and treasures you can unlock with one of your lockpicks.

Choose wisely though as each player only starts the game with 3 lockpicks and these can also be used to unlock paths that have lock symbols on them. Once pathways have been unlocked by one player they are then open for all players moving forward. There are also points on the map that allow you to warp to other warp points and these can be really useful when try to traverse. I have also not even mentioned the shop that you can go to where you can even buy a bigger backpack which then allows you to carry 2 artifacts.

The map itself only starts as a couple of spaces and is only opened up once a player needs to leave the current tile they are on. That player then chooses a tile at random, first from the purple starter tiles and then from the blue tiles, and places them in any rotation that they would like. Sometimes the placement of the tiles can help you but, at other times they can divert you in ways you would not expect/hope for. These can be a fun way to mess with the other players too without being overly aggressive or upsetting for them. Once you have got your artifact/s you may leave the dungeon at any point and when you do each turn where you would have played your cards then becomes a turn for the dragon to draw Clank instead. So, once one player leaves it becomes more and more chaotic as everyone else tries to escape before they die. If you excape from the dungeon you recieve a plus 20 point token, if you finish on a purple tile when you die you still get to count up your points but, if you die in a blue zone you are dead and finish with 0 points.