Clank! Overview

Clank! is a deck building game. In every iteration is going to remain the same. And it is also a press your luck game. The main core of the game is going to be around building up your deck of cards and getting a treasure and getting back out.

There are a few other things that are consistent across the games. The first is that there market isn’t fixed. That means that you flip over cards so what is available is going to change after someone has made a purchase. There are going to be monsters in this section of the cards as well. And there are a few fixed cards that always give you a chance to buy attack or movement. But they don’t have points on those cards.

The treasures are going to be consistent as well, at least in terms of you can only carry one, with a couple exceptions and you want to get the ones with the most points on them, but they are also the farthest into the dungeon or spaceship.

There is also a secondary marketplace you can buy from in all of them. These credits or coins are harder to come by. But they often give you a benefit when you get them or additional points for the game.

Finally, you need to get in and get out with the treasure. But there is an area of the board you can make it to and be safe. It’s just that if you don’t make it the whole way out, you miss out on some big bonus points.

Clank! Deckbuilding Adventure Game

This is the original one so I’m going to say that there isn’t a ton to say. Everything about the game I mainly covered in the first part as to how you play the game. But there is one main difference about the original Clank and that is how the game ends. We’ll talk about it’s way here and then what the newer versions of the game do with the other ones.

The big thing is that when you escape, or the first person escapes that starts a timer for the game. There are four rounds left at that point and if you don’t get out you don’t get out. So you need to be booking it back to the safe zone at that point and you need to make sure you have a treasure. There is a downside to this, though, because someone can pop in with a lot of movement and grab the cheapest treasure and just try and take everyone out quickly.

Clank! In! Space!

Clank! In! Space! has a few different elements to the game. The first one is around the end game. And this carries through into Clank! Catacombs as well. But on the players turn they now draw a number of cubes from the bag. So the game might go longer than four rounds if someone can manager their noise (Clank) well. But on the flip side, it can end faster for people as well if they put too much. The big benefit of this is that it keeps the player who escaped more engaged in the game.

The other thing it introduces is the idea of the locked treasure vault. So you need to get a treasure, but it’s locked. So you go around first to a couple of terminals and once you have gone to two you can access the vault. Basically, you hack your way in. This means that you just can’t find an optimal path and go as fast as you can.

Then there is the lift. This allows you to move around faster. But at some point in time the lift is going to get closed down and you need to make your way through the halls like normal. It’s just a small tweak but something that can make a pretty big difference at times.

Plus there is board that can change. Now we’ll talk about a truly open board concept in Clank! Catacombs. But in this case you can flip tiles and place them in different spots to create the space ship. The shape of the ship is always the same, but what’s in the different areas can change and change up the game.

Clank! Catacombs

Clank! Catacombs offers a few new changes to the game. There is one very large one though, and that is that there isn’t really a board to the game. There are tiles, but it’s a catacombs so as you go around you explore and create different pathways. You do this by drawing tiles and you determine how you want to orient that tile so that it works out best for you. This means that you could create a looping path to move around or branch out in one direction, it is up to the players.

There are also new shrines. These shrines do have a couple of benefits to them. One you can trade in a minor secret of the puzzle box type for a major secret. But the main thing that you can do is place a cube there and then for each one you visited you get a gold coin for the marketplace.

Finally, there are locked things. There are three different types of things that you can unlock. The first is a treasure chest which is where you get your major secrets. The next is a library which allows you to get a secret tome. And finally a prison cell where you get two helpers. These helpers are new to the game as are the lockpicks. So while in Clank! In! Space! you hack everything, here a lockpick is a one and done item.

Best Elements Of Each

For the main Clank! Game it’s tricky because I think that the other two improve upon it. So it doesn’t always have something that stands out as that much extra about it. But with that, I will say there is a bit more simplicity to the game. Each subsequent version is going to add in another challenge that you need to deal with while you play the game.

For Clank! In! Space!, I really like the addition of going around and hacking before you can get the treasure. That slows down that rush in and rush out mindset of the game. And of course the new game ending mechanism when someone escapes is something that I like better.

And for Clank! Catacombs, of course it’s going to be that modular board. But I thought about the prisoners as well. It just means that you never are going to play the same game and that makes for a fun experience. And it means that the game is going to be easier to expand.

The Battle and Winner

For me it comes down between two. Unfortunately base Clank or original Clank! is just very good, but doesn’t take that extra step. And that makes sense because it’s the one that started it all. So it’s going to come down between the other two. And yes, I might redo this when I eventually play Clank! Legacy.

But for the other two there are elements that I like a lot about both. Clank! In! Space! makes sure that you know this is a silly game. It parodies a ton of different things in the Sci-Fi realm which I enjoy. Clank! Catacombs is still light and fun, but isn’t so much of a parody of anything in the game. I think that parody element for some people might be a turn off, though for the game.

On the other hand, Clank! Catacombs offers more flexibility and that promise of the game being different every time. I really enjoy how you build out the map and as I said, it is going to make it really easy to expand. Add in more tiles that do different things will be easy to do in the game, but that’s in the future. Mainly because I don’t have the first expansion for the game yet, it’s on its way. And the expansions for Clank! In! Space! are fun as well.

That said, I do think that Clank! Catacombs is the better game. The addition of the lock picks and that extra resource and the prisoners that you can free and get a bonus are great. And they are such minor additions that they don’t add much to the complexity of the game. So Clank! Catacombs is our winner.

Final Thoughts

I love this series of games. In fact, I own all three versions that battled here plus the two legacy versions of the game as well. And the legacy ones I suspect will be my favorite as they are Acquisitions Inc themed and I love Acquisitions Inc. But right now, obviously, they can’t be on the list and a legacy game is always going to be a somewhat different animal.

