Clank! takes you on a rollicking romp. You’re pushing your luck to see how deeply you can delve and still make it out of a dungeon. You’re making noise and angering the dragon ... who might just wake up, to munch on you. And you’re turning over every stone you can, to weasel away every bit of loot your sticky fingers can filch.
Along with such slapdash spelunking, Clank! A Deck-Building Adventure requires strategic choices at every turn. You’re custom-building your deck of action cards, hoping to lock in some combos. (And hoping to avoid too much bloat.) You’re navigating the dungeon’s maze a step or two at a time. Every move you make requires a tactical decision that will affect your current turn and the whole direction of your game.
Along the way, sometimes you’ll get a little gold, which adds a few victory points.
Gold is a no-brainer. You always want it. Not only does it add no burden to your person (unlike adding a Secret Tome to your deck, for instance). It’s the only way to purchase from the market.
That asks very little of you. It’s never not a good idea to buy from the market. You’ll trade your 7 VP of gold for a weightless 10-VP crown. Or you’ll buy a bag of holding or skeleton key – useful things. They’re still worth a chunk of victory points on their own, even if you never use them.
So, you want to find all the gold you can. And you might as well use it to buy market items when you can. That’s about all there is to it.
But what if gold were a soft metal?
Ever since we started playing Clank!, we played it like this: When you buy cards during your turn, you can spend gold along with Skill (the normal blue-diamond currency from your cards).
The blue diamonds come and go; sometimes you have a windfall turn with a huge amount, and other turns you’re flat broke. So when that perfect card for your deck shows up – but you’re 1 blue diamond short – too bad for you!
With our rule (we didn’t know we made it up) you might be able to buy that perfect card, if you have a little gold ready.
This requires sacrifice.
For one thing, spending that precious gold might delay you from purchasing at the market. And that bag of holding can be a game-changer. (Buying it is part of Jamie’s go-to game plan!) More notably, you’re parting with straight-up VP. You better make sure it’s worth it.
Obviously I like this accidental house rule. It gives a little flexibility in dealing with turns of luck. And it deepens strategic choices to the deck-building aspect of this deck-building board game.
Thus:
Following hither is our house rule’s text, copied from above. This being the entirety of this mini-variant upon which we stumbled (CLANK!).
When you buy cards during your turn, you can spend gold along with Skill (the normal blue-diamond currency from your cards).
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