So my roommates and I just finished another game of Talisman using The Dungeon and The Firelands expansions. We've played with Dungeon once before, and this was our first go at Firelands. I was the Swashbuckler, Roommate A was the Warlord, and Roommate B was the Dervish.

From the start the game was not kind to RB. First couple turns forced her onto the Black Knight for one gold, lost her Water Bottle somehow, and she never encountered more than one creature at a time, and even a single one was rare. We kept getting swarmed by Strangers, Places, and Followers (methinks a hefty reshuffle is in order). RA was a bit crazy and delved straight into the Dungeon because she wanted to keep experiencing all the fun stuff in there, and last time she somehow managed to survive as a raw character in there for several turns, and figured she'd get that lucky again. Sort of did, but she didn't get much out of it, and lost a couple lives in the process. One of the last things she did before leaving the dungeon for the first time was reveal a Strength 10 creature that allowed her to Evade, which left it face up.

Then the game just decided to throw everything at me that I needed. I got a Stranger that allowed me to take a faceup card as a trophy (we play with the 5-trophy rule to speed things up, so that was 2 Strength right off the bat). I pulled some decent items and creatures that I could kill, and took full advantage of my ability to use the Fields and taking extra turns. I was the first to enter the dungeon, and thanks to a Riding Horse I absolutely sailed through it. And since we were playing with a hidden ending, and it was only one of two possibilities, I picked my treasure entirely based off of that, nabbing myself the Clockwork Owl. That only made things worse for my roommates, as I was able to go to any space I wanted for the most part, and only delayed on moving to the Inner Region because I got down to two life thanks to some bad card draws, and didn't want to chance Dice with Death with no Fate and 2 life. Instead I powered up even more, got some gold and my life back, and made a second dungeon run. At that point RA, who had gotten some good conscript numbers and some decent items, had attempted her first full dungeon run. I zoomed pas her thanks to the Riding Horse and my Swashbuckler abilities, got to the Lord of Darkness when she was just a few spaces away, teleported directly to the Crown of Command, and revealed the Spread Flames ending that forced her out of the dungeon. With the two of them Strength-focused, and me at 20+, the ability to chase them down with the Riding Horse+Clockwork Owl, AND the Ifrit Cloak making me immune to Fireland Tokens, there was little chance for them to win. Their only hope was the Warlord who was at 17 Strength thanks to all her followers and items, and I had grabbed the Elixer of Life on my second dungeon win to safeguard against losing too much life.

So obviously we played a bit more cautiously than needed. I for sure could have gotten to the Crown early if I hadn't been scared of only having two life, and it took several turns for me to get healed up. Either of the two of them could have made a run for it themselves, but RA wanted to go through and get a dungeon treasure first, and RB is never too confident in her ability to survive on top of the cards not giving her much for the first half of the game. It wound up running longer than it should have, and it didn't help that Spread Flames...is honestly a really bad ending with only three people I think. It's hard for the tokens to spread effectively, and with me having the Ifrit Cloak and RB having an item that let her move a Fireland Token to another space, the only way for me to win was to slowly chase RB down and whittle her health away. I had fun, but that's because I was so powerful that I had victory sealed before I even made that second dungeon run, probably. The other two? Not quite as much, especially by the end.

Thanks for the report.

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Not a good ending for three players? Not sure why you think that.

Also, the tokens don't spread?

I'm not sure if you read this ending right. Once you end your move, you place the tokens
on every space around you basically.

Yes, I guess the owl helps evading them to an extent,
but I don't think it would work long.

Your roommates might have also made a tactical error as you revealed the ending.

They should've spread out as well, because that way, you would not have been able
to encounter both of them to fight and kill them.

You really played pretty carefully, yes.
We don't usually have such a high strength/craft like that in our games,
because we go for the win much sooner.

Guess that's also part of the experience (you have or not).

Ah, the Ifrit Cloak. In the scenario you described, I would call the person to have it
extremely lucky.

However, the game has tons of effects that can make you lose objects and other
characters certainly have lots of ways to take them from you.

Sometimes, the stars align just right for one player.
It's part of the randomness.

Not sure if it would do any good, but I do recommend advising player RA
to stop rushing into the dungeon every game.

You may get lucky some time, but you can easily die before you even
get out of there - once your luck turns.

About that other object to move (remove ?) firelands tokens,
it wasn't the Dousing Rod or the Taweez Amulet by any chance?

I'm asking because you usually have to get rid of those
after you've used them once.

You can of course try to get the rod back,
but that is not that easy.

Concerning player RB, she should've probably tried to leave
the middle region as soon as possible right at the start of the game.

With just the adventure cards you had in play, it gets even
more dangerous there.

Then there's the 3-player "problem". Yes, in Talisman as well as probably every
other game, with 3 players, you always have the risk of running into the "king/queen" scenario.

