Why do we play board games? It’s a question I’ve rarely asked myself or group as it’s been so ingrained in my hobby time that it really needs no answer at this point other than “because we do.” Yet, I think the WHY is all about creating the dynamics of conflict within an explorable system that is outside the realm of any real conflict. Of course, Cormac McCarthy put it better in the words of the Judge:
“Men are born for games, nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself, but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents, and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principles and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth, all games aspire to the condition of war, for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.”
Yet a lot of games these days aren’t about conflict at all, they are more like a knitting circle where people sit around for awhile and then show what they made (I did not make this up, there’s a meme around that I got this from). Root and other games like it pushed against this trend hard, but for a long time, there were tons of games with actual ‘dudes on a map’ conflict. With that, let’s talk about Derek Carver’s 1985 classic Warrior Knights, later redeveloped completely by Fantasy Flight into their version. Both are good representations of design ideals of their time (1980s, early 2000’s respectively), the 1985 game especially so.
To start with, I have huge respect for Carver who has given several telling interviews about his design process. He simply made games and played then every week at his house with friends. Games like the ones he wanted to play did not exist (1970’s and 1980’s), so he just went and made them, not to fill a gap in published games (like area-control deck builders after deck-builders were a thing) but just to play. People that came to his house spread the word about some of these games (like Durance Vile which later became GW’s Dr. Who and if I was to guess, influenced Dungeonquest and Talisman in no small way) and some of these folks were at Games Workshop and asked to publish them. Carver did not make games to shoot out the door for publishing and hit some market, he just invented games and played them– a lot. It wasn’t playtesting, it was just play. This is quite a difference from what happens when I go to protospeil events or playtest with friends to the point where personally I will never ask anyone again ‘do you want to playtest a game for me’ but rather ‘would you like to play a game I made?’
After a long time of owning the game (almost 8 years!) I was on a Warrior Knights kick (the Fantasy Flight version) and wanted to do a comparison, so I dragged out Carver’s Warrior Knights and I was shocked even while learning the rules: the game is the absolute antithesis of modern board game design with the following aspects that HORRIFY modern gamers:
very long (3+ hours) with an emphasis on the +.
potential player elimination (people can come back, but they are weakened badly)
insanely random events that can wreck not just the leader, but any of the players, which cannot be avoided when they happen
A political phase with tons of negotiation that is central to player advancement /victory in the game
Stealing cards from other players both via voting and on the battlefield
Requires pencil and paper for various things in the game
Has a combat CRT using a single D6
You can trade money and cards back and forth between players at any time
What was amazing is that despite everything listed above, everyone had a total blast. The rollercoaster this game generates is absolutely insane. For example, I sent my noble with the biggest army I had to Acre to do a little crusading for cash. All was going well and the siege of Acre was well underway. An event showed up that targeted my noble, but I though ho ho! he’s outside the normal map, but as it turns out, a peasant that noble had somehow offended had snuck onto one of the ships and murdered him in revenge, dissolving my biggest army in an instant. My only benefit was to be able to use that as a wedge to get people to attack someone other than me, or help me with votes in the Assemble. Broken-wing style players can constantly complain about bad events they got to get sympathy votes politically, and people to ease up on them in military conflict, people can sneak in stronghold attacks on unsuspecting players, players can be voted off the island in the Assembly phase and watch while their barony is schralped out by vulture players.
This version of the game accomplishes this with few rules, and what rules there are, are usually quite simple. It is absolutely possible to pick up the rules in the first turn of the game and have a decent chance of winning against experienced players because like few other games of this depth, the rules get out of the player’s way so they know what their choices mean.
A few weeks later, I got a 5 player game and while longer, it was also really quite excellent, though one of the players’ goals was to end the game as quickly as possible so went around and razed as many cities as possible to reduce the win conditions. This reduced incomes to a trickle, forcing the massive legions of the mid game to dwindle to shells of armies.
So this is definitely going into rotation and I am amazed there isn’t a modernized (components, cards, board) version out there of this.
I should have bought this in the late 1980’s or at the latest 1990’s and played, a lot. I blame the entire state of Florida for this oversight on my part.
