Clank! Adventuring Party from Dire Wolf and Renegade Game Studio — Review

New Mercenaries have been added to the dungeon in this expansion for Clank!

Publisher — Dire Wolf and Renegade Games

Designer — Evan Lorentz

Art Direction — Anika Burell, Derek Herring, Raul Ramos, Nate Storm, and Alain Viesca

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Theme and What is it?

The dungeon just got a lot more crowded as a team of new mercenaries has entered the fray. Can you deal with the extra competition, trained fighters, and monsters offering harder decisions?

What does it add?

Clank Adventuring Party adds a couple new bits to the game. In addition to adding pieces for two more players jumping the player count to six it also adds cards for the set decks for mercenaries, explore, and secret tomes. It adds some new tokens for minor secrets and shop items.

It also adds a new mechanic in React. Each card with the react keyword has a trigger. While the card is in your hand, if an opponent takes the triggering action then you can play the card in front of you and draw an additional card. The react card has no effect until your turn when you use the card’s effects as normal.

The game also adds six heroes with special powers and mechanics. Each new hero comes with a player board that shows their special rule, and a custom ten card starting deck. Each deck has two Stumbles, five Burgles, and three cards that are unique to the hero.

The six heroes it adds also come with new rules and abilities special to themselves with the three cards specific to them interacting with those rules.

Agnet uses companions. She comes with four tokens that she can use after acquiring a companion to place it on top of her deck. One of her cards is a companion who lets you draw a card if played with another companion. Another card allows her to place a companion she played this round on top of her deck as well.

D’Allen interacts with certain “finds”; the dragon’s egg, monkey idol, crown, and relic. When he claims one of these it’s placed on his player board and can be used for a bonus when certain cards are played.

Garignar has a token track on his board that interacts the first time he kills a monster each turn. When this happens he’ll advance the track and gain rewards. Some of his cards give bonuses for defeating monsters.

Lenara has a mana pool that she can generate and spend to get different effects. One card gives her mana every time she collects a secret another gives her a mana for each secret tome in her play area and discard. She also has a teleport instead of a basic move.

Monkeybot Prime has a set of gears that cover bonuses. As they take damage from dragon attacks they remove gears and free up bonuses they’ll get every turn. They also have cards that interact with the monkey idols.

Whiskers is a cat that has joined the guild and entered the dungeon. Whiskers has three tokens that have bonuses that can be triggered when playing certain cards. You flip a token and gain a bonus. At the end of your turn, if all of the tokens are face up, you flip them face down and trigger a four cube dragon attack that Whiskers is immune to.

Do I want/need this?

This is going to come down to a couple of things. If you want to play with more players then, yes. This gives you everything you need to boost the game to six players, including extra cards, relics, and secrets.

If you want to have special powers for each player then also yes. Each of the unique heroes in the box feel fun.

If you don’t like or want either of those I might pass on this. There are a couple extra dungeon cards, market items, and the react mechanic but I’m not sure those alone are enough to justify this box.

Conclusions

I like this. I do enjoy bumping a game to six players. I enjoy having more people at the table. I like the new characters and their abilities. Even if you bump player count and don’t want to use those there are two new base decks included in the box.

The new heroes are a big play for me. Each one is unique and the special ability and new cards are fun. Each hero has a focus that pushes you in a certain direction of play. This can be helpful. IF you want to play a monster fight heavy game then use Garignar, if you want to go a secret tomes route then take Lenara. If you want to be a chaos goblin take Whiskers.

The new tokens and cards work really well and are easy to add in and take out. The tokens are all a visibly different color with secrets having a red background, new relics are silver, and cards have a VII behind the text box.

I know this was designed with base Clank in mind but I used it with Catacombs and it worked fine. I’m really happy with this and will be hanging onto it. I won’t be leaving it shuffled into my game as I have a couple other copies of Clank I’d like to use it with. I might not use the new characters if I’m teaching new players how to play the game, but it does come with two standard decks if I need those.

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Until next time, stay safe and be well.

Score ~ 8/10