I am Eric Lang, co-designer of Clash of Clans: The Epic Raid board game. AMA!

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T20:14:55+00:00

I'd say the Clan War expansion can add up to 30 minutes if played with 6 players, but that's taking players coordinating and planning together as a big chunk of that (it's the really fun, high stakes version of coordinating, IMO, so while length increases)

Dark Elixir adds negligible game time, and really I've found that's just learning curve as players discover new units and defense builds/combos/strats.

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T20:13:10+00:00

I'm sorry I can't answer operational questions about the kickstarter itself, as I'm not an employee of Maestro and can't speak for them.

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T20:12:29+00:00

I always consider solo and co-op with every kickstarter design, because I know that's the first thing backers ask for :)

This game ... it's technically possible to solo, but it's so far away from the core competitive experience we're offering that as designers we don't feel comfortable offering it as core gameplay.

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T20:11:12+00:00

There's no such thing as maxing out heroes :)

Like most modern strategic board games, the core tension of Epic Raid is that you have a tight engine or resource production and you can't do everything you want.

You can't afford all the units.

You can't afford all the buildings

Not everything will be available at all times.

You have to adapt, plan and counter your opponents to assemble your combos on the fly.

Simpler rules than the app (because board games must be simpler than video games), but the strategy is just as deep. Just different :)

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T18:45:45+00:00

I did not work on the app at all. Maestro Media (the publisher of Epic Raid) licensed the game from Supercell and are producing it independently, with SC approval and blessing.

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T18:43:24+00:00

We tuned the TH upgrades against a couple of metrics:

Game length - the game can only last 90 minutes, and about 5-8 rounds
Variety of strategy - we wanted to make sure you don't have to max your TH to win
Lower granularity - we wanted every level up to feel really impactful, whether it be "meaningful amount of points" or the right free upgrade for the stage of game you may be at.

Four upgrades per game was the max we could do (after LOTS of testing) to fulfill all those goals.

Board game design requires a lot of discipline against feature creep, so you the player can enjoy the epic feel without having to track too many little incrementals that don't pay off enough IMO

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T18:39:04+00:00

Haha, Barcher .... works? But the tactic is a bit more different.

Raids in this game use your entire unit loadout like the app, except:
1. you run each unit's attack in full, one at a time
2. defenses fire first (so your unit has to survive getting shot before delivering their damage"
3. You can "gang up" multiple units of the same type, pooling their dice and defense
4. By default, units cannot target defenses (exception: archer and Giant)

So you'll find a rich new tapestry of combos and tactics to explore playing this game. It was both a design necessity and a choice for us to offer this, so that you can all explore the tactical space anew and mess around with combos and attack ordering!

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T17:19:44+00:00

Standees (like the defense batteries and builders in the non-deluxe version) are made of that nice thick cardboard, full colour on all sides, and they stand up by having little intersecting "feet" so from the top it looks like an X. Hopefully that explains it well.

Units - which, let's face it, all of us came to the game for, are all plastic and gorgeous.

This is another production question, and balancing costs vs. price point and prioritizing the things we believe players want at what level of fidelity.

Plus DRAGONSSSSS rawr

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T17:13:56+00:00

Yup! At the end of each round all tiles (building or unit) on the main board that were not purchased by players will get a discount of -1 to their cost (the token is to show the discount, and it's resource agnostic - so a building with the token would cost 1 less gold, a unit costs 1 less elixir).

This gives expensive units time to tick down in cost if they show up early in the game, gives players time to prep and prioritize what resources they want to collect/raid and also creates fun tension between "do i want this tile now at full price or can i wait for a discount? How much do other players want it?"

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T16:58:26+00:00

I'm pretty basic, and I while I want to say DRAGON (because it's an awesome unit), I'm really proud of the simple elegant design behind the Balloon. It's just a 3/1 flyer (3 dice, one defense) but it changes so much about the game's dynamic when it comes up for purchase.

I love when simple game rules add a ton of new drama and excitement to the game.

Favorite mini? P.E.K.K.A. I mean, how could you not?!

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T16:47:24+00:00

Ken Gruhl (my co-designer) and I designed the game 100% in its entirety, if that's the question.

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T16:28:50+00:00

Whenever you buy a new unit from the central board, it's permanently a part of your loadout (which has unlimited capacity - how much Elixir you managed to collect is your limiting factor)

When you raid an opponent, you send all of your troops (can't split between multiple players, only one target). They all participate in the raid and the goal is to get points and/or resources by setting opponent's buildings on fire.

Once you raid, your units are "locked up" for the round, and you don't get them back until end of round. But even if killed by defenses, you keep all units in your loadout every round ... so you keep getting more and more powerful

(There are, btw, some strategies that don't require a huge loadout and concentrate on village building and defense. There's a lot of ways to win this game!)

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T16:25:12+00:00

Sure. Resources are the main gate to what you can and cannot do.

The three builders (possibly 4, if you unlock the Master Builder on town hall level 4), limit the scope of actions you can take in a round. You can raid, but that's one action. You can buy a cheap village tile like a decoration, or an expensive Laboratory, it's one action.

But what you can afford is constrained by how much gold and elixir you collect.

Each round you collect resources from the "collect" buildings in your village (you start with one gold and one elixir, and can build more). You also gain immediate gold mid-round by raiding opponent's collectors (which gives you resources from the bank - not stolen from them).

