Dial 3-1-1 for a Ridiculous Score (Clank! Expeditions:Temple of the Ape Lord)

I received the Temple of the Ape Lord expansion for Christmas, but this weekend was the first chance I had to play it. In fact, I think this is my first solo game of 2020...yikes...

Anyway, this expansion is not officially covered in the app yet, and I could tell that it, at least the jungle side, was not balanced for solo play.

Here I am about halfway through the game, contemplating heading for the exit but actually feeling pretty good. I managed to find a secret and a card that let me scrap cards in my discard area and so got rid of both of my stumbles early on. I haven't been making much clank, but I do need to watch out for the building threat (the red cubes, added by the app). I ended up hanging for a lot longer and amassed quite the treasure horde.

311 points - an insane amount, probably just about doubling my record solo score from before. You'll notice 160 for tokens - that's because this expansion has some new tokens that you can gather. You get a certain number of points based on how many of those tokens you have. Well, since I was the only one collecting them, I ended up with almost the maximum amount for each of the three types (banana, wrench, and gear), giving me about 100 points. This is why I say it's not properly balanced with the app. Right now the app officially supports the base game and underwater and mummy expansions, and I hope they add more modes for the expedition expansions as well. Even without those bonus 100-ish points, I still would have had a good score because I managed to ditch those stumbles early on and run through most of the dungeon clank-free.

Does the score really matter? No, not really. The most fun part for me is buying buying BUYING! I love this game solo because there are just so many awesome, powerful, unique cards that you can buy! I had one that let me ignore icons in tunnels - another reason I was able to zip around so much and get such cool stuff.

The second side of the new board, the temple side, has a cool new mechanic where certain tunnels rotate. You can rotate them yourself or they get rotated whenever the rage level increases. This might change the direction of a tunnel, cutting off access to a room you want, or adding enemies or more footprints to a tunnel. I hope the app adds in something that rotates these tunnels more for solo play, because they didn't really come into effect that much. It would be a lot more fun with four thieves running rampant, all turning tunnels around on each other so no one can get out alive! 

I did get out alive again, although not with such a crazy score. I headed out a little quicker this time because I had a gem that was worth 10 if I escaped alive but 0 if I did not. This score was much more realistic for a solo game.

I don't care what anyone else says: I have the most fun playing this game solo. You run around a board trying to avoid a dragon, all the while purchasing fun and creative and powerful cards. This is still my number one solo game and adding more cards and more boards only makes it more so!