Renegade Game Studios Renegade Games Studios RGS0594 Clank in Space Game, Multicolor, 31.12 x 8.26 x 31.12 cm

Product Information

Outlaw, Science, and Prisoner, and some cards have an added bonus if you play another card with that icon on the same turn. This review was written after two plays with the expansion board, though there were multiple plays with cyberware and cards from the expansion before that. A couple of caveats – one of the modules (the Vault) doesn’t work with the Apocalypse expansion… and this expansion doesn’t work with Cyberstation 11. You'd better hope your friends are louder than you are if you want to make it to an escape pod and get out alive.

So since the board is broken into tiles it doesn’t just easily plop in on top of everything like before. The Cloning Vats offer you a sneaky way to protect yourself against bounty hunters (those pesky red cubes that show up near the end of the game). In the base game, when Eradikus really gets pissed off and rages at you, you pull a certain number of cubes out of the bag.I do also like the fact that the base game is relatively quick to play (for 4 of us, we can be done in about 70 minutes so we can even sneak games in on weekday evenings sometimes). It’s nail biting fantasy stuff as the dragon won’t sit quietly, and you forgot to pack your flame retardant undies. I have several friends who previously wouldn’t look twice at a game with a zombie theme but who love Dead of Winter. This slows you down in the early game, limiting the sprint in and out strategy of the original, by requiring you to hack two of the green terminals spread throughout the modules (done simply by moving into the space with them).

There is a ton of initial amusement as each card is revealed, and you try to decipher what it’s referencing. Instead of an angry dragon ready to breath mighty flame at the noisy invaders, an angry AI named Lord Eradikus is ready to fry at the slightest sound made on his ship. The modular board and the large pile of tokens to randomly place out means that no two games of Clank!It’s more expensive than just another expansion would have been and probably doesn’t offer enough of a new experience to justify having both, unless you play Clank! Below the Adventure Row is the Reserve, which has a series of cards players can obtain or defeat in lieu of any of the cards in the adventure row. In one of our games, one player got out fairly quickly while the other two players hadn’t even moved toward the Command Hub yet. Hopefully your friends are louder than you are so you can make it to an escape pod and get out alive!

First of all, the artifacts worth the most points are in the deepest part of the ship, which means it takes longer to grab them and escape. Anyway, so once the game comes to a close, everyone counts up their points which are a smorgasbord of things including the units you have collect, the cards you purchased and the artifact and other small treasures you found. There are also hyperlifts and telepads throughout the ship, making movement easier if you are able to access them. This time, you are on a circular station instead of a space ship, and facing off against the dreaded Commander Preon, a boss lady who knows what kind of cybernetics she likes!Each of these has benefit (Swords, Boots and treasure points for the end game), so they certainly have a use. For those of you who spent great wads of emotional and mental capital on a TV show from 2004-10 like I did, this is Not Penny’s Boat. I just love the deckbuilding aspects, how the board works, and how you can end the game without any points. But you would think it would generate sword icons and be combat oriented as opposed to drawing cards.

Finally, it wraps it all inside the tight tension of a racing game, and one where the finish line isn’t set in stone. Move your character around the ship, hacking the terminals to open your pathways and building up your deck with tools and allies to aid in your endeavours. Pretty much every card parodies a character or meme from a popular SF franchise: close enough to be recognisable without going so far as to actually infringe on any patents, copyrights or trademarks. If you make it to the cargo bay before taking one too many lasers to the face, you still get to add up your score because your allies will drag your loot-laden body to safety. Depending on the number of players you have in the game, you place the Lord Eradikus marker on the rage track, and different actions move him up the track.One of the most interesting aspects about games like Clank and Dune Imperium is that the deck building is used to actually do things on a physical board. Many of the games’ cards, including those two infuriating stumbles in your deck, force you to add “clank”. There will never be an alpha strategy you can rely on every time because the other players are always a factor.