I'm an old Talisman second edition veteran who for the most part has been very pleased with the 4th edition so far. As I've come to expect from Fantasy Flight, the designers have really done a fantastic job here. Nonetheless, there is one expansion I have a big problem with, and that would be the City.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that it is great to have a board where your gold can be spent on things which are truly worthwhile and interesting rather than just handed over to the village doctor. As is depressingly easy to do, however, they took a good idea too far here.

I recently posted a thread about how ridiculously overpowered the Flail seemed to me, and a Talisman player skilled in statistics made the point that it was really only the equivalent of a "+4 to your Strength in battle" weapon.

Think about that. A +4 weapon, for a measly five gold?!?! That's ludicrous! In 2nd Edition Talisman the ONLY thing which would add four to your strength in battle was the Ancient Artifact on a lucky roll of a six; the only thing which would add +3 was the Holy Lance used against a Dragon. And this wasn't because the prior designers had an irrational hatred of powerful weapons; it was because they had a proper sense of balance, as did these designers for all of the other expansions. An excellent example of this would be the Doomsword from the Blood Moon expansion. This fearsome magical blade adds three to your Strength in battle, but it you roll a one in combat you automatically lose the battle regardless of your Attack Score. A very powerful weapon, balanced with an appropriate drawback and properly hidden away in the adventure deck. Yet why would anyone ever bother using the Doomsword when Flails and Battle Axes are available for sale? These weapons being so out of proportion ruin plenty of neat and interesting weapons from prior expansions.

Furthermore, those prior cards you had to be lucky enough to find; you couldn't just waltz into a store and buy them. There's a reason that in AD&D you can't go to a shop and buy magic items; it's boring, lacks drama and unbalances things, and the same is true here.

What's even worse is that between the City Alchemist and the Bounties, buying such cards is no problem whatsoever.

The worst thing of all, however, is that buying these weapons is the most logical thing to do. There's simply no way to NOT go for them without deliberately playing suboptimally. After the first game we had with my 4th edition Talisman one of the other players said he thought the Flails should be taken out, because they'd played too outsized a role in the game and made things too easy for their bearers. I agreed, because I could easily see the same thing happening again and again, and monotonously going for these weapons every game would seriously taint Talisman's two greatest attractions: its variety and its unpredictability.

Take out those two weapons, and there's still tons of great things to buy in the City: Potions, Spells, Pets, full Plate, a Warhorse, etc etc. The Flails and Battle Axes were simply a bridge too far, and I would submit that the City expansion and the game as a whole is much better off without them.

The City Expansion was designed with a good concept: giving new meaningful ways to spend gold. The not-so-dangerous City deck is also different from the others because it's mostly about gaining/losing gold, or gaining/losing Objects and Followers, with a slightly higher tendency to give things for free instead of taking them.

All things considered, there are great disproportions between the value of the cards and their sale price, or between the power level of cards that you randomly find during the game and cards can just be purchased.

The problem I see is not really a balance issue, since players will usually band together and react strongly to characters that have geared themselves with a Battle Axe, a Flail or a Spellbook, the latter being the most difficult to deal with. For me the problem is that super-attractive items make the rest of the Shop decks completely uninteresting, outdated and ultimately useless. Come on, has somebody EVER bought a Mirror Shield for 3G at the Magic Emporium? Can't you think of a more useless way to spend your gold?

It's all because of that stupid price progression in shops. Stiletto costs 1G, Bow 2G, Great Sword 3G and so on... it looks like they first made a price table, then filled it with card names. The most evident mess is the Stables shop, where a Mule costs 3G and a Warhorse 4G, with Horse and Cart reaching an excessive 5G. Why can't two items just cost the same? E.g. Riding Horse & Mule cost 2G, Horse and Cart cost 4G and Warhorse costs 5G (of course in the City things can't cost more than on the main board). The current price lists seem to care more for a regular progression than for balance between cost and value.

