Last weekend I hosted a Talisman (base game board) and Cataclysm dual game. We did not use any of the extra map expansions, but used most of the "small box" expansions (Blood Moon, Reaper, Frost March, Sacred Pool, Firelands, but not Harbinger).

I shuffled all of the Adventure Cards except for the Cataclysm cards together into one deck. Then I divided that one deck in half, and then transferred a few from one deck to the other to offset the number of Cataclysm cards that would be added into the now smaller deck. This made it so that each game board had its own Adventure Deck.

We placed the Time Card on a spinner between the two game boards. When it was day on one board, it was night on the other. Since both games were going simultaneously, this meant that the Time Card could switch in the middle of your turn. We instituted the rule that if you declared you were entering battle/psychic combat before the Time Card switched then you got whatever adjustment it was according whatever the time was when you declared it. That way if it switched while you were still adding your bonuses you didn't have to start over.

The Reaper and the Werewolf could be sent back and forth between the boards if you rolled a 5 on their respective cards. This happened a couple of times. This meant that you could be visited by either one in the middle of your turn. Whatever you were doing you had to stop and roll on the chart.

I've got to say, I haven't had this much fun playing Talisman in a long time. There were nine of us (5 on one board and 4 on the other), and we got to see a lot of cards that we don't normally get to see when playing just one deck. And it was interesting to see how the Rune Sword wound up in one deck and the Fate Stealer wound up in another.

One thing we all noticed, though, is that enemies seemed to be a lot more sparse on account of this. You would think the ratio would remain pretty much the same, but there seemed to be a real deficiency in that regard. It took a while for most of us to start building up our characters.

Each game had its own random ending. One board opted for a hidden ending. The other opted for a revealed ending.

All-in-all, this was a very fun way of playing, and it was a great way to have more than 6 people playing. I would highly recommend it if you have a large gaming group.