More Talisman Stuff

I can’t help myself… well I can usually but when a good offer comes along I seem to lose all resolve.

When I was ordering the Talisman stuff I was really keen on getting the Dungeon and Reaper expansions since they seem to be very popular with those “in the know” on sites such as Board Game Geek.  Sadly both of those expansions were unavailable at my usual haunts Maelstrom Games and Milsims Games.

I turned to eBay and couldn’t find anything that had a reasonable price AND reasonable postage.  I took a gamble with some “Make an Offer” entries though and while going through the deluge of “Offer Declined” messages tonight I noticed one lonely “Offer Accepted”.  Woo Hoo!  So I managed to pick up a new copy of the Reaper expansion for less than retail including postage from the US.  I’m as shocked as I am happy!

This does mean I’ll need more card sleeves now.

More Christmas Goodies

After much deliberation I placed the order for the last part of my Christmas present: Talisman, the revised fourth edition by Fantasy Flight Games.

 

I played this game a lot when I was a kid.  I never owned the game but two of my friends did so it saw a lot of table time.  I never really claimed to understand all the rules but I knew enough to do the basic stuff and I left all the tricky card stuff to my mates.

A little research and a strong nostalgia filter I came to a couple conclusions:

1. First the game is pretty much random in every way.  As a kid I didn’t care about this too much as it meant that even when you were down you weren’t completely out.  It also means that the game has a huge replay factor.  That’s when point two hit me…
2. I could get my kids to play this.  I’m sure I’m more than capable to manage all the cards and tricky stuff and just let him get on with rolling dice.
3. The game sure looks purty now.  And is bigger.

The left photo shows the board size comparison between (top to bottom) 3rd edition, 1st/2nd edition and 4th edition on the bottom.  The right photo shows game cards from (top to bottom) 4th edition, 2nd edition and 3rd edition.

 

It seems that while the cards of the fourth edition are bigger than in the previous editions the little buggers are in fact, little.  Teeny even.  Here’s a comparison shot against the now “industry standard” gaming card.

And Talisman continues the trend of modern boardgames to come with miniatures instead of meeples or standees.  Here’s what you get from the core box.

There seems to be a healthy amount of expansions for this game and I was very tempted to grab more than just the Frostmarch one.  I’ll see how much table time the game gets before doing my usual thing and buying everything.

Anyway I’m off to buy a truckload of card sleeves…