Clank! Legacy – Acquisitions Incorporated Review
Stats at a glance
— Don’t worry! NO spoilers ahead. —
The legacy board game subgenre has become very popular ever since Pandemic Legacy came out. Clank is one of the best legacy game installments to date, with a brilliant deck-building system and a driving campaign.
In Clank, characters will rival each other, but often have to work together to survive as a party and reach the end goal. Join us as we explore the reasons why Clank! Legacy is one of the most popular and highest-rated board games!
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Brief Overview of Clank!: Legacy – Acquisitions Incorporated
Clank!: Legacy is still a strategic card-building game, like the original. Players will form a game strategy around their deck of cards, which will constantly change throughout the game.
The Legacy aspect gives the game a campaign divided into a series of scenarios, with quests, meaningful choices, and progression.
Legacy games require you to permanently alter the components of the game by placing stickers, drawing on them with a marker, or even destroying the components.
They’re meant to be one-off experiences, but Clank has ways to keep the game going past the campaign. Still, I know that a lot of gamers won’t like these aspects, but that’s what a legacy game is at its core.
Clank!: Legacy — AI is a moderately difficult game and many enjoy it as a family game. Each of the 10 missions takes 2 hours to complete, so you can expect at least 20 hours’ worth of fun from the game. Once you’re done, you can continue playing the one-off games as many times as you’d like.
Unboxing Clank!: Legacy – Acquisitions Incorporated
Clank!: Legacy comes with:
- Two-sided Game Board
- Franchise Board
- 300+ Cards
- 100+ Tokens
- 140+ Cubes
- 4 Player Miniatures
- 1 Dragon Miniature
- Cloth Dragon Bag
- Sticker Sheet
- Rulebook
- Book of Secrets
- Component Organizers
Clank!: Legacy greets you with a message from the Acquisitions Incorporated CEO, telling you about the great opportunity the company has to offer you. The next paper asks you to sign the franchise charter and officially become a member.
These two pieces of paper are simple, yet genius ways to set the stage for a game that’s going to require a lot of commitment. The 4-player charter already locks in the group before you even begin playing, and everyone involved will have to see it through.
Next up, we’ve got a full-color illustrated rulebook. It’s fairly easy to follow and with only 16 pages, it’s quite digestible. The game suggests that at least 2 people read through it, but I would recommend that everyone has a read and gets familiar with the rules to avoid unintentional house rules.
The party board has a simplistic look with a basic color palette, but it’s well organized and easy to keep track of. The punchout tokens fit on one cardboard page and look surprisingly detailed.
The game board has one of the best-looking maps I’ve seen. The way colors interact gives it a lot of depth and detail without sacrificing the practical gameplay aspect. The best part is that the board is double-sided, and features a completely different layout on the back!
With so many of the components being closely tied to the campaign, I cannot go into detail without spoiling. It’s important to mention that all of the components look good and the card design is excellent.
What I can talk about is the box itself — it comes with a plastic organizer which is always welcome, but also some plastic bags and component holders. They look like containers for a pack of cards and are initially empty, but as you play through the game you’ll fill them with cards to store them until the next session.
Lastly, we have the miniatures. They look quite good and have a decent amount of detail, but my dwarf came with a slightly bent hammer, which is unfortunate. Overall, the components of Clank!: Legacy look and feel great, and there’s really nothing to complain about.
How to Play Clank!: Legacy – Acquisition Incorporated
There’s a lot that goes on during the campaign of Clank!: Legacy, but in terms of mechanics and rules, it’s not all that hard to learn.
The goals are simple — retrieve the Artifact token, survive, and get the highest score among the adventurers. However, the Legacy aspect makes it a lot more interesting, as you can work together with other players, but also look out for your own interests.
Taking Turns
Clank!: Legacy is still a deck-building game at its core which is clear in how the turns work. When it is your turn, you’ll play all the cards from your hand on the board, in any order you choose.
Playing the cards gives you the resources required to take actions, and you can play cards and take actions in any order as long as you have enough resources. Cards may also generate gold, Clank! Actions and initiate card draw.
There are six actions you can take during the game.
- Draw a card
- Combat
- Move
- Buy from the market
- Hire a coach
- Take an artifact
The actions are self-explanatory — if you meet the requirements or have the resources, you may take the action to gain a benefit from it.
The Game Map
As you move around the game board, you’ll come across symbols that have varying effects on the game.
For example, the forest spaces will exhaust the character and prevent them from moving further, while the rewards spaces give you something once you enter them.
The HQ is also a point of interest — it represents the starting location for every game and the place to bring the artifact to and complete the mission.
Dragon Attack
Once the players have executed all their actions, it’s time to check contracts, draw a new set of cards, and check for the dragon attack.
The dragon attack depends on the cards pulled to the adventure row. Should a card depicting a dragon attack symbol appear, the dragon will target all party members.
