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For those of you not familiar with Talisman, You begin the game by choosing or selecting a character to play. Each character has various special abilities, (which distort the rules in some way), 4 lives and 1 gold, plus a variable Strength and Craft rating.
Gradually, your character gets stronger, and you head towards the centre and the Crown of Command. In the Inner region, you have to encounter each space as you head for the Valley of Fire. By this time, you must have acquired the Talisman - without it, you cannot enter the Crown of Command.
Once there, you then cast the Crown of Command spell, if you are on your own, which involves casting it at each character in turn to cause them to lose lives or admit defeat. The winner is the last player left alive on the Crown of Command.
And that space was the games biggest criticism. Up to that point, there is usually plenty going on, with players improving their characters and interacting with each other. Then, a player gets to the centre and rolls a die. 1,2,3 - ok; 4,5,6 lose a life. End of story.
Expansion 1 (1986), Talisman Expansion, added 14 new characters, 6 new spells, and 36 new Adventure cards.
Expansion 2 (1986), Talisman Adventure, added new characters, monsters, spells and other cards. Character Sheets let you keep things in place and six Alternative Endings were added. One was selected at random, which tried to correct the ending to the game, but it was never really happily corrected.
Expansion 3 (1987), Dungeon added a new gameboard, the Dungeon deck and another 14 characters, plus 4 doorways which were added to the Adventure card deck to let you get from the main board to the dungeon board. You began at the doorway, travelled through the dungeon and exited in the middle, hopefully, wiser and richer.
Expansion 4 (1988), Timescape added another gameboard, the Timescape deck, more cards and another 8 characters, two of which were taken from other Games Workshop games. The board consisted of 15 'realities' or spaces. Travel between them was random, following 'warplines'.
Expansion 5 (1991), City, added yet another gameboard, a City deck, more cards and another 6 characters. This time, it converted the city space on the main board into 14 locations on the new City board.
Expansion 6 (1993), Dragons, added over 80 new Adventure cards. The land is now infested with Dragons and players will have to defeat many of these powerful monsters, as well as overcoming the minions of the Dragon Cult and the many other perils included on the new Adventure cards, if they are to complete their quest. Also included four new Characters for you to use. This expansion was always rare and almost impossible to get hold of.
By this time, it was now 10 years after the original game. Edition Two arrived, then edition 3. Games Workshop then became a 'one-game wonder' and began producing everything they did for the Warhammer universe, dropping all there boardgame lines. Sigh.
SUMMARY:
Despite the negative end to my review, this game is still well worth playing and seems to have gained something of a 'cult' following, which is no bad thing as the game mechanics make this a very enjoyable game to play and deserves a place in every game-collectors collection.
2007 and a new 4th Edition is due for release this year - not from Games Workshop, however
Review by Brian