Howdy. I’ve played a lot of Talisman. Hundreds of games with the Games Workshop 2nd edition and maybe a tenth of that with Fantasy Flight’s version. They came out with more expansions than the number of times I get to play in a year for a bit there, but now that FF and GW have ended their long, fruitful relationship, Talisman will again be in limbo and eventually prices will start to rise and things will become scarce. Here is a list to help you spend your ducats.
The following list and thoughts are not for collectors, but may help you determine what may be sought after by players. For the completionist, just buy everything. If you didn’t get the print on demand stuff– ouch! I would AVOID Deep Realms unless you are the most ardent collector. However, the Nether realm Expansion is fantastic.
For players, if you are new to the game or new to this version of the game (from 2nd or 3rd editions), here is what you really need to buy, what you sorta need to buy, and what you shouldn’t buy.
CORE game
Make sure you are getting the Fantasy Flight version of the game and not the Black Industries version. The FF box is ‘less black’ than the Black Industries version (see above). If you do end up with the Black Industries version, you will need to purchase/find the upgrade kit with the fate points and stuff in it. These will likely be SCARCE. Obviously, you need the core set, but in my opinion it’s not enough for the full experience of Talisman. The base set doesn’t have enough characters, nor spell cards and the adventure deck is too small.
ESSENTIAL EXPANSIONS
The following are what I feel are the absolutely essential expansions to Talisman. There are very few of these that you actually need to have to get a good experience forever with the game. This will likely run you about 100$ retail.
#1 The Reaper expansion
This is stuff that really could have all been in the core game. While you can leave the actual Reaper and his rules in the box, the cards and characters in this expansion flesh out the base game enough for me to say, “yes, you are really playing Talisman.” By far, this is the most important expansion to the game, with the absolutely essential adventure, spell and characters as well as the Warlock Quests. If you get only one expansion, Reaper is it.
#2 Frostmarch
Frostmarch is the first of the “more stuff” expansions that fits very well with the core game, Reaper and Highlands for a base set to play with forever. It has few new rules (unlike Firelands or Harbinger), just cards and spells and a few more characters. Because this is just ‘more stuff,’ one could argue that it’s not essential, but if you are going to expand your Talisman and have Reaper, this is the next one that you will want to get, especially if you are going to play without the Board expansions and keep your Talisman SANE.
MauriceBastard: Meh, I can’t think of anything great about it, I bet there are some good items in the pack but I don’t associate them with it, I most likely just assume the good items in this pack come from The Reaper.
#3 Highlands
Highlands is an ‘extra board’ expansion that has a lot going for it. Why this instead of Dungeon? First, it does not offer a pathway to the Crown of Command, so players will still need to go up the normal method. What happens when you have a lot of boards in a Talisman game, and especially if you include Dungeon, is that players scatter all over the place and have no interaction with each other at any time during the game. Sure they may cast spells up against each other late game, but the concept of landing on another player is totally moot if there are four separate boards (and deep realms) in play. Characters like the Thief and Sorceress become fairly useless in these situations and once someone gets rolling and chooses to chase down the other characters to destroy them, it’s a lot more difficult with all the boards. You have to decide on whether or not you have the table space and also want to have your players all over the place by picking up the board expansions. If you are going to get one, Highlands is the one to get first. It has few special rules that effect the base game, critical characters to the game (Valkyrie and Alchemist for example) and does not have that egress to the Crown that Dungeon has, while still giving brutally strong magic items if you win the board.
MauriceBastard: Makes the outer region of the main board almost completely useless as this area is good for starting characters.
With the core set and the essential expansions, you have 28 characters. Fantasy Flight, compared to GW, were REAL stingy with the characters they put out in each expansion (compare 8 in 2E’s Talisman: Adventure to FF’s expansions at on average 4 each), probably because they came with miniatures instead of having them sold separate, so this is not a massive list. However it covers the basics: varied strength attackers, shitty trick characters (elf/dwarf), and the all important craft attackers (ghoul, wizard) and lastly, spellcasters.
This, like Frostmarch, is another ‘more stuff’ expansion with more Adventure, Spell and characters to include in the game. Because it has rules that do not mess with the core gameplay, I place this as one of the best expansions to get. What’s more, if you are trying to stick with just the main board, this is a good one to get after Reaper and Frostmarch. I like all of the characters that came with this one.
