While reluctant to play with more than three, due to length, we got in a cracking four man game of Talisman last night– well cracking for some and a descent into madness and death for others (including myself).
This was the first time for the Firelands and print on demand Nether Realm expansions, so we picked one of the alternate endings from Nether Realm: The Hunt. The idea behind this on is that you have to destroy (and turn in as trophies) four Nether Realm creatures and then make it to the crown of command space in the middle. Seem easy? Unlike the very easy Warlock Quests, the Nether Realm cards are absolutely brutal. There are multiple cards that will kill you on certain turns of the dice, and man– the Goblin Baby is one of the best Talisman cards I’ve seen in a long time.
Needless to say, the game last night had the highest death toll of characters I’ve ever seen in a 4th Edition game– and that was with very little PVP. Monsters had much to do with these deaths, which is pretty rare due to fate points now in the game.
Late game, Scott had already lost 3 characters and was out of the running, Matt had lost the Magus and restarted as the Gladiator, and John had a very powerful Bounty Hunter gearing up for the win. At this time, I had a suped-up Valkyrie and just happened to land on the space where the Goblin Baby had done his work (ALL monsters from all regions go to that space). I defeated one of the monsters (the Lord Efrit who didn’t mix with the others we ruled) and then took on the strength stack (at strength 14). I had a pretty good chance of winning with some tricks, but in the stack was the basilisk. This is a strength 2 creature who rolls 2 dice for his attack. If it comes up doubles, your character is killed outright! Of course it was ruled that the whole 14 stack got to roll 2 dice and guess what came up? Box cars. We called it a night as the rest would have likely been John going to the middle for the win (he was at 10+ strength and craft). Great game. Need to play more!
