Game: Clay-O-Rama

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trevlix — 2008-07-01T19:48:13+00:00

Hmmmm...is someone hungry?

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trevlix — 2008-07-01T19:47:45+00:00

A throwdown occuring at Origins 2008.

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LeZerp — 2008-06-25T20:19:19+00:00

Clay-O-Rama in action: before, during and after Hammer-thing whacked the nice Seahorsey

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LeZerp — 2008-06-25T20:12:27+00:00

The mad people playing Clay-O-Rama at Krikkit Con 12

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LeZerp — 2008-06-25T20:10:15+00:00

From the archives of Krikkit Con: The awfull green thing!

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consolewa — 2007-11-08T23:48:57+00:00

Image and opening paragraph from the original Clay-O-Rama rules.

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consolewa — 2007-11-08T23:48:05+00:00

Front page (1/4) of the original Clay-O-Rama rules, as found in Dragon Magazine back in the day.

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Carjack — 2007-09-15T09:03:35+00:00

The clay gets ready to hit the fan. Blue boy here won by quite a margin, using Greenie there as a missile with highly comedic results.

Thread: Nerf the Blob of Death!

PoisonedV — 2007-06-30T20:59:58+00:00

I was looking on several geeklists, including free games, interesting play mechanics, and clay games lists. When I kept seeing this I decided to print it out and get some playdoh out of the storage bin. Heres the review.

Components: The components are the character sheets and the playdoh and dice that you supply. These work fine, although the character sheets were a bit confusing at first. The rules are well written, funny at points and and make the game very "analogue", for lack of a better word. You could also use clay instead of playdoh, but I wouldn't recommend that... It hurts too much...

Gameplay: The gameplay is very fun, and like I said above its very vague, with alot of judging to be done. The game requires a referee, but it's not really need as long as the players are fair. The game is much like any miniature game (the measured movement reminded me of Pirates of the Spanish Main), but less complicated. You move, use missiles, attack, repeat. It can be a little boring. It's saving grace is the special power. Special powers take use of the clay and let you do various fun, malicious things to other creatures, like bowling them across the floor, dropping them, and even smashing them with your fist. (The dreaded blob of death!)
One of the problems there is that they are all very unbalanced, and making your own are just more likely unbalanced. It's best if all the players just choose to use "The Poke" or "The Blob of Death" the two most powerful moves. Another bad point is that moving is kind of pointless, they all just meet in the center, and then its a dice rolling festival. Kind of monotonous.

Overall:

Pros:
+ Fun, innovative use of clay building
+ Cool special powers
+ Good for young kids
+ THE BLOB OF DEATH!

Cons:
- Unbalanced special abilities
- Monotonous dice rolling
- Pointless movement

All in all, it's a fun game that should deserve a play, especially if you find some old tub of playdoh. It's fun for people at any age, and last but not least, who doesn't love smashing play doh? The good points outweigh the cons by much, so give it a shot.

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chasiubao — 2007-01-20T07:05:47+00:00

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Walsfeo — 2006-12-23T22:17:14+00:00

Thread: User Review

n0dsw0rth — 2005-02-01T19:01:00+00:00

I played this game with my two boys today (7 & 8 yrs old). It went Great!

Setup:
Initially, I was very vague in my instructions for them to build their characters. After about 3 minutes I realized they would be ill equipped for the game to come, so I warned them "Make sure your guy has at least 2 legs and 2 arms" and left it at that. I created mine with 2 tank tracks, a set of wings and 2 arms holding two swords. When we ranked the characters for movement and attack, I showed them how my guys two tracks and wings accounted for his ability to move 3 units (I have a tape measure that had broken, so I cut a 6 inch length of that off to be used as the moving "stick"). I then showed them that since I have 2 arms, I get two attacks. At that point, they wanted to rebuild their guys, but they were anxious to play so we tried them as is.

Gameplay:
I modified a few of the rules for simplicity's sake. Basically, there were no defender returned attacks and each player got 4 missiles. After some explanation, the game flowed smoothly and after the second round, they had no more clarification questions of the rules. I had to make them use their "Special powers" correctly several times, but for the most part, it went really well. We had randomly selected character sheets with the printed powers on them. The youngest has the "bowling" power, and ended up wanting to do that over and over. The older had the "switch places" power, which he used once, but then determined it didn't do enough damage. I had the "player missile" power, which they constantly offered to trade me their power for.

Overall:
Just can't emphasize how well this went. The boys loved it. It took us about an hour to play from start to cleanup. This game is just a great game and I reccomend it to anyone who's looking for something different to do with the wee ones when they're home from school.