How to Play Clank!: Deck Building, Movement, Clank & the Dragon
Clank! combines deck building with movement through a shared dungeon. Your cards generate the movement, skill and combat needed to descend, buy stronger cards, collect treasure and escape. Noise adds your colored cubes to the Clank area, creating the risk that future dragon attacks damage you.
Scope. This guide covers the original Clank! A Deck-Building Adventure base game, not Clank! Catacombs, In! Space! or Legacy.
Draw five cards and play the whole hand
At the start of your turn, draw a five-card hand. Play the cards in any order, resolving their text and collecting the resources they generate. At the end of the turn, discard the cards you played and draw a new five-card hand for your next turn.
Skill buys cards, boots move and swords handle monsters
- Skill is spent to acquire cards from the Dungeon Row or permanent basic-card stacks.
- Boots let your pawn move along passages between rooms.
- Swords defeat monsters in the Dungeon Row or protect against monsters printed on dangerous tunnels.
Cards you acquire normally go to your discard pile and enter your deck after a later shuffle, so purchases improve future turns rather than the current hand.
Clank cubes create delayed danger
Some cards and effects make you produce Clank. Put the required cubes into the Clank area rather than taking damage immediately. When a dragon attack occurs, cubes from the Clank area are added to the Dragon Bag before cubes are drawn. Your color being drawn causes damage.
The dragon’s rage increases as artifacts are stolen, so later attacks generally become more dangerous.
Move through the dungeon and collect tokens
Spend boots to follow connected passages. Some tunnels require extra boots, contain monsters, demand keys or have other restrictions. Rooms can contain minor secrets, major secrets, market spaces, monkey idols and artifacts.
You need an artifact before a normal escape
Artifacts are the main objective and deeper artifacts are generally worth more points. A thief normally carries one artifact unless an effect such as a Backpack increases capacity. Once you have an artifact, your route turns from exploration toward escape.
Escaping starts the endgame pressure
When a player gets out of the dungeon with an artifact, the game enters its final countdown. Players still underground have only a limited number of turns before escalating dragon attacks force the dungeon to close out.
Survival location matters: being knocked out deep in the dungeon is far worse than making it back to the safer upper area. A successful full escape also earns the Mastery bonus.
Final score comes from loot plus card points
Eligible players total artifact value, other treasure and tokens, gold, point values on cards in their deck and relevant bonuses. The highest score wins.
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Sources and scope
Checked September 20, 2026. Expansion-specific cards and maps can change details.