everybody is so happy about ffg talisman, me too. But to be honest, the Cards are a desaster. Look at the Black Industries 4th Ed Cards and you see it.

Card size reduced so it looks on the mapspace like a mouse in a doublebed, pictures 1/3 size, with cardtype signet placed inside the picture, dark grey background on the textfield to make it hard to read, rough lined paper to let ink flow its way, cardnumber on right bottom corner, not in the middle, plain white background instead of diferent colours - everything that could be done wrong has been made wrong !

im really crying about the lost superior Black Industry Edition !

Eh, it looks like the picture hight on the Adventure cards is the same FFG has just shaved off the sides, but to conpensate it looks as if the font on the FFG Adventure cards is bigger. You also are getting far bigger character cards. I think the smaller card prevent the board text from being hidden from play.

The only part of the FFG design I don't like is that the Adven. cards are (or seem) smaller. My poor eyes.

akuma508 said:

That is standard FFG card stock and most of their games are like that (the ones I've played: Twilight Imperium, BSG, Talisman).

It works, as long as there isn't TOO much information to put on. Which is good and bad for Talisman (keeps things simple ).

Size combined with poor background texture and contrast, as combined with card size, has produced severe problems for me... and I'm not the only one. It doesn't work for everyone and the old background (at least) was superior and more thematic for a high fantasy game. What were they thinking?

However there were some good desing changes made, such as font size (though creating more problems with space) and moving card type to a the midbar and not over crowding the titlebar. The jewel under the order number is a push, and could have been left out. Increased character cards size was likely to accomodate the increased font size and need of Fate as new stribute, but overall, we all know size of components has been a problem (minor to major) for players. That may be partly why the cards seen so small (combined with text size increase).

As you state, card size was probably chosen based on standardization with other products, possibly for production efficiency and cost as well.

the point is : you know the cards after 2 or 3 games. then all that is important is the BIG picture with a BIG name on it, just like Black industries has done it. i will never play talisman mainboard with the ffg version with "what is that ? fingernail micropicture. for expansion cards on that deck i will make a rule.

however, if you dont know the black industry talisman edition, be happy, you wont get angry about ffg.

to bioball :

you took a card with good size from ffg. you know most cards do not have that picture size, they are much smaller. maybe you place one of those to the BI card to show the real difference.

I'm in near total disagreement with the OP.

The FFG cards are a great improvement over the BI cards. I found the BI cards to be very cheaply produced, with ugly artwork (especially on the backs) and worse, they were made from very low quality cardstock. Several of my BI cards were already fraying at the edges by the time I removed them from the cellophane wrapper. Epic fail.

I think the slightly smaller card size is perfect for fitting them into the spaces on the board. Anyone who can't read the cards should immediately seek out an optometrist. The text is roughly equivalent to font size 10 on my computer, which is basically the standard in publishing. I think most soft-cover books go smaller, actually.

The only thing I dislike about the FFG card revisions is that they removed the text from the backs. I understand that they wanted to create backs that are conducive to international versions, but the symbolic imagery they designed to replace the text isn't particularly evocative of the card types. The alignment cards, in particular, seem a bit over-produced.

Ideally, my preference would be for the cards to have a more hand-drawn aestetic similar to the board or the 3rd edition cards rather than the computer generated imagery of the 4th edition cards, but that's a matter of taste rather than function.

Smaller size isn't a big deal for me, it's the lightened contrast/colours that are an issue I hate. If I have a Spell, an Adventure card and a Purchase card in the same char's Object area, need to pause for a minute before discarding anything to make sure everything goes to the right pile. Often have to fish out Enchant Weapon (or was is Magic Weapon; one of those was perm) from the Adventure deck as it's gotten accidentally discarded there. BI version had darker shades of blue, green and yellow, never made a mistake with those cards.

Lars Gnomish said:

+1 ; perfectly fits. Buy glasses !

Lars Gnomish said:

-1 ! Nah come on, that is usually not well done. it often happens to turn into a bad tasty and poorly hand-written front...

Dam said:

+1 ! +2 actually. Wait, +2,5, I often discarded cards on the wrong deck, you're right.

Lars Gnomish said:

Watch your step, Lars, with those of us already in reading glasses . For the most part, readability issues with the cards are related to the background perhaps more than the text itself, and combined with texturing as well. But you're dead wrong about the font pitch/point. For those us creating cards to match the standard ones, depending on the varied Windlass font being used, the card's font is between 6.3 and 7 point. Paperbacks start at 10 pint and get larger if the content isn't enough to fill a standard set of registers in page sheets for economic product. You're not even close in your claim.

But considering the smaller size of card, they still managed to increase point size a bit in 4ER vs 4E, and that's a plus, though it was obviously offset in readability by other factors. Too many people are mentioning some problems for this issue to be dismissed.

Lars Gnomish said:

Definitely a lot of old schoolers will agreed on this. We miss the clear labeling, and I feel the same about other FFG games I've bought... and there you will find the same problems (sometimes) with iconography. Although with the Dungeon things improved a little in more representative iconography... or better choices. But a new new problem was introduced in one case; graphics effects (not actually design) got out of hand. The Dungeon cards themselves are somewhat obscured in noticing that "door" on first glance.

Lars Gnomish said:

I don't think it has anything to do with being conducive. But it is cost effective, if that's what you mean and I mistook you. They don't have to worry about new card back masters for every foreign edition, and it likely saves a bit of money on the print run setup.

those who talk about new glasses should do it. here are the facts :

talisman ffg picture size 34 x 16 mm

talisman BI picture size 44 x 29 mm

Bi are 33% broader and nearly 100% higher then the ffg pictures.

my thumb fingernail measures 16mm high, thats why its correct to talk about fingernail pictures in ffg talisman cards.

the larger pictures like the one above have 29mm like the bi cards, 2mm reduced by the signet.

my critics is about doing this little fingernail pictures and not all pictures in the 29mm size and putting the classtype signet into the picture, instead above the card as bi did it. noone cares about that class type, it just annoyes to look at that crapped picture. of course the icons of the dungeon cards are placed into the picture again, instead at the left bottom corner of the card, which is still empty, while the right corner holds the number of the cardtype.

look at fountain of wisdom, pool of life, prince, princess, holy lance , runesword, and 30 more cards of ffg fingermnail picture size.

about quality : i got my 4th edition when it was released in 2007, used it often, a couple of times per week, and the cards look brandnew.

however, i would love to have sleeves in that format.

about mapboard : with these small cards the huge spaces are out of any sense. the mapboard could have been reduced to 2/3 of its size. its a waste of space, which misses when you want to play the dungeon at the opponent edge.

about washed text in rough lined paper : you can see that (if you bought your glasses) for example at the lion, the ape, angel, pool of life cards, the weakness and divine intervention spell from dungeon.

after you cleaned the cards from what your finger puts on them, compare the dark grey background of ffg cards to the light grey, nearly white background of bi cards and see how much harder that makes to read the text.

hard to believe people are able not to see those differences, ordering those who see it new glasses !

I thought the new cards were to small as well but when i dug out the old first edition to compare they are virtually the same (1-2mm shorter) and as i played with that set for years im happy with the new size (and they are thicker and glossier).