Clank! In! Space!
Expansion of: Clank!The evil Lord Eradikus has all but conquered the galaxy, and is now on a victory lap across the sector in his flagship, Eradikus Prime. He may rule with an iron grip, but his most prized artifacts are about to slip through his cyborg claws.
60m
2 - 4 Players
Ages 12+
agentpatman
This was one of my favorite deck builders so far. The theme is interesting and unique and the cards are funny. There’s a lot of other aspects than deck building as you have to plan the most efficient route and decide which cards to hone your strategy. Some market abilities seem over powered initially without changing your entire strategy to count their moves. I also didn’t realize it was a race game that you can’t score without finishing. We may house rule that so everyone gets to participate as long as they make a clear effort to make it back. I understand that for others there’s joy in making it so others get stuck behind but for us the fun in the game is the suspense and racing to the finish line first with the most loot along the way. In two player we might also allow both to get a telepass so you don’t have to pivot your strategy and can continue playing the way to you wanted. I love how it feels like your deck is good at certain things compared to other deck builders. I had a lot of cards that allowed me to draw more and buy big cards but had difficulty moving. My opponents could run really far but couldn’t buy a lot of expensive cards. The modularity and custom board is also unique and really fun to see how that will modify and change things. So much variability with a large deck you play with half of it, different board setups, and all the randomness from the decks itself and the clank mechanism. That was also really fun in that playing cards generate clank and all the running around around to try and heal or remove clank adds another dimension.
apollak10
Not nearly as fun as Clank! It takes a fun push your luck rolic in the dungeon and makes it too complicated for what it is. Movement is a slog and restricted at every turn, and the game drags on...simply not fun. I suspect all of the space movie references are part of the appeal, but that will wear off. Stick with Clank! as it is great.
andrewroy39
This was a top 3 game of all time when I first got it, and it's one of the games that has declined the most for me (and as a result I haven't played it in a while). I do like the combination of deckbuilding and board movement, but the combination of the randomness inherent to deckbuilding shuffling in where you move along with the forced movement stopping points makes the map traversing feel far more random than I'd like. I love the look of the game, and it scales pretty well, but you just don't get to make all that many meaningful decisions given the 90ish minute playtime (less with less than 4 players), same as in Tyrants, and in Tyrants the excitement of tactically deciding where to use power is much more fun than deciding where to move here. The problem from Tyrants of very limited choices due to the card market is also present here. After playing it again since writing this, my frustrations were absolutely confirmed. The market problem is even worse here because you have enemies who you can't buy, so your choices are even more limited, and you can't buy a cheap card and see what replaces it and buy that (a mechanic I love and is essential to adding depth to the very random card markets of Shards and Tyrants). The bag building definitely makes it an easy comparison, but in some ways I do feel like this is a much longer, more grandiose version of Quacks - both games that feel like there should be some real depth, but are nothing more than luck-filled games best played without much expectation for decision making. It's tough to keep dropping its rating, cause it was an easy 10 when I first got it, but especially given how long it takes, it is simply not satisfying to play a game with such extremely little agency or flexibility in long term strategy.