Talisman Review
Short Description
Talisman is a turn based board game set in the fantasy genre. The game relies heavily on dice rolling, but player decisions still have a major influence on the outcome of the game. The ability to move in either direction on the board and the different levels on the board the player can go to gives the game a far less linear feel and allows players to better immerse themselves into play. It is easy to lose track of time while playing this and many of my friends have compared the game to an rpg, which it is easy to see the similarities. The game is 2 to 8 players and takes 2 to 4 hours to play.How the Game Plays
At the beginning of the game everyone is dealt a player card or cards (depending on how you want to play). If you decided to deal multiple player cards you then select your player. Every player card has special abilities and varying stats such as strength, craft, health, fate and gold. Strength comes into play when encountering enemies and attacking other players. Craft comes into play for psychic battles with enemies and other players. Health and gold are pretty self-explanatory. If you lose all your health you die (depending on where you are in the game you lose all your stats you gained and other items then draw a new player card. If someone is at the crown of command you lose). Gold allows you to buy items, heal, and so on. Fate allows you to re roll a die in most instances to change your fate so to speak.After everyone has got their starting markers for the above mentioned things and starting items if their player gets any play starts with whomever you choose. We normally roll to see who goes first. You roll one die and decide whether to move right or left by the amount you rolled. Depending on what space you land on decides what happens next. The space may say to roll a die to see what happens to you, give you decision of places to visit within that space, or tell you to draw a number of adventure cards. Adventure cards have a ton of different events. They can be battles, items, followers, events that affect just you or everyone, or they could instruct you to draw spell cards. At this point you would complete the adventure card or cards then play would move to the next player.
During a battle of strength you add up all of your strength from your stats and any given to you by your items/followers. The same is done by the other player you are battling or the enemy you have encountered. Then you roll for your attack. This roll is added to the number you got above and the same is done for your enemy. The person with the highest number wins the battle as long as a spell or an ability hasn’t influenced the battle. So as you can see battles are quite simple and move quickly.
The point of the game is to get to the crown of command at the third tier of the board and use it to cast the command spell until all of the other players have been defeated. The command spell is cast by rolling a die. If the result is a 4-6 it is considered effective and all the players other than the one at the crown of command loses a life. This is gives the other players a bit of time to try to get to the crown and defeat the player at the crown to steal it.
Effectiveness of Rules and Learning Curve
Talisman’s rules in the base game are overall quite good. They are balanced and pretty well written. The rule book does a good job of giving some examples on how things work to make understanding them easier. The characters themselves are pretty well balanced between one another when considering base stats and abilities.It is of note to point out that as with all larger games like this there is a learning curve. It’s going to take a bit to get the rules down. In my group I’m generally the one who reads the game rules and explains it to the other players, so if you are planning a game night be sure to have at least one person read the rules the night before. It took me about an hour to go through all the rules and figure out the game good enough to explain it to others. I also had to re-read a couple of things to understand it better. Once I had the rules down though, it was quite simple to explain to everyone else. It only took me about ten minutes to explain the whole thing to them. For the first couple of game nights we had to keep the rules handy so that we could refer back to them when needed. After that, though, it was easy to remember the rules, even when putting months between playing times. The rules from the expansions add on quite easily as well, but I will review those at a later time in detail.
Build Quality
Talisman comes with quite a few pieces. They include some card board pieces as well as plastic pieces. When I first saw the card board pieces I was worried that they would not hold up after a lot of use even though they were quite thick. Much to my surprise they have held up very well. I actually don’t mind them at all, they fit in well with the rest of the pieces. All of the character sheets have a matching grey plastic figurine that has decent detail. For the price of the board game the figures are of outstanding quality.To make it easy to keep track of health, strength and craft there are little plastic cones of different colors. The gold looks like little gold coins and they are made of plastic as well. All of the plastic counters are of good quality.
The board itself is pretty thick and is made quite well. The print on the front is of high quality. I loved all the artwork and the colors they used to make the board. I really enjoyed having the three levels on the board. It’d be kind of cool if they offered a stackable version for the different levels, but it is by no means necessary.
