A frined just picked it up for me from London. Should be playing it in a few hours!

Geoff

Awesome and Congrats! Let is know how it goes.

You are aware that failure to produce a full review will result in us throwing you into the Black Void?

Hi,

The figures are pretty good and on the same scale as the 2nd edition minis. Checked the adventure deck and it is different!

There are only 8 bag of golds rather than 13

There is an extra Wraith

There are 2 new cards! (2 of each)

Shadow Craft 2

and Lemure Craft 1.

Neither have any special rules

I guess we needed more Craft beasties but not sure on the reduction in Gold

Geoff

Cidervampire said:

Excellent! So there are new cards, and yes we did need a few more craft cards in the deck in my honest opinion.

Also, what do you mean by only 8 bags of gold?

SubElement said:

I can only assume he means 8 bag of gold cards as opposed to 13

Brando said:

Oh, duh... So glaringly obvious now you said it... I dunno, we did find ourselves getting a ton of gold during games, we'll see how it plays I suppose.

I actually prefer the reduction in gold.. there was too much of it anyway. Less chance of getting healed

I've probably missed a few but the changes in Adventure cards that I spotted are:

Cross - works on all spirits but you can't keep them as trophies

Poltergeist and the Witch are followers.

Serpent is an animal

Siren only works on that region, no characters are immune

Witch - a roll of a 6 allows you to replinish all your fate points

the Enchanter, Fairy and Phantom allow you to choose to gain a fate.

Gnome also allows you to evade in the hills

Pixie also lets you evade in the woods

A roll of 2 in the Shire gives you a fate point

The only change in spells that I spotted was that if you cast immobility on a character it has to be before they move.

I like the way they have brought more keywords into the rules such as clearly labeling Weapons, adding the word Attack to cover Battle (rather than combat) and psychic combat., creatures to cover anything other than characters that attacks you. This allows rules and cards to more clearly reference things. The only one I think they made a goof with is Armour. It was fair enough putting shields and helmets into the armour category to repesents objects that can save your life but they have also called Armour Armour rather than calling it a suit of armour. This may cause a bit confusion as to whether a card means Armour as in Armour or Armour as in the category.

Geoff

Thanks for the preview and commentary... though it does make me grumble a bit more in waiting on my delayed Upgrade. Seriously though, thanks for the detailed peek!

Cidervampire said:

I also like less Gold. 10% of the BI desk was gold. Way to much.

More Craft's are good. but only a 2 and a 1? Surely they could have been a 3 and 4?

akuma508 said:

Maybe they felt bad for the poor Troll! In seriousness though my guess is it was more about being able to level up on craft with the correct change and hence not waste as much from the few craft creatures available.

Picked up my copy today. I notice that the Raiders now only take your Gold, and not any Objects.

My storage tray has an odd attribute. There are eight slots for Adventure card-sized cards, but six of them have "ledges" that significantly decrease the depth available for holding cards. What is the purpose of this?

Raiders just taking your gold... not so excited about that change

Cidervampire said:

Wow they are some pretty big changes. So if I put it correctly when a character dies, the Poltergeist and Witch now stay on the board and don't go back to the deck, they can be mesmerised (if you want to?) and you can sacrifice them to the vampires?

Also, you can't cast Immobility on a character to end a combat?

Gentlegamer said:

That's a big one for us. Everyone FEARED the deck bigtime until raiders was popped out. That was an almost instant death card.

SubElement said:

Thas a welcome change... This stops stalemates, which was rare but annoying end to the game.

Wow, some big changes there. Definitely nice to see more Craft opponents, and things that can boos anyone's Fate. IMO the Raiders needed to be toned down, but I do hope it won't become a general tendency...

I thank you for your time

Lord Gorthuar de Veris

Cult of Nagash

The Raiders change does concern me a bit, but perhaps only for nostalgia reasons as it was a good card to bring the leader back to the pack sometimes.

What are some of the new powers the characters have compared to the 4th edition? I noticed in a preview that the troll can now regenerate, for example.

Gentlegamer said:

First Toads, now another staple of Talisman get sissified? Raiders and Cursed by Hag were one the few cards that could peg down a character loaded with stuff/followers. Now all you lose is gold? Sigh .

About the new Raiders card....

I have mixed feelings on this one. Many game changes I've heard of or seen... including Warlock Quest cards coming in the Reaper expansion... are geared to speed up the game. I understand this, as many pure boardgamers don't want to take the hours that some enjoy in playing the game the old hard way. Talisman has always been about putting the boardgaming before the RPG origins that inspired it. But perhaps it goes too far when the dangers aren't really dangers anymore.

FFG is trying (in small ways) to address flexibility of play rules. The recent article on the Quest cards offers different ways to use them (or not at all). Then again, the Warlock's Cave once reach has always been (1) the only way to take action to get a talisman and (2) some very paltry costs and ways to do so.

Let's hope this small tendency towards optional play continues. But when cards are rewritten, there's nothing to be done about it. Everyone I've played with has had a love/hate relationship with the Raiders card. But it was always kept in. Some rousing play occurred when some hoarding character drew it. Then the race and brawl was on to get to that lost hoard. Such a shame to lose that when any group of players that disliked it could just remove that one card from the deck. No one is going to race and brawl to get to a few gold.

As with ALL the versions past, you can always house rule the Raiders back up to snuff......

Mine's in the mail. MIGHT play it tommorrow night if it gets here in time.....

After reading the rules the other day, I'm finding I like the new rules. The game really could use an upshift in speed.

I trust John's changes. His other stuff like Tide of Iron is solid.

The only thing I'm mourning is the disconnect from the GW flavor.

Maybe an expansion will have an alternate Raiders card that has them steal all your Objects, but not Gold.

Has anyone had the same issue with the storage tray (six of the slots have "ledges" that keep the cards from going all the way down)?

I remember the first time i draw the raider, I thought I had read wrong. How could this be? They stole all your items and you could do nothing about it, It felt so unfair. And every one laughtet att me becouse got so sad about losing the runesword i just gained an boosted of how much I where going to kill everyone else:P

The fun thing whit the raiders is that they start a mini game, a rase for the their loot. Why couldent they just be convertet to enemies whit strenght 16^^ then ona had at least a fighting chance:P. Now they are stupied raiders that only taces gold when they could have stripped you naked and spanked you in the middle of the night:P

I will miss the ninja kick ass raiders.