Now, do I need all of the versions of the game. No, I do not. But I do own them all because it’s such a fun game. And I can see, after playing Clank! Catacombs with the expansions that I might get rid of original Clank!. But even that is a fun game still to play as well.

What is your favorite version of Clank!?

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Stars of Akarios

Stars of Akarios is a space adventure game where you are dealing with the fallout from your home planet, or at least your schools planet having been destroyed. You don’t really know why, but as you explore and come across new things, you realize that the stability of your world wasn’t quite as a solid as you expected.

Stars of Akarios is split into three areas. Firstly, and this is the main part of the game, you play tactical space combat. Flying your ships around and dealing with enemies on a hex based board. Then there are two areas of exploration, planetary as you fly around with your main ship to find points of interest in various systems. And planetary exploration where you reveal tiles and interact with points of interest. But it is mainly that tactical space combat.

ISS Vanguard

ISS Vanguard also offers space exploration but at a different level. Humanity has been called out to the stars. In previously thought to be dead DNA with no real reason for it, a secret message was found, some coordinates that led humanity out into deep space. You navigate the stars and explore planets to figure out why humanity was called out there.

ISS Vanguard is also split into multiple parts. Firstly you have planetary exploration as you go down to the planet, interact with points of interest, make discoveries, and possibly fight monsters. Then you play a ship phase as well. In the ship phase you are researching discoveries you’ve found. Using production to improve your ship. Getting new crew ready to go on missions and dealing with situations that arise on your ship. As well as navigate the stars and planets to find new places to explore.

Similarities

The biggest is that they take place in space and are epic space games. Both of them promise a big space story them, and both of them, as far as I’ve played, deliver on that. They provide very different space stories though. Stars of Akarios is much lighter, it reminds me of something like Farscape. ISS Vanguard is more serious in what it’s doing and reminds me of Another Life, a very different type of space show.

Both of them also have different phases or parts of the game that play very differently. Technically both of them will let you travel between other missions. How that is handled is differently. In Stars of Akarios it is very basic resource management. Do you have resources to travel, you can travel. If not, you start taking stress. ISS Vanguard, it is almost and equal phase to the game as a planet. Building up the ISS Vanguard to be able to explore more is an important part of the game.

Differences

There are a lot, I highlighted a number of them in similarities, actually. That is not the right spot to do it, but it makes sense. There are elements that sound similar that play differently. And it’s worth noting those because some of those things might draw you to both, but only one might work for you.

Space Combat

Firstly, Stars of Akarios is built around space combat. When you fly in the stars you most of the time find space combat. It is tactical in nature, and really doesn’t exist at all in ISS Vanguard. ISS Vanguard is one big ship you travel with. And while in Stars of Akarios you pilot the Sparrow between points, you scramble the fighters a lot. So that is a different feature to that game.

Planetary Exploration

Also, planetary exploration is different. Both let you play with that to find story elements. But in ISS Vanguard it is about the new discoveries you find. And it is about managing your resources and dice to make sure you can complete what you need to do. A lot of that involves story and exploring, but done in an Awaken Realms style. I say that as it reminds me of Tainted Grail that way.

Stars of Akarios, it is very different. That is a 7th Continent style exploration where you place out new locations as you move around. The grid allows you to move around it and explore new things. And it offers challenges that just pop up. You get ideas as to what might be coming or is happening on a planet, but less explicit detail about locations.

Tone

I mentioned this already, but I want to talk about tone more. The two games play with different tones. ISS Vanguard is a reverent game as you look to the stars and wonder. The question is, what is out there? When we get beyond our sun and our solar system and even our galaxy, what is out there? That is the question that you try and solve.

Stars of Akarios borrows from so much. And I say borrows because I don’t think it steals. I get the feeling of a lot of sci-fi shows, movies, and stories. To name a few I feel like I see Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, Space Dandy, Enders Game, and more in the bit that I have played. And a mish mash of all of those things is going to feel less cohesive. But it opens itself up for a wide variety of fun moments.

Battle – ISS Vanguard vs Stars of Akarios

So as they both enter the ring we see that they are heavy weights in the campaign space game area. Both offering different fun and exciting moments. And for a lot of people who they want to win is going to come down to your preference in how the games work. Because as much as I compare the two and the two will be compared they are very different experiences.

And for me, it’s a very tight battle. Next week I wrap up 10 different experiences with both games in the span of a year. I see what makes them different and I see what is exciting about both. And in all fairness, neither of them is going to leave my collection because they both are great.

So as we watch them duke it out, the question I ask is which would I want to continue playing solo. My experience with both of the games so far, which do I want to see? I think that answer is Stars of Akarios, which is my winner.

Stars of Akarios for me is an experience that works well solo. The elements of the game are fun to play solo and I like being able to collaborate with myself in the midst of space combat to see how I can work together with my ships. ISS Vanguard is streamlined well for solo, but it’s an experience that I’d love to play with more to see what happens next and to spread out that decision making to experience the full story.

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Basics of the Board Game

Let’s talk a little bit about how each one is played. As they do all do things differently but there are also some similarities. We’ll get to those in a minutes.

Grove

In Grove you are growing fruit trees to get as large a crop as you can. To do this you start with a base card and then you layer on other cards to cover it. You want to match fruit symbols to raise the value of the fruit you are getting from it. If you overlap the wrong type of tree you place a squirrel that is worth negative points.

