Building Powerful Turns with Echo in Clank! The Forgotten Vault

September 23, 2026

The Clank! — Cube of Holding and The Forgotten Vault Kickstarter is closing on October 1st, which means we’ll soon be in its final week, and we once again want to express a huge thank you for all the thieves and adventurers who have pledged their support for Clank!’s tenth birthday! And in case you missed it, we have some fun news for backers: everyone who pledges for either the Cube of Holding or The Forgotten Vault will be receiving the digital version of Clank! Expeditions for free, along with some fun party favors: a shiny, glittery 10th anniversary enamel pin, and a sheet of fun Clank!-related stickers!

Today, we’re back again with another preview for The Forgotten Vault, the new expansion to the board-based line of Clank! games!

In our last preview for The Forgotten Vault, we explored the new Study Token mechanic, which gives you new ways to interact with Secret Tomes. In that article, we showed some of the fun card combos awaiting in the Dungeon Deck, and today, we’re really diving into the deck-building of The Forgotten Vault as we turn our eyes toward a new game mechanic: Echo!

Echo! Echo…!

The Forgotten Vault introduces 44 cards into the Dungeon Deck, and on a wide variety of them, you’ll find the new Echo label:

Like all other cards, Echo cards grant all of their icons and effects on the turn that you play them. But unlike other cards, Echo cards remain in play for a second turn, allowing you to use all of their effects once more!

After you play an Echo card, you’ll turn it sideways to indicate that it’s sticking around:

And then, when you clear your play area at the end of the turn, all sideways Echo cards remain. Once you’ve drawn your next hand, Echo cards turn right-side up (set them to one side of your play area), and you can use them one more time. After that, they return to your discard pile.

Some cards are able to gain Echo based on conditional effects, and some can give Echo to other cards:

Cleave’s Echo effect will kick into action if you slay a monster token (you can learn more about those in our Wandering Monsters preview), while Justin Time can grant Echo to a card of your choice! This can be a very powerful boon, but note that all Echo effects — whether native, gained, or given — only last for one additional turn. In other words, you wouldn’t be able to bring Cleave into a third round even if you satisfied its condition — cards only “echo” on the round that they’re initially played from your hand.

But, that doesn’t mean an Echo card will play itself the same exact way on its second round. Take Jack of All Trades, for example:

Jack of All Trades allows you to choose between a Skill, two Swords, or a Boot when it’s played. If you chose Swords on the turn that you played it, that doesn’t mean you have to choose Swords on the second turn as well. When a card is echoed, its icons and text box effects are gained, and you can choose how to resolve them.

Aside from the obvious benefit of repeated card effects, Echo cards can start to get juicy when paired with complementary cards:

If you have Tome of Time and Study Buddy in your deck, you’ll ideally want them to come out in the same hand so you can take advantage of the latter’s teleporting effect. If Tome of Time comes out and you strike out the first turn, its Echo effect would give you an additional round to draw Study Buddy, widening your window of opportunity for card synergy.

Fun with Echo

Echo adds new dimensions to your deck-building — at minimum, an Echo card in your hand is a welcome gift that will make your next turn just a bit better. But when you draw multiple? That’s where the real magic can happen.

Some of the best moments in Clank! are those special rounds where your deck-building pays off, everything coming together in just the right way at just the right time. Let’s look at what a “super turn” might look like for a player who builds their deck with Echo cards and gets just the right amount of luck in their draw. We’ll imagine that the new Time Flies monster is in the Dungeon Row, and they drew the following five cards as their hand — three from The Forgotten Vault, and two from the base game:

Three of the cards have Echo, and Justin Time can apply it to another card, making four cards that will persist into the next round. Time Flies would be able to grant Echo to the fifth card, but this player doesn’t have enough Swords. Except, wait a moment — they get to draw another card with Rebel Watchman! Let’s assume lady luck is smiling on this player, and they draw Aftershock:

Now, that’s more like it. Not only does Aftershock also have Echo, but it also provides the Swords needed to slay Time Flies, which can grant Echo to the only card left that doesn’t have it. That means five cards will endure to the next round (Justin Time goes to discard because he gives Echo to another card but doesn’t generate it himself), generating -2 Clank!, 3 Swords, and 4 Boots in addition to the five new cards that would be drawn next turn! With the right deck-building, Echo brings dizzying new potential to your dungeon-delving adventures.

Now Live on Kickstarter

The Forgotten Vault is currently live on Kickstarter, along with the Cube of Holding deluxe storage box and the Master Thief Edition line of the original board-based Clank! games. The campaign will be wrapping up on October 1st, so don’t miss your chance to pledge in the final week before it closes! We’ll be back again with one more preview for The Forgotten Vault, where we’ll be putting a spotlight on its two new maps!