Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
I can still remember the moment when we wrapped up the first campaign.
In February 2021, my buddy Fil enlisted my lengthy Clank! resume and got two of his friends to join us for a full campaign play of Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated, and we went through all eleven missions while laughing our collective behinds off at all the great moments. The “Book of Secrets”, with all the funny passages, was certainly a highlight, but the reality is that individual plays of Clank! are always a joy because they create so many moments during each game, particularly at the end.
That’s because Clank! is a bit old-school—players sometimes, and maybe even often, die at the hands of the dragon within the dungeon. (Yes, people…PLAYER ELIMINATION!!) If I’m not mistaken, I won four of the game’s 11 chapters, but I died trying to get out in five of the seven other games. Diving deep for treasure has its benefits…and, it has its downsides, to be sure.
By the end of that campaign, dozens of cards were in tatters. The board (both sides of it) had been stickered so many times that the game state was completely different from when play began. All players had better starting cards, lots of cards had been added to the Adventure Deck during play, and all of us had run out of silly voices that were used to illustrate certain story passages.
The first Clank! Legacy was a thrill ride. If you have not played it—even if you have not played the Clank! base game—you owe it to yourself to give the first campaign a spin, as long as you have the right playgroup.
We connected with the team at Dire Wolf to see if I could get a review copy of the second game in the line, Clank! Legacy 2: Acquisitions Incorporation—Darkest Magic. That request was recently fulfilled, so I took the new game for a spin across four of the game’s 12 chapters. (Like the first game, it would not shock me if there are more than 12 chapters included, since the first game had a surprise chapter built into the design.)
Based on this new experience, I’ll share some thoughts on the first third of the campaign in this spoiler-free review.
Let the Right One In
Clank! Legacy 2 is a deckbuilding, press-your-luck campaign game for 2-4 players. Over the course of at least 12 games, players will support the efforts of their new adventuring franchise by doing a lot of things that will be familiar to anyone who has played the original legacy experience.
In the game’s first chapter, not much will be new for anyone who knows the structure: move through a dungeon, try to grab an artifact, then get back to the surface before your health runs out. On a turn, a player has five cards in hand, which are then played to do a mix of moving around, buying cards from the market (the “Adventure Row”), and defeating monsters using attack points.
I’ve had the chance to play Clank! in one form or another maybe 50-60 times. I’ve played the base game a bunch. I’ve played Clank! in Space. I’ve done the 11 plays from the first Clank! Legacy, and I now have the Clank! Digital app on my iPad.
I am going to say something that might shock Clank! superfans: purely as a deckbuilder, I actually think Clank! is only average. The worst thing about the Clank! system is how difficult it is to trash cards from a player’s deck. Because my deck is usually still full of the ten starting cards by the end of each game, I have sometimes found that the game’s best strategy is to buy as many of the high-point-value cards from the Adventure Row as possible, go after the 20- or 25-point artifact, then make it back just above the Danger Zone threshold to ensure that my point total scores at the end of the game. Sure, it would be great to get all the way back to the surface, but if I’ve amassed 80-90 points’ worth of stuff in the dungeon, I might win anyway.
In the second iteration of the legacy system, all the things I liked about that first experience are still there…but, so are some of the bad things. And even though the good well outweighs the bad—if you loved the first Clank! Legacy game, buy this sequel right now—I’m surprised about the lack of a few quality-of-life items in this sequel.
Could Someone Grab Me Currency from 1984?
There are lots of moments during Clank! Legacy 2 where someone will be asked to scratch something off a card or maybe even another board. Like, lots. As a household where there is essentially no coin currency in the house, our first night at the table featured one of the funniest moments of my life this year:
I had to scurry around the house to find a couple of pennies for the team to use for all the scratch-offs.
“I think this might be the hardest thing in the game,” one player groused as he was set to scratch off yet another line of the [secrets redacted] in our third session. There was silver-ish scratch-off debris all over the table. Some of the scratching led to areas of cards that weren’t completely scratched off.
Anyone as old as I am remembers all the great scratch-off work of yesteryear. (I’m thinking about running out and buying lotto tickets right now.) For me, that was initially a blast…but by the end of chapter four of this campaign, it was starting to wear on us.