In the Magic Emporium we have the 1G-4G items that never see the light of day, mostly because characters are always saving gold for the Armoury, which lies 3 spaces away. Scroll is just a Spell for 1G, while Psychic Crystal and Mirror Shield are crappy items to spend gold on. Crystal Sceptre was firstly seen as a big opportunity for Craft-based characters to oppose Strength-based ones, but why spend 4G on an Object that works only when you attack another character, while the Battle Axe costs the same and works when you attack a character, when you're attacked by a character and when you attack a creature in battle? The Magic Ring might be attractive, but usually characters that have enough gold for it can also buy a Spellbook, which is a game-breaking item that's worth 100 times more than a +1 Str/+1 Cft. The Spellbook should cost at least 8G, while Psychic Crystal, Mirror Shield and Crystal Sceptre should cost 1G less.

The Armoury deck has the most controversial items for sale: Flail and Battle Axe are out of question, they are absolutely more powerful than any Weapon in the game and are very cheap. Full Plate it's also very good, especially for Bounty Hunter, but the price of 6G feels appropriate. Stiletto and Great Sword are just an insult to the poor Village Blacksmith, who's selling worse Weapons for higher or same price. The Bow could be balanced if it were a Weapon, not an additional boost to attack score. The cost of 1G per use seems a good compromise, but it's turned upside down if you have Everfull Purse (it pops up almost in every game with the City due to the small deck). Everything in the Armoury should cost 1G more than its current price (except Full Plate), with Battle Axe and Flail costing an extra 2G or 3G.

I don't know how it goes in your games but here we move into the City as soon as we have some gold to buy 1 of the super-items (Spellbook on top of the list, then Flail, Battle Axe and Warhorse); if a character loses or gains gold in the meantime, he constantly rearranges his "shopping list" to get the most out of his wallet. This means that medium-tier items are ignored (Crystal Sceptre and Great Sword being the obvious "good but not enough" ones) and low-cost trinkets are mostly disregarded, except when they can randomly give a great bonus for 1G-2G (e.g. Potions and Pets) and there's some spare gold for them.

Surely it's about the power level of certain cards, but what's completely screwed in the City expansion is the balance between price and value of goods, and the balance of the City commercial offer as a whole. I haven't tried yet any of the price tweaks I've listed above, but maybe they are a better option than removing overpowered Shop cards.

I don't know. There are a lot of potentially "game breaker" cards. In two recent games (one with the Sacred Pool and the other with Sacred Pool + Dragon) a single character was able to accrue a huge amount of stats. In the first case, he was playing the Mage and accumulated all three Warhorses from the Stables deck. In the second game he was able to work the system of 'collect dragon scales and go see the Martial Artist', eventually accumulating +20 Strength. While you might argue that a few Randoms might cut him down to size a lucky draw of the Amulet at the right time rendered him bullet proof.

Some of the things that would provide more balance is an increased number of cards like Horse Thief and Raiders and the addition of more cards that destroy items, drain spells, and kill followers. A small box expansion that consists of updated and corrected cards and rules for all of the expansions would be handy. This would allow things like the Strength Potion to be changed into a Trinket and for pricing schemes, like the ones suggested above, to be updated. It does seem like some objects and followers should have a variable cost. Paying 6G for a Warhorse is about right if your Craft value is only 3. Of course there is also the issue of sinking alot of money into something only to have another player yoink it (like with the Thief, Sorceress, etc.). How these can be controlled for seems to be a murky problem for what is primarily a luck based game.

Instead of outright bans, just institute some simple House Rules regarding things that are considered too powerful by your group of players would be my suggestion. For example:

1) Treat the Armory, Magic Emporium and Stables decks in a similar way that the Potion and Pets decks are handled. Shuffle those 3 decks and keep them facedown until needed. When a player enters the Armory, Magic Emporium or Stables Shop spaces, they can then draw the top card of the appropriate deck, and have only the opportunity to purchase that particular item during that visit for the listed price. When using this rule, you have to abandon the must encounter rule which forces you to purchase something while visiting this space. Should they not purchase the drawn card, re-shuffle it back into the deck.