All of the cards are of grade A quality. The print on them is very well done. The text is not too small and the card stock it is done on is very nice. The artwork on them is also unique and interesting. Each different type of card has a different artwork on the back to make telling the difference between them easy and they look great.
Overall the build quality is really good for the price you pay for the board game. I can’t really complain about any single part. I especially like the great job they did with the cards and how nice the look throughout the table.
Setup Time, Space Requirements, and Storage
The setup and take down time for the base game of talisman is about 15 minutes, once you know what you’re doing (for one person). The first setup time is going to take more time because you are figuring out what things are and where putting them makes sense for you and your fellow players. I like to think I’m good at setup and take downs of games, but without buying some containers, I don’t think you can lower that time.Talisman’s space requirements are quite large. With the base game we played on a standard banquet table and if we were playing with more than four people we needed TV trays as well. Once you add expansions in, you need even more space so playing space is a serious consideration for this game especially when you add in expansions. I ended up building a folding custom table for our game nights. Its four feet by eight feet and we still use one TV tray for playing it with more than four people and all the expansions.
Storage is another thing to consider for this game. Not only does adding some containers lower setup time, it protects the pieces better than the provided little bags. I bought a container that was made for bead storage that had seven separate areas to store all the counter pieces in it. When we setup we just set the container up on the table. I also have a bunch of containers that I bought that were perfect for storing all the different cards.
Overall Opinion of Game Play and Replay Ability
A standard game takes anywhere from two and a half hours to four hours. So be sure to set aside an evening to play this game and I must say, you will not regret it. Game play is overall quite simple and stream lines. As long as the players are paying attention the game moves smoothly and generally sticks closer to the three hour make, especially with just the base game.The overall rpg feel along with a fun battle system leads to a night of adventure and fun. The competitive feel of the game is completely up to the players as well. Until someone gets to the crown of command you technically don’t have to battle each other at all and can help one another if you want. This allows those who want to be competitive to be and those who don’t want to can avoid it for the most part.
Collecting items and following to gain more abilities and stats is addicting. I love trying to get better items and getting fun abilities such as those that allow you to steal an item from someone else. The carrying limits on items also forces you to have a strategy as well, but if a market gets flipped up from an adventure card you may be able to buy a mule to be able to carry more items. You also could get one of those for free if you have a lucky draw.
Sometimes a single event card drawn from the adventure deck can completely change the outlook for the various players or a single die roll at the city could do the same. Being turned into a toad can really set a player back and is quite hilarious as well for the other players. The game even included some toad figures for you to use when you are turned into a toad.
When of the biggest drawbacks I saw in the base game had to do with gold. Unless you add the city expansion, gold doesn’t play nearly as big of a factor. The base game doesn’t have too many items you can buy and you only have to heal so many times. This led to quite few of us being loaded up on gold with nothing to do with it, but this isn’t a big enough draw back to affect the fun of the game. It’s just something small I noticed that they later fixed with an expansion.
The replay ability of the game is decent in the base game. The only complaint I had before the expansions was that there was just not enough adventure cards. In a single game we found ourselves reshuffling the deck in order to continue play. Also, when you play the game a few times you get use to the adventure cards in the deck so it detracts from the replay ability a bit. The base game does come with enough adventure cards to prevent you from reshuffling the deck twice though (unless you had a strangely long game). The expansions add a lot of replay ability to the game.
Overall the game play and replay ability is great. The game is fun and it feels like each games is different each time you play because you play with different characters and run into different adventure cards which can drastically change your strategy. The rpg feel you get from the adventure cards, spells, items, followers and so on is just great.
Final Rating 9/10
The Good
Build quality, Balancing, RPG Feel, Fun, Changing Strategies, Battles, Competitiveness That is Left up to the Player
The Ugly
Space Requirement, Not Quite Enough Adventure Cards, Little Use for Gold
Do you have the recent 4th edition?