Grove offers two things upon that idea. First the idea of a glade, an open spot on a card. This can cover anything. Of course, it does cause the fruit to fall to the ground. Unless you match the right color again. And then there’s the point cards, which basically give you goals and a target for your scoring. You can play just to see how high you score or you get a target to score.

Orchard

In Orchard you also layer cards so that you build out an orchard. But it is slightly different. There are no open spots, instead you get two bad apples you can put on your board that are bad matches. It doesn’t hurt you as much, just with where you can layer out the cards. And you try and get the best score possible as you layer the cards.

Sprawlopolis

Sprawlopolis has nothing to do with fruit, it is about building a town instead. You gain points for building large residential, commercial, industrial, or green spaces. And lose points for roads that go nowhere. But you layer the cards, if you want, as you play them down to create these areas.

You also need to pay attention to how you place them out because there are objectives which will give you more points that you play with for each game. This will add to the basic scoring that you do every game.

Similarities

Most obviously, all of these games have you layering cards. Though, while the symbol on the card matters for both Grove and Orchard, most of the time, it doesn’t for Sprawlopolis. But by layering the cards, you are trying to optimize your scoring in each of the games.

They are all also games that come in very small packages. Sprawlopolis is a Wallet Game from Button Shy Games, and with both Grove and Orchard you use 9 cards, plus dice in a given game. And while all of them don’t need to be played solo, they are small enough that people tend to play them solo more often than not. It is just easy to put them into a pocket and take them with you.

Differences

Firstly, both Grove and Orchard have to be specifically matched and use dice. Those are two things that aren’t part of Sprawlopolis. So Orchard and Grove are more restrictive on card placement. You have ways to “cheat”, but it is limited.

Also in Sprawlopolis, it is possible to play without layering any cards. Now that might not work out too well for you in the long run. Because you’ll see every bit of the town and every bit of the roads which might give you negative points. But it is possible.

And finally, Orchard doesn’t have goal based scoring. While all of them do give you points that make up how well you did in a game. Grove optionally offers goal based scoring. And Sprawlopolis always has that target that you are trying to reach.

Board Game Battle

Let me start out by saying, I think they all do things differently. I have all of them in my collection and I don’t foresee getting rid of any of them in the near future. So they are different enough, but there is also a lot of overlap, all word play intended, in these games. Mainly around the basic mechanic of the game. Layering cards to get your best score possible.

For me, it comes down between the two of Orchard and Grove. Sprawlopolis is very solid, but it offers you more choices in that you don’t have to overlap, but you probably want to at times. And you have more cards in hand that you need to think about. So it just takes a short and snappy game premise and stretches it out.

And when I talked about Grove, in it’s review, I said that I think without the goal scoring, I prefer Orchard. That is still true. Orchard offers a better card layering puzzle if you don’t have a target number. It’s friendlier in it’s card layering.

But the winner is Grove. I was worried originally that the objectives were going to bog down the game somehow. It doesn’t. Now, you don’t always focus on the objectives. Because they might not give a lot of points. But it is in the back of your mind that those scorings might just be able to push your over the threshold.

Which one of these is your favorite?

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What Are Adventure Games?

Adventure games are going to be story driven games where you make choices, explore, and maybe even fight monsters. Both Sleeping Gods and Tainted Grail are adventure games in a fantasy setting. But adventure games don’t need to be fantasy. I game I backed on Gamefound, ISS Vanguard, is going to be an adventure game with an emerging story, exploration, and combat, but that is set in space.

In this case, both adventure games are campaign driven. Technically Sleeping Gods isn’t a campaign, but a game takes 10-20 hours on average to play. It is unlikely that anyone will play it all in one sitting. And if you do, that probably means that things went poorly for you. Tainted Grail is a more traditional campaign game where it is split into chapters. But there are adventure games, like Zona: The Secret of Chernobyl that are one off games that would fall into that category, or another game from Red Raven Games, Near and Far can be played like that as well.

Let’s Meet the Adventure Games Contenders

Sleeping Gods

In Sleeping Gods you are the crew of the Manticore, a ship taken to another world. You were brought here to search for a way to awaken the sleeping gods. To do that, you must find totems. But in a new land, you don’t know where anything is. So that means you explore around, talk to the people of the land, and find clues and quests that might lead you to totems. Some of the inhabitants are peaceful though, so you will need to fight.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon

Tainted Grail is a grim dark retelling of Arthurian legends, where Arthur took the knights of the round table and his people to the land of Avalon. A land that is almost between two worlds or is being held there. However, Arthur is long dead. And things are falling apart. You need to try and hold back the the wyrdness which is threatening to take over the lands again. But do you know enough to be able to do that? And will the people of the lands listen to you?

Compare and Constrast

Story Books

Both of the games use story books as a way of conveying what is happening. When you explore you flip to a certain spot and read the text. In Sleeping Gods, you might be made to go down a path if you do or don’t have a keyword on a card. In Tainted Grail, your path might be set if you are in a certain chapter or do or don’t have a status yet. Both are very similar, but Tainted Grail comes with an app. You do not need to use the app, but if you do, it narrates everything for you.

Combat

Combat is very different between the two. In Sleeping Gods, you play out the monsters in front of you and then activate your crew. The monsters are adjacent to each other. Since they are, that allows you to hit multiple ones at the same time. You do that by picking a crew member to activate and then flipping a card to see if they hit their target.

Tainted Grail, on the other hand, that one is all about card play for combat. You only face off against one opponent at a time. And this isn’t always a combat encounter, sometimes it can be a diplomacy encounter. Then you try and string cards together to defeat the combatant or to resolve the diplomacy.

