Now that the Woodlands are out and Talisman is “complete” (already ready for the next expansion!) a test drive of ALL the expansions both big, small, and on demand, at the local gaming club was in order: Battle for Salvation, White Plains NY.
Consider this an invite if you are in the area and every want to get in a game of Talisman or RELIC.
An email invite was sent a few days before and Monday night had us sitting down with three players as the setup began.
Talisman is epic, and with all the expansions and the physical presence it commands it quickly started attracting the attention of many of the other club members.
For me it’s a personal policy to never turn away somebody interested in playing any game, especially the people who might be a little shy, but are unsure of the rules, or how to play.
“I’ve never played before, how will I know what to do?”
“No worries, after two turns of the game you will understand….”
Three players became six, and six ballooned to eight, and eight grew to ten.
TEN!
Now, for this game I was going to be more than just a player, and it was time to step in as what I will call the caller. Experience running large wargames and big RPG sessions was going to lead the game…
The first step was to set a hard ending time for the game since the gaming club closes at 10 PM. There was a very good chance that unless the planets of Talisman align, or somebody takes a power-run through the dungeon or something that we were going to have a player make it to the crown of command.
Next was onto drawing characters- with so many players and characters each player was randomly given five characters where they could then pick the one they like. This was important since not only does the game need to keep moving , but I wanted to keep the players engaged as much as possible, I didn’t want the down time between turns to devolve into Runebound. By drawing from five there was at least a good chance to grab a character that matches your play style. If, or should I say when you die, a single random character is drawn and you are injected back into the game- getting the player back in without looking at new characters and spending time to pick one out etc.
And with that we are off!
A few observations?
The biggest hit of the evening was the death himself- the Grim Reaper. With that many players a “1” on the movement roll was bound to come up, and somebody was going to be in range of death. One of the highlights was activating death to go after the Troll, only to have him fall short of the movement and land on the Warlock, who rolled the die and was killed- only to spend a fate point to send death to another character, who then rolled and send death to the Troll, who rolled and found out Death had plans for him and boosted his strength.
Sideboard speaking the Woodlands was naturally very popular since it was a new expansion and the Druid and Warlock spent most of their time there, and from my observation the Woodlands was very deadly, perhaps more so then the dungeon?
The Troll headed off into the Highlands with his massively jacked up strength, got smacked down by a goat, found some trinkets, blew his fate, made it to the Eagle King, got smacked by him, and then kicked out.
The most popular sideboard was the city, which quickly filled up with cards finding a number of characters spending some time in Jail…
…and as for the Dungeon, it wasn’t until the last two turns that a player entered it just because they were there- was it the reputation of the dungeon?
Character wise, the Tavern Maid was the MVP of the night with her ability to grab gold from such a player rich environment, which was then spent in the city buying more potions and gear.
Second to that was the Highlander who managed to miss a ton of monster encounter draws, while only picking up magic object after object.
When the game ended many of the players were quite far along, with the Warlock trying to pass the portal of power, Talisman in hand, ready to make his run for the Crown of Command. (We were playing with the standard ending, but I can imagine the fun if it was a random ending with the black void.)
Logistically, as the game played having a caller kept it not only moving but kept everybody engaged. I’d announce who is up for movement, and as the player drew an adventure card they had to read it out loud to the group. If it was combat I handed the opposing dice roll off to another player who looked like they might have been drifting for a moment to bring them back into the game- naturally bringing in a few extra D6’s was key. Also having the caller manage the bank of extra craft, life, gold, etc. next to them to hand out to the players as needed kept the clutter and fiddling around to a minimum.
Awesome game, awesome night- back to a “regular” game next week…