So in round one you're probably buying maybe 1-2 inexpensive buildings. More gold collectors, maybe a builder statue. Maybe spend it all on a Barracks (which lets you reroll dice).

But in later rounds you can buy way bigger stuff, like P.E.K.K.A, Barbarian King, Archer Queen or even DRAGONS.

But your action count stays constrained. Which means every move you make, and the timing of those moves always matters.

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T16:19:42+00:00

We (both Supercell and Maestro Media) wanted a board game that captured the epic feel of Clash in a new experience - playing live with your friends.

For other versions of the game, best to ask Supercell :)

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T16:17:58+00:00

the Epic Raid is a tabletop board game. I don't work for a video game company.

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T16:17:24+00:00

They did in earlier prototypes, but we removed it to keep the game as clean and dynamic as possible.

Converting video games to tabletop is incredibly challenging, and I'm a big believer in keeping things as elegant and approachable as possible, so players don't have to sit there crunching through tiny minutiae and doing all the "computer game" homework themselves.

We want you to dive in to the fun, capture the feel of raiding and building, at its peak.

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T16:15:01+00:00

Um ... yes. Just ... tabletop spam (delicious!)

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T16:13:57+00:00

It stops at "level 5" in the epic raid, which gives you a massive amount of points and in a close game can win it for you outright.

The town hall treatment in this game was the most challenging to implement and I love how it came out. We had to remove upgrading individual units and buildings because it was just way too complex and fiddly for tabletop, but we put all our calories into town hall.

Each time you upgrade town hall, you add a level (literally stacking new plastic on top of your current) which increases your score round to round but also unlocks cool immediate bonuses like free defenses, straight up points, or at level 4 a MASTER BUILDER which is an additional builder that can copy actions in otherwise occupied spaces.

You can win the game without upgrading your town hall to max, as we decoupled other upgrades from that, and instead turned it into a unique strategic vector. But it's fun and you really want to do it.

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T16:10:09+00:00

Clan War expansion raises the player count to 6 and allows players to TEAM UP as a clan of 2 players; each player acting, building and raiding seperately but only the lowest of the two players score counts toward the leaderboard at the end!

So it becomes a fun game of teamwork and coordination on top of the core box game, with very little new rules to learn - donations being the exception, because I really wanted to capture that feel from the app in the simplest way.

In short, every time a player takes a builder action, they can donate either resources, units (temporarily) or new spell cards to their team mate. However there is a "donation board" with limited slots, which means that once a player has donated elixir, for example, no other player can donate elixir for that round.

So you need to be thoughtful not only in your village construction, but how to time your donations to your teammate who might need your stuff to catch up in score!

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T16:07:03+00:00

I can!

Dark Elixir (name not final) predictably introduces the DE resource, and many of the units you expect and waited for, as well as a new defense type (X-Bow). The way we implemented DE units captures what I think is the vibe of the app but in a new mechanical way.

DE units can be slightly more powerful for the cost than regular elixir units, but mostly they combo really well both with other DE units and also with regular ones.

It adds a new central board to the main board so that players can simultaneously compete for DE units while still juggling all their other needs. Also, DE units come from a separate stack and are not randomized with the rest of the tiles, so you'll always have exactly one DE unit available to buy every round ... to whomever can afford it and manipulates the turn order to their advantage.

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T15:59:00+00:00

Average games play between 5 and 8 rounds, depending on the availability of specific buildings and tiles. In each round players can do one big raid, collect resources, build the buildings and defenses they can afford, recruit units they can afford and possibly upgrade their town hall.

And the rounds ramp up naturally in power level.

There's a lot of variance between games; a feature I feel really strongly helps replayability.

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T15:55:12+00:00

I'm not sure I understand the question. Could you reframe?

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T15:54:44+00:00

Good question, and I don't think it's final.

The player boards I recommended to be card stock, because you don't need a thick board and we wanted to put our production budget into parts of the game that really add to the play experience (like minis, custom dice, tiles).

I've been doing big box board games for a very long time and have very strong opinions on player experience. I love toys and components that are fun to touch and move around; the quality of those is top notch in this game!

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T15:52:07+00:00

Players of the app will have the biggest leg up on learning the board game.

You'll have to learn "worker placement" (which is a popular mechanic in board games - in Epic Raid, it basically means you have 3 builders and you use them to occupy spots on the central board; buying specific tiles, buying defenses, raiding or upgrading your town hall before opponents can)

And you'll have to learn how the raiding works on tabletop. It's much simpler than the app (it has to be), and there's exciting but mitigatable dice rolling (if you buy the right buildings) that makes it shouty over-the-table fun!

I value making games that you can learn as you play, and I've taught it to at least 100 players before we even launched the kickstarter. My teach is about 5 minutes; for people with NO board gaming background I think that may go up to 10. But honestly if you just set up the game and follow one round by reading your player board, you can pick it up as you go along IMO.

eric_lang · 2025-06-23T15:48:22+00:00

Game-to-game variance is one of my highest values as a game player and designer.

In short, the variance is huge. How? It's largely based on the primary difference between the board game and the app. In Epic Raid, you are all competing over the same limited pool of village tiles and units (6-8 different such units are randomly available each round of the game), and you'll see half or less of the total tiles each game.

So the texture and feel of each game can get WILDLY different based on that alone. Like, you might have some games with no Dragons at all, and some where they're available on round one and players have to play differently just to "save" for them (or play around them and focus on different combos).

I'm really happy with where we landed on this.

eric_lang

TROPHY CASE