In both cases, if the combatant is still alive, they will retaliate. Generally that is damage, but it can be a few different things. In Sleeping Gods, the combatants also have an end of round ability for once all the crew have activated. Tainted Grail, it just activates between every characters action.

Story Progression

Let’s talk about story progression before we get into character progression. In the case of Sleeping Gods, the story is just one giant thing. But really it is a lot of little things. There is no break point in your story where the goals change. You never stop to reset to anything new. You just keep going. The closest thing is when you run out of event cards and it gives you something to read.

Tainted Grail, on the flip side, has chapters. You play through one massive story, but the story is split into fifteen different chapters. So as you progress, you goals might change. You start trying to light the Menhir, statues that drive back the wyrdness, and by the end, well, let’s just say that it changes up a lot.

Character Progression

Both games also give you ways to level up your characters in the way of experience to spend. In Tainted Grail, each character gains their experience separately. In Sleeping Gods it is one big pool. Which makes sense because you are playing as the crew.

Another big difference is that Tainted Grail has you leveling up stats and adding cards once you reach a point. Sleeping Gods is basically just giving a character a new ability for leveling up. Don’t get me wrong, the abilities are good, but it is less stat focused than Tainted Grail. So it is less granular in how you can level characters up.

Skill Checks

Finally, we have skill checks. Both of them use them. In Tainted Grail it is rolling a die and then adding in whatever ability you might have. With Sleeping Gods, it is flipping a fate card and adding that to whomever you brought into the skill check. Both of them are similar with about the same level of randomness.

Head to Head Adventure Games Battle

Since I did a board game battle a little bit differently this time, let’s do some comparisons and see if/which any have an advantage in any of the areas that I highlighted. Plus a few more of theme, mechanics, and ease of play.

Story Books

These are very similar. Extremely similar in fact, but right now Tainted Grail will get the nod because of the fact it has an app. Now, I don’t mind reading and reading out loud the story for the stream. I might be doing that even if it was on an app. But for game play and immersion I think that app gives.

Combat

For combat, the advantage definitely goes to Tainted Grail. Both I find interesting, and both I like better than straight die rolling. But I feel like I can be cleverer when playing Tainted Grail. A downside to that, though is that it often takes longer to get through combat. Sleeping Gods, you just pick who you want to attack and go with it.

Story Progression

This one is tougher because both of them progress so differently. Whereas Tainted Grail has a more directed story in what you are doing, how Ryan Laukat and his wife managed to create an open world story is impressive. The whole game of Sleeping Gods feels like it has an arc just from the little direction. For me, I think this one is a draw.

Character Progression

This one is also interesting, but I do have a clear winner. For me, I prefer the Tainted Grail character progression. The more free form character progression with XP spending and level-up cards, it works for Sleeping Gods. Mainly because you play as the whole team not one character. But Tainted Grail really allows you to customize your character over time. I could take a great combat character and make them great a diplomacy by the end if I wanted to.

Skill Checks

This one, like I said, they are similar, but I prefer Sleeping Gods version. Is flipping a card that less random than rolling a die, no, not really But it feels like more control. And I can bring in characters to help and make it more likely to succeed. But doing so is a cost something. And the more you do it, the more it can cost. Versus the simpler version that is Tainted Grail where the additional numbers are basically always on.

Theme

This isn’t going to be that exciting. It is a tie. I love both of the themes a lot. I don’t always want to play in a dark fantasy world, but sometimes I do. So either of them works really well for me. And I think that the theme, because of the heavy story elements, really is there in the game.

Mechanics

This one is trickier. I think that Sleeping Gods mechanics are easier, but I prefer Tainted Grail‘s mechanics. For both fo the games the most mechanically heavy part of the game is the combat. And I prefer Tainted Grail’s combat. In terms of the rest of how the game works, it’s really close. Both of them are very easy to do. Tainted Grail, overall gives you more flexibility in what you can do. You want to explore, move, explore, move, explore some day, you can. For Sleeping Gods, that’s two and a half rounds.

Ease of Play

Another close one, but I do have one that I prefer. I think that Sleeping Gods is a bit easier to play. Both of these are big table hog games. They take time to set-up, they take time to tear down. But with Sleeping Gods there is less to track between sessions of the game. And the storage system is really nice for saving what there characters have. Granted, that’s just a ziplock bag, but since the characters have less it is nice.

The Winner?

I think that I prefer Tainted Grail but I also have more time in the land of Avalon than in the world of Sleeping Gods. Mechanically it offers more interesting to choices, but I really do like both. And I think I’d play both solo, but I’d play them with different groups of people. My campaign group would enjoy both. But I’d play Sleeping Gods with my wife because Tainted Grail might be a bit too much to track. Sleeping Gods is that little bit simpler but still big and epic adventure game.

Have you played both, which do you prefer? If you haven’t, does one interest you more than the other? Let me know in the comments below.

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Let’s Meet the Fighters

Splendor

Splendor is a game all about collecting gems and becoming the best gem merchant in wherever it is set. It is a fairly generic theme, but it works for the game. Splendor, like I said, starts with you collecting gems to buy cheap cards that then give you more gems. However, the gems you get from the cards are permanent and in a tableau in front of you. So you collect more gems, but now you need less to get your next card. And if you can figure it out, you can build up those cheaper cards to then get more expensive cards for cheaper, or for free, and those cards generally give you points.

Century Golem Edition

Another game with gems, but this one is a little bit different. This one gives you a hand of cards that you add more cards to. You are trying to build your most efficient hand play combos of getting gems, and upgrading gems. When you get the right combination of gems, then you can trade those gems in for a Golem. And the golems at the end of the game are worth points. So with Century Golem Edition, you are trying to build up that perfect engine in your hand. Super fast turns and a really fun game.