The dragon attack uses the Clank! area cubes to determine the damage dealt to the players. Black cubes are disregarded, but the colored cubes affect the matching player.
The more Clank! you make, the greater the odds that the dragon will damage you. If your health meter is ever completely filled, your character will be knocked out!
Campaign Progression & Game End
There are two individual progression tracks in Clank!: Legacy — the associate status and personal goals.
The associate status is increased by earning the Checkmarks of Grudging Approval through contract completion among other methods. Personal goals are tasks unique to every player. The more you complete, the more points you’ll score on the track.
Once the mission ends, each player counts their score by summing up the value of their artifact, gold, tokens, and cards among others. The player with the most points is declared the Most Valuable Employee for that game.
At the end of the campaign, you’ll add up the mission scores along with associate and personal goal points to determine the winner.
Your First Game of Clank!: Legacy – Acquisition Incorporated
Because of the Legacy aspect of the game, giving you any first-time advice would be very detrimental to your experience of the game. I can only repeat some of the important notes from the game to ensure you get things right.
The most important thing is to not open anything that the game doesn’t explicitly tell you to. I like the experience of going through game components as much as anyone, but most of the Clank!: Legacy pieces need to stay a secret.
Follow the setup guide carefully and make sure that everyone has at least read through the rules. This is not a game where you can easily roll back so misunderstanding the rules can make a lot of problems and potentially ruin the experience.
Lastly, if you don’t want to ruin the game by placing stickers and writing on the components, you can always work around it. There are guides out there that show you how to play a Legacy game without damaging the components, and how to repack the game for the next campaign.
Versions & Expansions
Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated – Upper Management Pack
Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated – C Team Pack
Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Engaging storyline
- Balance of fun & depth
Clank!: Legacy – Acquisitions Incorporated has a simple, yet engaging and interesting story. While the parody of the dungeoneering guilds has been done several times before it, Clank! manages to nail it and deliver a great theme.
Unlike some other Legacy titles, Clank!: Legacy is very easy to learn. At its core, it’s just a few cards and actions spliced with a dose of strategy and forward planning.
This allows you to play the game with both an experienced board game party, but also a more casual crowd or even your children. Clank!: Legacy provides balanced gameplay and tons of fun from start to finish of every session and the whole campaign.
Cons:
- It’s expensive
- Hit or miss gameplay
Depending on where you’re buying it from you might get a better deal, but even the best option we’ve found is still a bit expensive by the board game standards.
This wouldn’t be as much of a problem if not for the Legacy system that inherently limits the total number of hours a game can be played. The one thing going for Clank!: Legacy is that it’s playable even after the campaign is over.
I’ve said several times how the gameplay is fun and that the game balances depth with approachability, but Clank!: Legacy is still not a game for everyone.
The commitment aspect of the game will be enough to prematurely end some campaigns, even if everyone was enthusiastic at the start. The second problem is knowing whether or not you’re going to like the game in the first place.
Being a Legacy title, it both tells you exactly what it is, but also hides a lot of the gameplay from you. If you’re not sure whether you’ll like Clank!: Legacy or not, I recommend watching some in-depth reviews and playthroughs of the original game.
Clank!: Legacy – Acquisitions Incorporated Review (TL;DR)
Clank!: Legacy – Acquisitions Incorporated is one of the best Legacy games you can get, with interesting and easy-to-follow gameplay, deck-building mechanics, and a quirky story.
As long as you’re aware of what the Legacy genre entails and know the general premise behind the Clank! Games, you’ll have a great time with this title!
Conclusion: Verdict?
I want to start this section by going over all the things I’ve enjoyed while playing Clank!: Legacy.
Missions last 2-3 hours which is the perfect length for a single sitting, and it’s not the type of game where you’ll forget the rules between sessions and have a hard time continuing the game. With all the components sorted beforehand, the next setup is relatively quick and easy.
The Legacy-style progression works well with the comical narrative of the game. The story elements can easily be skipped, but I’ve found them to be quite entertaining and valuable for the whole experience.
However, the unavoidable drawback of the Legacy genre is the commitment it requires while not giving players enough information to determine whether or not they’ll like it.
I don’t like the saying “If you like Legacy games, you know what you’re getting into” as they only matter if you’ve played at least one Legacy game before. You might get a group of friends gathered and eager to play Clank!: Legacy, but you’ll have no idea whether they’ll like it or not until the first session is over.
For that reason, I would just say be cautious and pick the right group for the game. As long as you all like similar games and have the time to commit, I’m sure you’ll enjoy Clank!: Legacy – Acquisitions Incorporated.
We hope you enjoyed our Clank! Legacy – Acquisitions Incorporated review! Have you tried this highly-rated legacy game before? What other legacy games do you like? Drop a comment below and let us know what you think (no spoilers)! We’d love to hear from you.
