Review – Clash of Clans: The Epic Raid

15.5% of the United States’ population plays Clash of Clans. It’s been downloaded over 600 million times since its release in 2012, and somehow, it’s taken 14 years for Clash of Clans to hit tabletop. Perhaps Supercell was waiting for the right designers? We have Eric M. Lang and Ken Gruhl to thank for The Epic Raid, the first Clash of Clans board game. Is it a worthy implementation of the app, worth raiding your Friendly Local Game Store for, or is there not enough loot in this village to justify any kind of pillaging? 

Disclaimer: I’m a part of the 84.5% of the U.S. population that doesn’t play Clash of Clans. I’ve never played it, so I’ll be looking at The Epic Raid through a tabletop-game lens. 

Review

In Clash of Clans: The Epic Raid, 2-4 players will build and raid in a race to 40 victory points. Players can earn victory points through raiding opponents and protecting their own scoring tiles like the Town Hall and other tiles that can be built that will score x points based on how many y a player has. 

At the start of each round, players will collect coins, elixir, and gems according to their Collect tiles. Players will then take turns placing workers to perform actions: building tiles, upgrading your Town Hall, taking the First Player token and a gem, building defenses, and raiding opponents. Building tiles is as simple as paying for the tile and placing it in your unit row or town (everyone begins with a Town Hall, an elixir-producing tile, and a coin-producing tile). Upgrading your Town Hall VPs and often grants immediate bonuses and will eventually grant you a Master Builder, who can take actions with other builders on them. Building defenses nets you 2 walls and a turret of your choice, provided you have the coin. 

Raiding opponents is the most complicated of the actions, but also the most fun… for the attacker, at least… if they’re successful. First, you’ll choose an opponent to raid. You can choose 1 open tile to attack (tiles are open if they’re not defended by walls or nested within other tiles). The defender will roll, if they have any defenses, and if the attacker’s unit(s) are still alive, they can roll an attack. If they successfully attack the tile (swords = or > the tile’s defense value), they place a burn token on the tile, score a victory point, and gain the resource that tile produces (if any). If you have units left, you can attack additional tiles, and any adjacent tile next to the first tile you successfully attacked, so even if your opponent’s Town Hall is nestled safely amidst many tiles and walls, if you have enough units, you can still get there. 

The components are solid. The miniatures are the stand-outs for sure and seem to capture the cartoony source material really well (the clear stand for the dragon so it looks like it’s flying is a great touch). The artwork is fine (also based on the source material), and so are the cardboard standees, though it can be difficult to differentiate the Archer Tower from the Wizard Tower. The tiles have quarter-circle notches in them that the defense turrets fit perfectly into, allowing 1 turret to effectively cover 4 tiles. The storage system works well, though it’s not a game you’d want to store on its side. The rulebook, however, could have used another page or 2 for clarifications. There’s a particularly confusing bit in the rulebook about what defenses can be attacked by what units. 

I had a lot of fun playing The Epic Raid, despite having no affinity for the theme. Building my town was enjoyable and strategic, the worker-placement mechanic is just about perfect (enough meaningful options without being overwhelming), and the raids are just plain fun, especially with the added strategy of which units to send first and which of your opponent’s tiles to attack for their respective rewards. The worker placement jostling, finding the right tile synergies, and figuring out which of your opponents’ tiles are worth raiding (either to help you or hurt them) are the strongest game mechanics, and they work well. 

My main concern is replayability. While there’s a fun discovery aspect your first few times through the tiles, when you’ve seen them all, you can get a sense of which ones are strong combos, which ones aren’t used much, etc. While the mechanics are solid, there’s nothing particularly special or smooth. The raiding mechanic is perhaps the most innovative, but it can also be the most cumbersome and time-consuming. Clash of Clans has been around for 14 years, so I anticipate Maestro Media has plenty of expansion content to help with replayability, additional units, etc., but I don’t love it when a game isn’t self-sufficient at its base. 

The Epic Raid is a solid board game. I’m not convinced it’s as good as it could be, but there’s enough to like here that even a non-Clash Head like me can enjoy it. It’ll be a good time the first few plays, even if the raids can get a bit long, and I have no doubt Maestro Media has plenty of content to come. 

Maestro Media (Asmodee North America) kindly provided a review copy.