Homebrewers

Finally, my favorite theme, we have brewing beer in Homebrewers. In this game you are competing to have the best beers in four different categories, ale, stout, porter and IPA. You can brew them and get some base points, but one of the big things in the game is that you can modify your brews. Maybe you have a card with yuzu on it, you can then make a yuzu IPA. That might give you more money, points, or raise you up in another beer. Twice during the year, you are then judged on how good your brews are, player with the most points wins.

Similarities

Al of the games allow you to get better at doing things as the game goes on. In Splendor it is because you have more permanent gems and with Homebrewers you have the ingredients on the beers. Century is a bit different, but you have an improved engine because of the new cards that you’ve add to your hand.

There is also that every game is about points. In Homebrewers you get points for brewing the best beers. Splendor you get points with the cards that you buy. Century Golem Edition, you get points for the golems and coins that you have. They also give the players a chance to catch-up. Though, Splendor is the one where this stands out most. Because the end game in Splendor is triggered by someone reaching a point threshold.

Differences

So, I already kind of talked about one. Century builds up an engine of card play. Homebrewers and Splendor have a tableau. Now even between Splendor and Homebrewers there is a difference. Homebrewers you trigger part of your tableau when you build, Splendor the whole power of the tableau is always available. So the engine building piece itself, while similar that there is one, how they each handle it is different.

And while the theme is an obvious difference, I think it’s worth pointing out that Century Golem Edition and Homebrewers feel like they have more theme than Splendor. If we go back to the clean versus messy games article I wrote this week, Splendor is the cleanest. This isn’t that it is massively more clean in game play than the others, but just that all of them a very neat and tight games, Splendor just removes more theme while doing that.

The Battle

They come out swinging, Splendor gets ahead with some fast and simple moves getting Homebrewers into a corner. But it, like in a button mashing video game, just seems to be doing the same basic moves over and over again. Homebrewers and Century Golem Edition get the upper hand knocking Splendor out of the ring.

Homebrewers and Century Golem Edition keep on duking it out in the middle of the ring. Every time Splendor tries to get back in, they dump it back out. The battle, in the end comes down to the two of them. Century Golem Edition keeping some cards back and changing up their moves. But Homebrewers builds up several solid sets of moves to keep pace… and the winner is…

Homebrewers

Homebrewers just beats out Century Golem Edition, though, it is really close. Both are engine building games and both are a lot of fun. I think that I just like the theme of Homebrewers better. It is fun to sit down and play that game, and it plays fast, and at the end talk about what weird beers you’ve made and if you’d try them. Both are really good games though. And I know a lot of people really like Splendor, but to me, I’m kind of done with that one. It was fun, but I know how it plays out most of the time now, so I don’t need to play it again.

Which do you prefer?

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So what are these games, we have three different roll and write games all from the same series of game and all with some similar mechanics. In all of the games you are rolling six dice and then using them to fill in areas on your sheet in classic roll and write style. Also in all of them you are picking one die, and using it in it’s color, except for white which is wild, then getting rid of all the dice lower, rolling again, and doing that until you have used three dice. Then on your opponents turn, of the three dice they didn’t use, you get to use one of those, and if you can’t, you get to use any die they ended with. In all the games there are also plus ones which allow you to use an extra die after any round, or rerolls which allow you to reroll all the dice on your turn.

Ganz Schon Clever

The older of the three siblings, this game is pretty straight forward. You are basically crossing off spots based off of a number, or filling in numbers that then score points for you. Where this game shines is that it is pretty combo focused which is great because as you fill in spots, it then allows you to fill in other spots and you can potentially chain it pretty long. The rules are pretty straight forward with the most complicated thing being that you need to remember to add the blue and white die together whenever looking at the blue section, and that the purple section counts up so you always need to be greater but a six resets it. It’s not complex stuff, but those two rules compared to filling in everything else are the most complex.

Doppelt So Clever

The second one in the line is probably the most complex of them. It has a section with grey where if you fill in the grey section you take all the lower rolled dice and fill them in as well, so having a high grey can be good, but also can mean that you lose too many dice. So it adds in an ability to get dice back. That is something additional to keep track of, but not that complex, you just have a few things to pay attention to. The yellow section is also tricky, using a yellow die once means that you circle the spot which can help you get bonuses, but you have to cross off spots in yellow, using that same spot a second time, which will give you points but not a bonus again. Overall, everything is just a bit more complex to think about. The blue section still has you adding blue and white together, but it is always decreasing or equal to with no resetting, so you need to plan that out carefully. Green is all about getting a high die and then a low die as you score the difference between the two spots you fill in, and pink gives you points for the number you put down, but rewards if you put down numbers that meet the criteria. Definitely much more to think about.

Clever Hoch Drei

This one I find a bit easier than Doppelt So Clever, but closer to it, in it’s complexity, than Ganz Schon Clever. This one you have a green section that is filled in by looking at how many dice you have used of the same number, plus that die, and filling in the column with that number. There is a brown section that allows you to go as far to the right on it as you want to fill in a number, but you can never go back. There blue section has you either building up or down from a central number and resetting it on a seven, but it always has to go up or down by one. And the pink section either gives you a bonus, or you can multiply your number for the dice when scoring it. This one adds in a mechanic where instead of getting a die back, you can unlock numbers to change the die face to when you are putting it on the player board, but you don’t actually flip the die.