MariceBastard: Ya again the items that are worth it in this pack I attribute to The Reaper.
#5 Dungeon
The 4E Talisman Dungeon expansion is far and away better than the 2nd edition one, with awesome monsters, great magic items, good characters and a means to get to the Crown of Command to boot, circumventing the entire randomness of the middle region with a straight up combat instead. Many players B-line it to the dungeon as soon as they feel strong enough to farm it for goodies and strength/craft. Unlike the Highlands, the Dungeon is not an easy board to make it through, and many characters will die if they go in before they are ready (usually after 2-3 stat upgrades). That said, Dungeon is not an essential expansion because it’s a new board section and while some people may like it, the fact that you can circumvent the inner region’s perils and get the the crown of command changes the game drastically, adding to the sad fact that more boards = less player interaction.
MauriceBastard: Fine. Allows a end round run to the center for overpowered heroes which is a needed mechanic late game.
#6 Nether Realm
The Nether Realm expansion is one of those funky print on demand ones and when it came out, I thought that was the end of support from FF for Talisman (i.e.: no new expansions). The components were very good quality and this expansion is fantastic. In the new victory condition, instead of a Talisman, the players must kill a certain number of Nether Realm creatures and get to the Crown of Command. The creatures are represented by a Nether deck that has some of the nastiest stuff I’ve ever seen in the game! This win condition also promises a shorter, tighter game, so I like it a lot. This expansion also adds back in the Pandora’s Box card for the inner region, using the NetherRealm cards in place of Adventure cards! Once out of print, this one will be very expensive, but if you can get it no for 15$, it’s great.
MauriceBastard: Great shit, excellent way to change up the center region for extra challenge, make sure to exclude The Dungeon so you can’t end run the mosh pit of the center.
#7 Blood Moon
Like the Reaper expansion, the Blood Moon expansion has a guy that goes around and does stuff to people independent of the characters. This is less optional if you are going to play with everything from this expansion than the Reaper is. We’ve played with both the Reaper and the Werewolf and that was a clear mistake that slowed the game to a crawl. This has some interesting characters and most importantly, it has the HORRIBLE BLACK VOID card which makes the first trip to the Inner region even more dangerous than before. We play that once the void is drawn, it goes away for the game and at that point no other characters can be drawn. This gives both players going through the dungeon or up the inner region method a bit of pause about hitting the Crown of command space.
In addition to the Werewolf mechanic, Blood Moon introduces the Day/Night cycle to the game with +1 and -1 vs monsters during this time. This is one of my most hated mechanics that has been added to Talisman. Don’t bother with it.
MauriceBastard: We’ve entered the arena of where expansions stop working when you are playing completionist, while there are some good cards here the day night and werewolf shit becomes too much to keep track of if you play with reaper as well.
#8 Talisman City
There are a lot of options that open up in the City, and a lot of strange new cards. I like the pets and I like the fact that with the City expansion GOLD actually starts to have value again where normally it was pretty useless mid to late game. You can pay to win using the City, with very powerful cards on sale. We’ve enjoyed this expansion but you have to make a choice: do you go the standard Highlands/Dungeon configuration or do you remove one of those, or do you make the game board MASSIVE and play with all three. Frankly I would probably play with Highlands/City at this point and leave the Dungeon out.
MauriceBastard: Overpowered shit galore the Alchemist will gape you.
The NON-ESSENTIAL
#9 Firelands
While this has some interesting cards and characters, because it fundamentally changes some of the rules of the game with the firelands tokens, and does not mix well with everything else (if you play with EVERYTHING, the firelands cards won’t do much in the game), you do not need to get this expansion. “Destroying spaces” is a mechanic we started to see a lot more of in nearly all the later expansions.
MauriceBastard: Great expansion that needs to be played without other shit to help keep shit manageable, extra punishing late game.
#10 Woodlands
We have only played with Woodlands 2-3 times. It is another big board to add, so you have to decide which to play with and which to leave behind. Most of the time I would choose to leave the Woodlands in the box except that it’s new and we need to find out what the designers were trying to do here! The board comes with a new mechanic where players draw Fate cards, which are quite cool, but it’s yet another mini game– and since Talisman tends to be beer and pretzels, some players are not keen on it’s complexity. If you use Woodlands, I would use it alone with just the main board for a few games and see how you like it. There are some really interesting and cool characters in this set like the Leywalker and Spider Queen. The art in this expansion is superb.
