Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated

My two sons and I just finished our last game of the Clank! Legacy campaign and we had one of our best board game experiences of our life! This was our first Legacy-type game and we had a blast. The box is appreciably honking with tons of envelopes, boxes and secrets. The character figures are fun and the colored bases make it a snap to keep track of which of the gray characters is yours on the board. Quality was pretty good but not perfect. Our separate player-health tracker board was a bit warped, the "Book of secrets" game book was poorly bound and all the pages were falling out by the end, some of the stickers and cards had printing or color-consistency issues, and it can be hard to precisely place stickers to make everything line up. Nothing to majorly detract from our enjoyment but still worth noting so you're aware. Most of the cards looked great and the stickers were of high-quality and stuck well (sometimes too well after you realize you misaligned something and can't fix it...) If you've played base Clank! before, this is a similar experience though not identical. There are lots of new rule and game play mechanics as well as some that were removed (e.g., there are no "Device" cards in this version). During the campaign play-through, the regular objective of getting an artifact and escaping is still present but you have more to do and additional story-based objectives. There's typically plenty to do such that different players can focus on completing separate objectives. The story aspects of these objectives are more choose-your-own-adventure than full-on D&D role-playing but there are also plenty of less restricted player decision. You can be cooperative and use group-tactics like agreeing to not purchasing anything from the Dungeon Row to keep near-to-death players alive longer or you be cut-throat and just focus on #1. In my case, playing with younger kids, 10 and 12, working cooperative was important to keep the game fun for all. Still, there were times when some of my kids felt left-out when they didn't get the highest score or didn't get to do as much of the story portions during a game. We were able to keep the game balanced though for us and everyone had fun. You play through 10+ games with the same group of 2 to 4 people each game lasting 2 to 3 hours. For our experience, we easily had 25 hours of game play. Plus, when the campaign is over, you have your own customized copy of Clank! to keep playing into the future with two board sides. The card backs are the same as the base version of Clank! so you can even mix-and-match cards between them. Nearly all of the cards in this version of the game are new and they do a better job at opening up game play options and providing interesting synergies. The game is quite funny and the descriptions at the bottoms of most of the cards are simply a delight. We had never watched or listened to any of Penny Arcade's Acquisitions Incorporated but we still enjoyed the characters and world and smiled a ton at the humor, silliness, fantasy cliches, and not-so-subtle D&D references :) This is definitely worth picking up if you're a fan of Clank!. If your groups hasn't played Clank! before, I believe you still stand to have a good time but will be at a bit of a disadvantage during the first few games as you learn the intuition of which cards to buy to help you achieve your objectives whereas veterans can focus more on the new mechanics and story beats. Lastly, you'll want to sleeve the cards due to how often they are reshuffled by players. This is a highly recommended game and a great cohesive multi-session experience!