The Fight

Normally I’d do some comparison, but I’ve kind of already done that at the top and talking about each I’m talking about the differences for them. I think the biggest thing with all of these games, besides them being similar in how they work is that they all are roll and writes that focus on getting combos. I love to be able to use a plus one to fill in a spot that will then fill in another spot and then hopefully chain even one further.

This fight itself is seeing a lot of mirror moves from Ganz Schon Clever, Doppelt So Clever, and Clever Hoch Drei. They really are doing the same thing, but Ganz Schon Clever gets knocked down and out of the ring as Doppelt So Clever and Clever Hoch Drei are just faster and showing off more complex variations. Those two go at it with Clever Hoch Drei getting ahead by pulling off more combos faster and chaining together more moves, Doppelt So Clever on the other hand seems to be trying to get some really complex moves in there. They both are wearing each other down and Ganz Schon Clever comes back from where they’ve been lying outside by the ring and pushes Doppelt So Clever out of the ring. It hits the late game combos on Clever Hock Drei, and goes for the pin…

And the Winner is

Ganz Schon Clever

I will say that I really like all of these. I think that they are interesting and creative games that keep something similar throughout but still offer up great challenges. Ganz Schon Clever is just a little bit simpler, and I think that works well for all groups where as something like Doppelt So Clever feels like it’s two steps beyond that and for some people might not work as well. I also think that Ganz Schon Clever has a slight advantage for me because it should play faster since there is less going on. I really do love them all, I think they are really clever and interesting games.

Which is your favorite of the three?

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Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game

In Detective you are playing as a group of investigators at Antares. Basically an offshoot of something like the FBI. You are investigating, in the base game, a case of an artifact, a watch to be exact, that has shown up in Virgina that had last known whereabouts in Poland before the Nazi conquering and looting. From there the story unfolds as you go through five cases in the first box. But wait, there’s more. There’s an LA Crimes expansion where you are going to be investigating in LA or Dig Deeper a small expansion from Rob Daviou, one of the designers of Pandemic Legacy.

TIME Stories

You are part of an organization that is set to protect the multiverse and the timelines there in from those who would mess it up and profit from changes and incursions into the past, thus changing the present and the future. You do this by having your consciousness put into the body of where someone is trying to change the past so that you can stop that from happening and keep the timeline where it should be. Now, in the base box, you get a single case to deal with and everything you’ll need for future expansions. Right now there are a lot of expansions out there and the stories can vary wildly from ancient Egypt, a fantasy world with dragons, or an insane asylum.

Comparison

There is actually a fair amount of overlap between these two games, they both have a great diversity in the story that they can tell. While Detective: A Modern Crime board game kind of puts itself into a corner of some sort of crime having happened or happening, They manage to make the cases feel different, some of them you are out doing a lot of fieldwork, some of them you are trying to get leverage on witnesses to be able to question them, there is one where you never leave the HQ and are trying to solve the case from there. But in TIME Stories, like I talk about, ancient Egypt, fantasy, asylum, zombies, and so much more, they can really do anything with it.

But both of them use cards to tell you the story. So there’s a fair amount of reading off of information, but they both are done a little bit differently. In TIME Stories everything you need to know is on the cards, Detective might have you searching the web to find out about some piece of history or using the Antares database to look up a police record on someone or get case files. This makes Detective, in this case, more dynamic because it can tie into real world events and you don’t need to be a history expert.

Finally, both are cooperative games, but they handle information differently. In TIME Stories you go to the various locations and you have a display of cards that lay out a picture of the room or location that you’re at. Each player picks a location, and you can double up, in that room to interact with. They then can’t fully share the information on the card, basically you can’t read aloud what is said, you just have to paraphrase once you’re done looking at it. Compared to Detective, all the information is known by everyone, you go as a group to investigate someone, exhume remains, and more.

The Battle

They both come out swinging with similar move sets. The fight almost seems like a mirror match. TIME Stories starts to get an advantage by being able to have a more diverse move set. But the moves seem to be flashier than doing that much damage to Detective who just seems to be handling the punches well. Detective goes down to a knee selling the story well and starts to make a comeback. TIME Stories makes a big move but Detective has it scouted and looks like after the surprise flurry they’ve scouted and know all of TIME Stories moves. The match slows down, but TIME Stories tries the same flurry of moves again and gets caught be Detective who hits it with a big move and gets the pin!

Winner

Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game

Detective gets the win because the storytelling is just better. While it doesn’t quite have the breadth of stories it can tell, the base box just weaves such an interesting story that it’s a better and more compelling story in each case than a lot of movies. TIME Stories does a good job of staying interesting, but it doesn’t have the through line running through it like Detective ultimately does, and for me that’s the difference. I really really like both of them through I think four or five cases, expansions, for each and both are enjoyable, for me the story element pushes it over the edge, and the hidden information in TIME Stories, if someone doesn’t fully remember the rules or misses something important, ends up causing it to drag longer than it always needs to.

Which do you prefer between the two?

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Roll Player

In Roll Player you are rolling up and drafting dice to try and create your best RPG character. You do this by selecting dice and placing them in the stats of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. At the same time you are buying gear and traits in order to make your character even better. The game gives you stats that you need to target for your character, dice placement of color which can get you extra points, and an alignment that you are going for as your ideal. Plus, you have a character race with modifies your stats as well. In the end, the player who can match up their background and stats the best will get the most points and win.