2) Another City related House Rule I figured I'd mention is don't allow the Alchemist character to alchemize Trinkets. This helps prevent some of the more abusable situations that can arise from this characters use. Trinkets are too small to become 3 bags of gold anyway.

3) Whenever you use the Scribe Follower to keep a spell, lose 1 gold, much like the Bow. Quills and ink aren't free you know.

I hadn't considered making these kind of house rules or modifications for use of The City. I only play with my wife, and we are not incredibly competitive; its more about the adventure and mystery. We tend to go our separate ways. While I think this may end at some point (and btw, we haven't been able to play since before Woodlands came out, so we're still Virgin in that regard), we go through all the characters 1 by 1, until no more, than start again:

We pick from 7 shuffled characters. Any unused go back to be 'considered' in future games. When the game is over, the 2 we used go into a pile of not to be used until all have been used. (we've never used the die and pick another character; our games are so long.... ummm, legendary, that if you die, the game is over, period). edit: So characters like the Alchemist aren't really Game-breakers to us, since they are only in 1 in every how many games

For the City, well we do have our favorites and the 2 weapons being discussed are our favorities; she adores the Flail and I have a thing for the Great Axe. But in most games, I may get to the City sooner than her. And its not about who has the bucks first/easiest. We both find it hard to amass some wealth, generally. You can get all the trinkets you want from the Highland but if you can't land on the City space, you can't cash in. So there is actually a bit of wheel spinning in our games.

At some point it does happen though. Our flail and Great axe are mostly only used for enemies and creatures. We have not done a lot of battle with each other. (now spell casting, that would be different)

Its all fine to make house rules for our own games, but as I like to also play online with the digital edition, I would worry about these balance issues for that.

Surprisingly (and thankfully), the digital edition is totally faithful to the real game and while this is awesome, its also going to throw up these problems as we move into more of the expansions..... when you play the digital edition, its not friendly, I don't mean in a person to person social way, I mean that you play to win and therefore anything in the rules goes.

So if there are balance issues observed normally, they could be bad for the digital edition, there is only so much house rules they can add before it is way too complex to make an online game that people agree about the rules of.

Its all fine to make house rules for our own games, but as I like to also play online with the digital edition, I would worry about these balance issues for that.

Surprisingly (and thankfully), the digital edition is totally faithful to the real game and while this is awesome, its also going to throw up these problems as we move into more of the expansions..... when you play the digital edition, its not friendly, I don't mean in a person to person social way, I mean that you play to win and therefore anything in the rules goes.

So if there are balance issues observed normally, they could be bad for the digital edition, there is only so much house rules they can add before it is way too complex to make an online game that people agree about the rules of.

Well...for the most part the digital edition is faithful. They have changed some of the Mephisto characters from the original printed versions, mostly because they were poorly worded in the first place, as sometimes they were overpowered or too weak. The Shapeshifter is supposedly getting some serious re-working according to the Devs. Most haven't been too concerned with this since the Mephisto characters aren't exactly canon.

However, they are also making a change to one of the spaces on the Dungeon board from the physical edition, as they viewed it as a little lackluster in its original form, and didn't fit the title of the space very well in certain circumstances. Not a huge change, and I personally don't mind it, but purists may have some issues with any changes made at all.

While some may disagree with deviations from the physical counterpart, it does provide hope that the DE will fix some of the more overpowered combinations or confusing entities, especially from the City and Dragon expansions, which tend to be the most criticized.

However, they are also making a change to one of the spaces on the Dungeon board from the physical edition

Which one?

However, they are also making a change to one of the spaces on the Dungeon board from the physical edition

Which one?

The Summoning Circle. It will still function the same if there are Enemies in the Dungeon to be summoned to the space, however they are changing how it works when there are no Enemies to summon. Instead of being a "Draw 1 Card" space when no Enemies are present, it will be "Draw 2 Cards. Any Non-Enemies drawn are discarded before they are encountered, and all drawn Enemies must be encountered." This is being done so that the space lives up to its name and helps ensure it summons baddies to fight.