That extends into what will be the hardest thing about this, or really any, legacy game: there’s a LOT of upkeep. For our three-player game, we spread out the tasks—one person was in charge of the Book of Secrets and the “Cardporium” box of cards that included new cards for the Adventure Deck as well as Contracts. One person, my man Gideon, was in charge of stickering, a task that I personally thought was the most intimidating role for this adventure. Eric was responsible for a variety of lighter tasks, in addition to the scratching of that [secret redacted]: things like token management, boss cards, and a couple of other items.
Just setting up the fourth chapter led to the occasional groan. During the setup for that one, there are a lot of tasks that need to be handled before play can begin. Those tasks were all worth it, providing for a decidedly different landscape for our final review play. But with our plays lasting anywhere from 2-2.5 hours, the setup for the fourth chapter is “not nothing”, and at times, much more than that.
Campaign game players—particularly those who love the legacy elements from experiences ranging from Gloomhaven to any of the Pandemic Legacy games to Risk Legacy—will feel right at home with some of this upkeep, and I have a couple friends who aggressively seek out these types of experiences…for them, they are fired up to take lots of breaks to make changes to cards or introduce new physical elements of the game state. So, this is likely just a “me” problem…often, we felt that all the upkeep took away from the great game at the core of Clank! Legacy 2.
Another Round of Glorious Fetch Quests
The first four chapters of Clank! Legacy 2: Acquisitions Incorporated—Darkest Magic delivered what I expected they would: Clank!, elevated, with a snarky storytelling style and push-your-luck adventuring. Chapters three and four began to open up what I was looking for, and while I won’t give away anything specific here, I was excited to begin seeing what worked in the first legacy game but on a new map with a few new story twists.
As mentioned, I am critical of the limited trash abilities in the base Clank! game, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that a new mechanic in the fourth chapter began to change that in an interesting way. The fourth chapter was easily my favorite of the first four, from the better balance of contract quests and pure Clank! gameplay, to some updates made to the initial map. The story beats featured some fun twists and after doing a lot of initial upkeep to start the chapter, we were mostly left to play the game, so hopefully that will continue with future chapters…if I can find a replacement or two to keep playing.
“I’m out,” Gideon said after we wrapped up the fourth game, in which all three of us died in the Danger Zone, something I have never seen happen in any of my other Clank! games. “I like what I see here, but I’m sure I would not play this eight more times.”
Eric was on the fence; he was our only first-time Clank! guy. “I don’t know what I don’t know,” he said, acknowledging that it is tricky to figure out what is coming down the road. “I like the Clank! system though, so I think I want to try the base game next.” Would you play Clank! Legacy 2 eight more times, assuming we kept the group together?
“Sure,” he replied. “But eight more times does sound like a lot. I like where things are heading, though, and I’m really digging the surprises that come with new cards.”
As a design, I can’t argue with a thing—as a sequel, Clank! Legacy 2 is basically a “more is more” standalone product and I felt great about where the story was going. As a game for a guy in the now, who plays less legacy games because it is so challenging to keep the same group coming out for potentially 10-12 plays of the exact same game? I might do this again, but only with my kids, and only when they get old enough to play deckbuilding games faster, and only if I can really ensure that they would commit to playing it all the way to the end. (My family has done 30 plays of Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game, so I’m saying there’s a chance.)
That’s a lot of qualifiers, and the lack of “drop in, drop out” player structure makes me hesitate to jump in with a different group. That said, I can already think of a few families in my network that would adore this game, and if this is something that can live on a dining room table at your home for a few weeks, Clank! Legacy 2 is an absolute must-buy, particularly with kids in the 10-15 years old range. There is a lot of out-loud passage reading, but as a family activity, that can be a winner.
Clank! Legacy 2 is just as good as the first run…I just wish I had the time and interest to dedicate to a single game. If that sounds like you, pick this up stat!
Clank! Legacy 2: Acquisitions Incorporated – Darkest Magic details
- Designer: Jay E. Treat, III
- Artists: N/A
- Publishers: Dire Wolf
- Release Date: 2024
- Player count : 2 - 4
- Age range : 8+
- Time range : 60 - 120 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Deck, Bag, and Pool Building, Legacy Game, Push Your Luck, Scenario / Mission / Campaign Game
- BGG Geek Rating: 8.72407 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 4.5.
- More articles about Clank! Legacy 2: Acquisitions Incorporated – Darkest Magic.
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