Sagrada

In Sagrada you are building a stained glass window by placing translucent dice onto a grid. To get these dice you are drafting them from a pool that is rolled each round. You don’t get to just place the dice, you have to place them according to certain rules. The dice can’t be next to the same color or number on the top and bottom and left and right sides of them, the diagonal doesn’t matter. You also have to place a die so that it’s touching another die, this time it can be diagonally as well as orthogonally. Beyond that, certain spots on the board are going to tell you that it has to be a certain color or a certain number, so that limits what you can place around it. There are tools that you can use to manipulate your dice placement or the face or die itself. However, you have a limited ability to do that. The game is won by whomever has placed the most dice, how well you scored on three public objectives, and their private objective.

Comparison/Differences

The big area that these two compare is on the dice placement. Now, it’s done a little bit differently for that, because with Roll Player you’re just adding it to the end of a row of dice for the stat versus in Sagrada where you can branch out more so to fill in certain areas. This makes Sagrada a bit more strategic on that end, but not that much more, both of them are pretty straight forward with that.

Another area is dice manipulation, in this one Roll Player offers a considerable number of more options. Each time you place a die for a stat, you have a power that you can do, and all of them, minus Charisma, manipulate the dice, the side, the placement, whatever it might be somehow. So you’re manipulating your dice a lot in the game. Sagrada, on the other hand has tools that you end up using, but you have a limited number of times that you can use them. A hard stained glass window gives you five or six tokens to use, and after the first use of each tool it costs two tokens. So you’re manipulating the dice less, but also low numbers have more value if it matches a number requirement or color requirement on the stained glass window.

Battle…

Both of these dice placement, dice selection games look pretty evenly matched, with Roll Player using it’s weight advantage to push around Sagrada. It gets the early advantage with it’s simpler dice selection, but it tries for some complicated moves as it manipulates the dice. Sagrada starts to get in some quick hits and soon they are brawling again. Sagrada, knowing that Roll Player is going to come in for some bigger moves, starts to use it’s speed as it strings together move after move versus Roll Player who seems to be struggling at times to keep the momentum going. Sagrada eventually uses it’s speed to roll up Roll Player and the winner is…

Sagrada

For me, the game just plays cleaner. I do really enjoy both, but there book keeping aspect of Roll Player, having to refresh the market every turn, setting up the dice, it’s all just slower. Sagrada gives me a number of interesting choices still, and less downtime and just less overall time in the game. I can sit down with people who are familiar with Sagrada and probably knock out two games in the time of one game of Roll Player. Now, the length of Roll Player isn’t a bad thing, Sagrada is just easier and smoother to get to the table.

Which do you prefer, Sagrada or Roll Player?

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There’s plenty of reason that people compared the two. Both of them are card games with deck building elements, though with one you build the deck ahead of time and one you build it through in game purchase of cards. The other obvious thing is that they are both Marvel themed. I could have added some more contenders if I had opened this up to the DC deck building game as well, but I wanted to keep it focused on Marvel, especially with Marvel Champions being a newer game. Both still have a lot of expansions and Champions is getting a regular flow of new heroes and bad guys to add into the game. Generally what you’re trying to do is similar as well, there is a villain who has their own scheme that they are trying to do and as players in the game, you are trying to defeat that villain, though, what that means in the games can be different. Let’s take a closer look at both competitors.

Marvel Legendary

The older of the two games, it has a ton of content. The content that it has dwarfs that of Champions at this point, though Champions will slowly start to catch up as it is releases more expansions on a more regular basis. In Marvel Legendary you put together a team of heroes and shuffle them together to create your hero deck that you’ll be able to purchase characters from. Each player starts with a basic deck of a few SHIELD agents, some that give you purchasing (recruiting) power to get hero cards into your deck, and some that give you attack power. When you purchase these cards they go into your discard pile, and once you’ve drawn all the cards from your deck, you shuffle up and use the deck with the new cards added to it to try and stop the mastermind and the other villains showing up in town. One thing that I think works well in the game is that you can’t sit back in your deck building and only focus on purchase power until you can really buy a lot of attack power. Because there are always villains coming out, that can mean that you’d potentially screw yourself over with villains escaping town before you’d be able to really deal well with them as you can lose if the hero deck is gone through. Now, there are some downsides, because you are getting a mix of heroes, it’s possible that they won’t synergize that well and you won’t be able to build up the combos that quickly that you need. In fact, I feel like this is very common with the game when I’ve played it.

Marvel Champions

Whereas you are building your deck in game, in Marvel Champions you are building the deck you’ll play with before the game. Each deck you build is going to be specific to a character, and just out of the base box, you could build a deck for Iron Man, Black Panther, She-Hulk, Captain Marvel, or Spider-Man. Then you can send that hero up against the likes of Rhino or Ultron. Beyond just a basic deck construction of it being, for example, just a Spider-Man deck, you can give them a fighting style. You could make Captain Marvel Aggressive style if you want her to deal a lot of damage, on the other hand, you could give her Leader or Defensive for a build that would be less focused on combat. And while certain styles will synergize better with her cards than other styles might, you’ll basically always be able to make a deck that works with any style. Beyond that, your hero deck is going to have a single hero in it, you aren’t going to be combining in a single deck Spider-Man and Iron Man cards, it’s going to be either Spider-Man or Iron Man. There are sidekicks to help that you can call in, like Nick Fury or Hercules, but they aren’t as powerful as your character. Another cool thing is how the characters work, in the comics, you have T’Challa and Black Panther, the alter-ego and the superhero identities. So, in the game, they mimic that and you can flip between the two. When you are the hero, the villain is going to be scheming on their master plan a little bit but mainly going after the hero to knock them out. But if you flip over to alter-ego, the villain won’t be able to attack you, because they don’t know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, but instead they’ll scheme more. There’s a downside to being flipped in alter-ego form, though, you aren’t able to attack them or thwart their scheme as that might reveal to them who you are. It’s a very clever little thing in the game, but it gives it a good comic book feel. The biggest issue with Marvel Champions right now is keeping up with it and finding what’s already been released. We know that we have Black Widow, Doctor Strange and Hulk being added as characters soon, but I haven’t been able to get my hands on Ms Marvel or Captain America yet, or the Green Goblin villain pack.