MauriceBastard: Shite, feels completely shite / haven’t played it enough because there tons of great content already so who wants to bother with Woodland.
#11 Cataclysm
This is really new, and I’ve only gotten one game with it so far. What I like about it is that it’s Fantasy Flight’s artists going to town on the main Talisman Board. They inherited the main 4E board from Black Industries and the art on it, while OK, was not up to the normal Fantasy Flight standards. Just compare the older main board with all the art on the other boards and you can see the difference.
Cataclysm fundamentally changes the game in that none of the spaces you are used to going to are going to be on the board at first, nor will they end up in the spaces that you normally get to them. Depending on the card draw, there may not be any place to heal, there may not be any place to get FATE points back or buy stuff. I think the best way to play this is to play without the city, with the Dungeon and possibly the woodlands/highlands. Since this is an expansion late in the development of the game, it will be very hard to divorce the content enough from player’s sets to see how it stands on it’s own. Overall I would say this is probably a good buy to get, event though the characters in it are a bit trash; much like Harbinger, there’s nothing that great except for the Barbarian and maybe the Scavenger. The Arcane Scion is powerful, but I hate the art on that card.
While cool and a bit of a must have since it’s the last blast we’ll ever see of FF’s Talisman, it’s not essential.
Mauricebastard: A last gasp at keeping Talisman fresh, a honest attempt to switch some shit up a lot, played once and it seems FINE.
#12 Dragons
I do not own this expansion, but probably will someday. The brilliance of the 2nd Edition Dragons expansion is that it was just a set of cards that went into the main deck which shifted the way the game played without fundamentally restructuring the entire experience. You knew there were dragon problems in the 2E game because dragon cards kept coming up and destroying you and stuff on the board.
FF went full bore on the Dragon’s expansion and it’s a totally different game, one which I would not play with any of the other expansions, including none of the other game boards. There is a lot of book-work between turns and Dragons will be a slow slow game compared to normal Talisman. This one is almost in the Don’t Buy section, but not quite. It does make for an interesting game if you are prepared for it.
MauriceBastard: FUCKING BROKEN EXCEPT WHEN PLAYED BY ITSELF WITH THE BASE, a way to switch shit up if you are playing weekly, a attempt to spice shit up that fails in a completionist “play with all expansions” game.
Mouth: My dragons is still sealed, and I think I may have only ever played it once, and maybe just the heros [sic], which were Meh at best.
PROBABLY DON’T BUY THESE
Only two on this list.
Harbinger
Totally forgettable. The characters in it are pretty dumb and I just don’t even want to integrate the adventure cards from this, let alone the added mechanics. I may comb this for adventure cards to add to my CORE SET+, but probably won’t play with the rest. Collectors only.
MauriceBastard: Unsure what this one is, I own it and have played it once I think, fucking can’t remember what it is, expansion fatigue has set in fully, old man who plays once or twice a year.
Deep Realms
Collectors only. It’s just a total mess in play physically– it just doesn’t work well with another board between boards. We tried it once and it’s been in the box ever since. I’m not even sure I would recommend ever playing with the boards you need all together to make this work.
MauriceBastard: Shitcakes with a side of diarrhea.
The End papers
There wasn’t and there will never be a Talisman Timescape expansion for 4th Edition. Instead FF decided to make Relic which, yeah, no interest at all. We will never have the Astronaut, Space Pirate, Cyborg or essential ASTROPATH to round out the what used to be the top three characters in the game (from 2E :Prophetess, Monk, Astropath).
I also make this post with some emotional feeling that FF’s run is over despite at the same time thinking: THANK the GODS since there was just too much coming out for the game for awhile there (right around Firelands… I was overwhelmed). I’m proud of what Fantasy Flight and John Goodenough did with Talisman. They did right by the license, for the players and obviously it was lucrative to some extent! I was happy to support them by buying (nearly) every single expansion the day it was released.