We realized these problems as well and also fear for the digital version.

I'll try to remember what we did, but I know we got really tired of flails and warhorses everywhere really quick.

We changed flail to work like the Dragon Hunter, you roll doubles and you lose - like every flail effect that's ever been in the game. 5G, I think.

Battle axe we haven't had an issue with so far.

Spellbook also not a huge problem so far, but I could see it going crazy pretty fast.

Warhorses are 6G just like the Adventure card.

Really it was Warhorses and Flails. Got a Craft character? No problem, just roam the city for a bit and you can beat everything without even needing to roll! You aren't likely to lose a craft fight and you mathematically CAN'T lose a strength fight so you'll likely never lose that horse. Add in a flail to assure instant wins.

The game really, really needs more ways to take out followers and to some extent items. Items are much better, but once your game has an Adventure deck that's two feet tall the odds of drawing counters become fairly limited.

Woodlands introduced some new issues in that the follower that lets you manipulate fate is, simply, insane. At least there it's a matter of luck getting him, but if you do odds are everyone else just lost. And since it's a follower, odds are also EXTREMELY good no one can ever do anything about it other than pray for the one Mesmerize in the 200 some spells or that the 1 Hag in 2000 Adventure cards hits you.

This is my new "City at Night" ruleset: This does fix some of the issues with cheap shops buys plus adds a interesting bloodmoon mix to the game. Comments welcome.

The City at Night

Talisman City and Bloodmoon Rule set

Overview

This Talisman rule set includes a new time card with rules within on how it is played with.

This Rule set can only be used if Bloodmoon and the City expansions are being used players can use the new time card instead of the old one if they like ignoring the effects on the City region if not used in game.

Expansion Rules

For all purposes the new time card is the same as the old time card with these extra rules governing its interaction with the game

• When characters are in the City region and the time card is flipped to night (or is on night) all shops are closed (no player may enter a shop while it is night) if a player is in a shop at the start of their next turn as well leaving the shop they cannot enter another shop until it becomes day.

• If it becomes night after a player enters a shop the player can still encounter the shop as if day. The only way a player cannot enter a shop if it becomes night is if it becomes night before they roll for movement.

• When its night no player can enter the City region or leave the City region treat the City space as a (no enter or move through space) until it’s Day.

• Players are free to teleport to any space in or out of the City during night when using any teleport effect.

• When a player is in Jail at night they may roll 2 dice to escape instead of one (taking the best result of the two dice.

Sets Contents

1 – New time card

Version 1 . 0

I like it!

When playing the Wanderlust ending this weekend we discussed if we should make any restrictions on the city. We decided to go by the rules this time since all boards where in use. But we think the best rules to use (for armoury and magic emporium, that is) might be Arkham horror rules. Draw 2-3 random cards and decide if you want to buy 1 of them for the listed price.

But then again it's always a risk to buy these cards as you're likely to get all other players against you.

When playing the Wanderlust ending this weekend we discussed if we should make any restrictions on the city. We decided to go by the rules this time since all boards where in use. But we think the best rules to use (for armoury and magic emporium, that is) might be Arkham horror rules. Draw 2-3 random cards and decide if you want to buy 1 of them for the listed price.

But then again it's always a risk to buy these cards as you're likely to get all other players against you.

Relic has a similar purchase style.

I liked how items worked in 3rd edition. Every weapon you could buy broke if you rolled 1. So even if the great Axe was +2 strenght you might use the +1 strength magical weapon you found instead as it was more reliable.

I liked how items worked in 3rd edition. Every weapon you could buy broke if you rolled 1. So even if the great Axe was +2 strenght you might use the +1 strength magical weapon you found instead as it was more reliable.

Now that wouldn't be hard to create maybe even turn it into a small expansion set.