Let’s get ready to rumble……..

Ding

This is almost a mirror match, but Marvel Champions gets out to quick advantage where it is younger and doesn’t carry around as much baggage as Marvel Legendary does. But Legendary is able to fight back as it has a weight advantage and tries to bully Champions into a corner with all the different characters that it has. But it’s moves are too slow and lumbering, Champions escapes the corner and is picking up new moves all of the time. It uses the agility of Black Widow to get behind and Hulk smashes Legendary down to the mat. Thor drops Mjolnir on Legendary.

1…. 2…. 3

We have a winnter:

Marvel Champions

For me, this isn’t all that close, Marvel Champions is a better game, and I was even worried about picking up Marvel Champions because I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. But the game just works better, you don’t end up having combos that don’t work that well, which you do in Marvel Legendary, and the game plays a lot faster. While with more players Champions will add time to it’s game, you are immediately doing something and immersed into the comic book nature of the game as compared to Legendary where you might spend half the game getting to the point where you are able to pull off a combo and that might never happen just because of a shuffle. In Champions, you’re able to play good cards right from the beginning. And I think because of that, you always feel like you have a chance in the game, even though my playing Spider-Man solo against Rhino has been a resounding defeat both times, I always felt like, because I was learning, I knew where I had gone wrong, as compared to Legendary where there are so many variables that it might just be nothing that I did wrong, and I still get stomped. I think that Legendary is fine and I’m willing to play it, but I’d always prefer to play Marvel Champions.

I do want to think about, if you already own Legendary, does Champions do enough different for you to add it to your collection? For me, I’d say yes. I think being able to focus on a single hero and play that hero, plus the superhero and alter-ego sides, it makes the game feel different enough. The deck building and management during the game feels different as well, because you might want to get some powerful cards, but those might also cause you to go through your deck faster, which is a negative in the game but not a negative to the game. If it’s the other way around, I think that maybe the Legendary core set, but if you were to get expansions for one of the games, definitely Champions as with it, it feels like it’s giving you more options versus Legendary where it feels like bloat at times.

Which do you prefer?

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This is a grudge match between the two, both groups were trained by the same master, Yahtzee, and are dice chucking battling games. In one you are trying to take out a single opponent while with the other it’s about punching big or getting the points locked in you need to submit your opponents. Let’s take a deeper dive.

Dice Throne

In Dice Throne, you are taking a character, could be someone like a Huntress with her pet tiger, a vampire, a barbarian, or a paladin, plus way more, and pit them against another character. This is a primarily two player game where you are rolling dice to get certain matching sets for combat. But it’s not just chucking dice, keeping some, and repeating the process up to 2 more times, like Yahtzee, there are things you can do to manipulate the dice or your attacks, you can upgrade those. While it certainly is a game of luck as you’re rolling dice, there is more to that, and with a simple main mechanic like Yahtzee, they’ve done a great job of making the other characters feel different.

King of Tokyo

King of Tokyo also uses the roll, keep, repeat up to 2 more times. You’re also trying to hit your opponents and do damage, but you’re trying to be the king of Tokyo. So this can be a 5 player game where everyone is for themselves. The dice allow you to punch or heal, but they can also give you victory points, and if you get high of enough you can win from victory points not from knocking out your opponents. You can also roll energy, that can help you buy new abilities on cards that can get your more victory points or help you punch more often and harder. So the choice in play styles is up to you in this simple game.

The Fight

The battle is fast and furious with the monsters of King of Tokyo rotating in and out quickly. However, their strategy appears to be simple, punch several times, and not worry about who all you hit, and then tag someone else in. Dice Throne is able to use more complex strategies to get the first pinfall as they take out one of the monsters, and then it’s madness as everyone is in there brawling. There’s a submission from King of Tokyo onto Dice Throne and in response, Mecha Dragon is rolled up quickly. In the end, the variety in the styles of offense is just too much and the winner is…

Dice Throne

Why did I pick Dice Throne out of the two, I think that Dice Throne just offers more variety. The upgrading of what you can roll for an attack is a lot of fun, there’s a lot of dice manipulation, and overall, I think it’s a better game. With that said, I have room for both on my shelf. If we have an odd number of players or want to play a simpler dice game, King of Tokyo is great. I will say, I haven’t played with the power-up cards for King of Tokyo, mainly because I have the first printing. I’ve heard that adds some to the strategy of the game so I’d be interested in it. But Dice Throne, and the theme of the game is just fun for me.

Also, I like the upgrades better in Dice Throne, not only is how the dice are used more thematic, the upgrades are more thematic as well. All of the monsters can feel like the same monster in King of Tokyo, but each character you use is different for Dice Throne. The Pyromancer is a glass cannon but they can hit hard, the Shadow Thief steals combat points and can use that to improve their attack. The Tactician puts plans into motion while the Huntress and her tiger deal more damage when the tiger is around. That’s just really fun for me, and from what I’ve played, probably 15 or so games, it feels well balanced. Not perfectly balanced but not bad, and there is luck that determines some of that balancing when it comes to card draw and dice rolls, but they do a good job of letting you be able to manipulate the dice.

Which do you prefer?

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