With the end of the Games Workshop relationship we are absolutely at the end of an era with Fantasy Flight (though that could be said when they were sold to Asmodee too). They will be putting out some great individual games for sure (like the new Game of Thrones: Iron Throne), but their Golden Age is over as they will never have a license so rich with possibilities and an amazing board game back catalog as the Games Workshop one: not Star Wars, not Warcraft, not anything. Lament though we might, what we need to do is pick up the GW licensed stuff that we want right quick!
Maurice!Bastard:
Talisman has become a pick and choose your expansions game, different from v2 of Talisman which played WONDERFUL when you used everything. Version 4b can’t be played in total, or perhaps it can if you are 16-24 years old and don’t have true responsibilities and can focus fully on playing epic turn maintenance cluster fuckery. Now some people want Talisman v4 to be like v2, to have a “complete” version. A version that includes the best expansions that play well together. A version that you keep “shuffled” together and play over and over, ignoring the expansions that add too many new rules or to much turn maintenance bullshit. Fucking just play v2 if you want complete. Perhaps my picks for a complete V4 would be: Base The Reaper The Frostmarch The Sacred Pool The Dungeon The Highlands
Mouth:
For the small boxes… The reaper, is essential. Frost March and Sacred Pool are also good… More endings and the warlock quests were good additions. The blood moon is a little Meh and managing the whole day/night mechanic is tedious. Firelands is cool, but the flame shit and destruction of everything is again tedious, but can prove both beneficial and Terrible all at the same time… I think it’s a keeper. I have no experience with the harbringer.
For the big boxes… Dungeon and Highlands are both great, borderline essential. City is better than the original and makes gold worth having, but not essential.
Other… The neither realms is cool, and brutal… It’s good. No knowledge of the deep realms.
Also, I purchased the conversion kit for the original black library release of talisman. This gives you a complete second set of cards for the base game so it matched the ff version. I selectively added duplicates of the adventure deck cards to the base game. Basically adding all of the monsters and events… And I think some of the bad cards like the poltergeist and hag. I did not duplicate any of the magic items or bags of gold… But I would have to check to be sure. This was necessary when 4ed come out, as the base set was not balanced enough for a good play through, deck cycling was too frequent, and monsters scarce because people were holding them for trophies. I think it was also good for the first few expansions… At this point I could probably take all of the duplicate cards out since the adventure deck is massive with only half of the expansions in use.
Wow. I was thinking of dusting off the old Necromunda stuff for some holiday destruction in the underhive (not for nostalgia’s sake, but because it’s a great game that should be played!) and lo and behold not only are the rumors of Games Workshop’s Specialist Games returning true, but the newest rumor is that Necromunda is going to be the first on the slab for a remake/re release.
Killing the Delaques– always a good plan.
Stuff I think they should update:
Make ‘hero’ characters have detailed advancement and have ‘gangers’ have simplistic advancement. This is just like Mordheim/Legends of the Old West and cuts down on the TON of book work between Necromunda games.
Add Vehicles. I was REAL sad that Gorkamorka was about Orks and not an expansion for Necromunda that added the Mad Max shit. Gorkamorka is a good game, but they missed the boat there. They could have had a space hulk with Orks on it crash into Necromunda if they wanted to add the Orks into a Necromunda vehicle expansion, but yeah.. odd decision that.
Two girl factions/ girls in the other gangs. It was odd that all the gangers are dudes in all factions except the beautifully sculpted (and fun to play) Eschers.
Let me use my old Miniatures. Just like Blood Bowl, I don’t mind changes on a team and new minis and will buy them, but if I have painted gangs of Necromunda, I want to be able to play them.
Better Spyrer models. I have all the Spyrers, and they look like ass pretty much except for the Malcadons.
Vehicles? Did I say that already? Yeah.
So– I’m pumped for this. It will probably be out in a few years at the earliest but it’s great news, especially after this Age of Sigmar dreck.
Otherwise I’m taking a hard look at FROSTGRAVE from Osprey as something to replace the rather poorly designed Mordheim.
…and Blood Bowl was on the list of the four games Specialist with get to as well. That’s going to be a tough one since the fans are RABID about the rules, but needless to say with the quality of miniatures that GW has been putting out, that’s all they really need to do.
