Played my 1st Talisman game with every expansion. The Nether Realm's Pandora's box was stacked randomly with the other alternate endings and played with the Firelands expansion as well. Everything! Even dragons, but using my dragons variant, see here:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/99736-wanted-your-house-rules/

It was a very balanced game. And while I say I played with every expansion in this game, I did not play with every card. As noted elsewhere I only play with about half of Blood Moon, no day/nite and most of the heavy Halloween flavored monsters taken out. And a small amount of cards removed from Dragons as well (also as noted).

It was fun everyone loved it.

On the link above, I discuss in a 2nd post (not the initial one) how the variant worked in detail.

My latest game with our D10 variant went terrible. I don't know if the moons were just aligned wrong but after 3 hours of playing, the 4 of us were each on our second or third character and no one had more than a 1 increase for stats. If it could go wrong, it did. I was the only one that did not really want to go to the timescape but somehow I ended up there twice and died once at the hands of the warp demon. The nether realm ripped us apart. The grim reaper killed an adventurer. At one point my friend rolled 3, 2's in a row after encountering the werewolf...at which point another friend cast a spell, killing his adventurer. It was a brutal night and the dragons seck had dragons littered across the realm....

Old man of the sea is NASTY. Saw him kill someone too.

My friend wants to try Timescape with 4th Revised...haven't told him I just bought Relic, its not a replacement idea as some suggest just another option. But I won't mind trying Timescape, as I do l like it.

I have not made the jump to get Relic yet. I should before too many expansions are released.....

Timescape it a pretty good expansion, I enjoy it.

I have not made the jump to get Relic yet. I should before too many expansions are released.....

Relic is what Talisman should look today. I play it much more often than I play Talisman ...

Except for Dragons, using all available expansions is the way we play too. I simply hate to separate cards before and after each play.

I have not made the jump to get Relic yet. I should before too many expansions are released.....

Relic is what Talisman should look today. I play it much more often than I play Talisman ...

Except for Dragons, using all available expansions is the way we play too. I simply hate to separate cards before and after each play.

Everything I read points in this direction. One can only hope Talisman 5th Edition will use this streamlined mechanic.

I hope it does not go all the way to be honest.

There are some very nice touches in Relic that would work well in the game, but I actually like the chaos that is Talisman.

I haven't played it yet. And I think no matter how much I may like it, I do not want Talisman to change.

I do wish Talisman would adopt the character card frame that tracks life/attributes instead of using the cones. The cones are messy and can take up some valuable table space. The card frame with the spinners is much better, IMO. We were trying to figure out a way to use the card frames from Relic with our Talisman character cards, but there's just not a good way to get +12 on the attributes, and in Talisman you can definitely start rocking the strength/craft amounts.

I also like the combined 6 points of attribute trophy turn-in in Relic as opposed to 7 points of specific strength or craft in Talisman. In fact, we've been playing Relic for a while, and we had to consciously remember it was SEVEN points, not six, for skill level bump in Talisman the last time we played.

We use dice to track points (Str, Craft, Life...).

A lot of people use a modified trophy turn-in, making it 6 would not be a huge deal if everyone was doing it. In our group we don't allow any attribute to more than double its original starting number.

There are some phone apps to keep track of your attributes too. I don't really like the cones either since I can not seem to keep a hold of them...they spend more time on the floor than anywhere else.