Clank! is a game that holds its value. It was around $50 when I first played it, and it's around $50 now. There aren't really used copies floating around, because...well...it's Clank!.. Combining deck-building with a "water-rising" (ala Pandemic) that spills over into your health track (making this a combination of dungeon crawling and push-your-luck) was an incredibly successful combo commercially. People love it. Now personally, I found the original Clank! a bit too stressful, and I frankly hated the vertical map. But another irritation I had was that gameplay lacked variety, and there just wasn't much story or flavor to the game beyond card descriptions and artwork. But here comes a Legacy version and I KNEW this would go over better in my home. My wife liked Clank!, and I thought about buying it for her, but she urged me not to. She liked it...but not THAT much. Just check it out at the library again sometime, not anytime soon. But I felt in my bones that if there were narrative decisions (well, any narrative at all really) the game would be a massive hit with my wife. And I was not wrong. This game has flaws. Some could argue there's TOO MUCH narrative. There's Prologue, Epilogue, plus narrative every time you accomplish any numbered contract or or trigger any numbered space. That can actually feel overwhelming when combined with all the regular Clank! fiddliness. My first two games, I made a LOT of mistakes. I would NOT recommend playing this game without playing Clank! first, just to avoid a lot of first-time player mistakes that may hold back your experience. And putting down all those stickers...yeah I haven't put down this many stickers since Seafall. But this is no Seafall. A friend of mine who designs games for a living once told me "When it's not working, add humor." The problem with a lot of games (and especially Seafall) is that brilliant mechanics, great theme and artwork, etc, etc, just plain aren't FUN, and a game NEEDS to be fun, otherwise...it ceases to be a game. But not to worry. In this game, there is a super-abundance of fun. I haven't seen this much fun injected into a dungeon crawl since I played Dragon's Crown with my wife (the video game). There's a LOT of light-hearted humor to be found here, in all the flavor text, the narrative, everywhere. It's not amped up to 11, but with a game like this the lighter touch REALLY goes a long way to keeping up the fun factor. Components There's a LOT in this box. A hundred bucks worth easy. You've got the starter decks for four characters, miniatures (!), a full deck of adventure cards, a "book of secrets" (narrative), rulebook, cubes, Clank bag, coins tokens etc, a giant folder of stickers, tons of extra tokens to punch out as the game progresses, a book of cards (and magnetic cardboard box to hold them!) for contracts), and a GIANT double-sided board. That's a LOT of value for your money!!! One important point to note is to handle the Book of Secrets with kid gloves. After ONE game the pages were falling out and the binding had basically been ripped to shreds. Fold and roll its pages at your own risk. I wish that the cards were threaded instead of slick cardboard that's GOING to wear out if you don't sleeve it (I just don't care that much, let it wear out, but I HATE slippery cards). Otherwise I don't really have any issues with components. I LOVE the new board design. It's huge and gorgeous and thick. Likewise for your headquarters. It's awesome. I can't stand cardboard money so I'm replacing mine with metal tokens. If you want an upgrade that's what I would suggest (other than sleeving the cards if you want them to last forever). Speaking of forever... Longevity Oh no! Woe is me! When my campaign is done I'll have to throw everything away!!! ... ... ... ... Hahahaaha!!!!! Nope!!!! When you're done with this campaign you've still got the map you have created and customized and can play on to your sweet li'l heart's content! But aside from that...wait a minute! You have the Clank bag! You have the cubes! You have the Adventure Deck! You have starting decks! It's almost like...wait for it... YOU HAVE THE BASE GAME AND CAN COMBINE IT WITH ALL THE EXPANSIONS!!!! Wait, wha??? You mean I can combine it with the underwater and mummy etc, ect.??? You bet your fluffy bunny slippers of sneaking you can!!!!! I played the first game yesterday. My wife was exhausted. I was prepared to wait a long while before she wanted to play again. She wanted to play TODAY. She's REALLY into this game. And so am I. She would love to do a real RPG campaign, but lacks the friend group to do so, and the time to commit. If you are like our family where you have avid gamers who want to keep things fun and friendly and don't have a basement a van full of friends to play a huge RPG campaign regularly (or if the idea of trying to play Gloomhaven scares the living daylights out of you...or even if you just want a dungeon crawl with more humor and light-heartedness) THIS is an excellent game. Here's what's REALLY insane: Remember how I said that Clank! has held it's value really well and it's still floating around for $50? Well Clank Legacy was $100 at release but has since fluctuated in price and can be had anywhere from $80 to ... $50?!?!? Wait, what!!!???? You're saying this box loaded with goodies, with MINIATURES, with an ENORMOUS double sided map, a CAMPAIGN...CAN BE HAD FOR THE SAME PRICE AS THE BASE GAME????? YES!!!!!!!! I bought Clank Legacy for $50!!!! If you can get this game anywhere near that price...DO IT. It's a good game for $100. It's well worth it for $80. But at $50 or $60, you need this game if you like Clank. Even if you don't...you might love this.

First off, if you buy this game from Amazon, check that all the game components are present and in tact. The copy I got had a damaged box, but I asked for a replacement and I received it a few days later. On some board game forums, there have been complaints of missing components, but Renegade Game Studios have great customer service and will mail any missing components straight to you. As for the game itself, it's great! I have played both Clank! and Clank in Space! multiple times, but Clank! Legacy adds so much that it is worth the extra money(even better if you can get it on sale for less than $70!). Clank! Legacy has a 10+ game campaign that gives personal goals to each player, new secrets, side missions and a fun narrative on top of the already fun deck-building, press-your-luck gameplay. Once your done with the campaign, you will have your own custom version of the game with cards, board spaces and extra rules that are unique to your copy! (I have not provided images of the board or components as those would spoil the surprises!) I played the campaign with two of my friends starting in February, and tried to play it once a week. While Covid-19 delayed our plans, we were able to continue playing through Skype and managed to finish the campaign recently. Even though each game took about an hour longer than it usually would have, this game really helped us stay in contact and have fun together. If you already have Clank! Legacy, I would highly recommend the expansions as well(as seen in the images), but only after finishing the campaign. If you do not think you can get a consistent group of people to play the campaign, then I would recommend getting Clank in Space! as it has extra gameplay elements that are not found in either Clank! Legacy or regular Clank!

The game arrived quite quickly and in good shape!

Muy bueno ,llegó rápido y bien protegido

So far we are thoroughly enjoying Clank! Legacy. We had a very exciting and close first game and are bursting with anticipation for the rest of the games.

Best legacy game ever.

My friends and I enjoy original Clank (map, deck building, competition), so when I heard of the legacy version I ordered it straightaway. We've played 3 games of the story campaign so far, and eager to play more. Really loving it!! It plays similarly to Clank but with a story that unfolds along the way. The game changes with each new chapter as new rules are added/removed. Certain decisions you make will change some aspect of the game permanently. Apparently, while the legacy aspect cannot be replayed, at the end of the story campaign you will have a unique version of the game that can be replayed. Haven't gotten that far yet. The components are great. Minis are well defined, card art is in the same Clank style, stickers are good. Only problem I had was that for the first game I didn't understand what I was supposed to do. The rulebook wasn't very clear on that part. After jumping straight in with some trial and error, we kinda figured out what to do. Overall a really fun, light-medium game. Recommend to play with the same group until you complete the legacy aspect.