The only way out of it here is for the other two to try and dethrone the player
who is ahead, which will probably not be much fun for that player either.

Thanks for the game report. Very enjoyable.

I would back up Lorinor of suggesting to your friend not to go into the Dungeon if your base or near base level. I've come ut of there on more than one ocassion,battered and bruised because I was not strong enough. It can be a very nasty envoiroment for a low level character.

Also when we play, we adopt a "common sense" approach to the rules re , normal real world equipment i.e how it is used and where.

So we don't allow mules,horse and carts, War or ridng horses into the Dungeon, which I think stems from years of playing D+D in my teens. Never mind the physical aspect of the size of the thing in narrow torch lit corridors but I'd be worried about traps, floor hugging nasties and banging me noggin on the ceiling!

Just a thought for future games.

So, in order.

1) Yes, we did read the ending right. The issue was is that I was Immune, so it didn't matter where I went, so I could stack up on the other players and we wound up doubling a lot of tokens on spaces that way since we both started a turn on the same space. One of the players had an Atlas, I don't remember the full name, that let her move one Firelands Token from her space to anywhere else in the Region, so she started stacking them all up on the same space as well. So the flames were spreading out there, it's just that with only three people and the items we had they tended to get clustered up. More people would have spread them much faster as well, as we went around the three of us for several turns without really getting the tokens spread out. That's what I meant by the flames not spreading.

2) I had a riding horse and the Clockwork Owl; there was no evading me. I could roll and (unless I played them wrong) decide almost exactly where I wanted to go at any time so long as I had the movement to do it, which I often did.

3) Our game went long because I was overly cautious in going to the Inner Region thanks to having low life, the game would've ended with more reasonable power levels had I not. I also had an issue where I needed to finish a Warlock Quest because I needed a Talisman, so that held me back from making my run as well.

4) RB did try to leave the Middle Region ASAP. That's just how mean the dice rolls were to her.

5) I tried telling RA to not go into the dungeon, citing exactly what you two told me. She said she didn't listen to "power gamers" despite being one herself. She just wanted to explore and enjoy the dungeon, and she paid the price for it. Maybe next time she'll be more cautious, but I wouldn't bet on it.

6) I will definitely consider that houserule for the Dungeon, though I do find it a bit curious considering how they'd be usable in other corner expansions like The Highlands or The Woodlands. I'll grant you The City, Dungeon, and maybe Woodlands make them impractical, but maybe not, and it seems a bit weird to say certain advantages don't apply in certain regions while they do in others. Also, with your rule do you force players to abandon their Horse&Cart, Mules, etc. outside the dungeon, free for anyone else to pick up? Especially with the followers that allow you to carry more items, it seems to defeat the purpose of the dungeon, which is to gain a slew of useful objects. Maybe it balances out, forcing you to only carry some of them, but it seems to defeat the purpose of having the ability to carry more items in the first place.

Owl + Riding Horse? - Nice combo.

That's one of the reasons we like to play
with face down random treasure draws.

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"There was no evading me."

That's where your roommates made the same wrong assumption.
This ending gives you the option to get to one of two regions,
but you can't leave the region you are in.

"Player 1" should've chosen the middle region, "Player 2"
should've chosen the outer region.

Which gives you ("Player 3") the choice who you want to hunt down and kill,
but the other player is safe from you.

"The Atlas":

Ah, it was that item. Still wonder how she was able to use it every turn,
since you have to spend 1 fate each time you use it.

"Dungeon Rush":

Figured as much from what you told us before.
Though I would actually not call my group "power gamers".
(No offense taken.^^)

Yes, we play because we want to win, but also because we enjoy the journey itself.
We don't have any set moves we do every game or some kind of pattern we follow.
That would be boring.

We try to adjust to wherever the game takes us.
The randomness is one of best things about Talisman for us.

Of course we also take risks sometimes,
but even with just a bit of experience,
you know that some things are too much of a gamble,
if you don't want to lower your own chances of winning the game.

I know that some people like to play the risky way though,
so of course we could have a player like this here.
I wouldn't know without seeing the game being played.

Ahhhh, so there were a couple of misreads on our part. Misread the ability to travel between regions (thought we just couldn't go into the Dungeon or Inner Region), and missed the part about Fate needing to be used with the Atlas. She still could've been using it most of the time she had been anyway, as she had a good chunk of Fate saved up though, thanks to the Pool of Fortune popping up for her. But yeah, note to self, really read all the cards just in case.

And yeah, I think random treasures might be better. Might decide to remove the Talisman from there though, because that's just an awful treasure compared to everything else.

And got another game in with my tabletop group last night. Only used The Reaper and Dungeon expansions since the couple we played with hadn't experienced The Dungeon yet. And this time the board was exceedingly unkind. We started with the Wizard, Swashbuckler, Knight, Dervish, and Gladiator. The Knight was the first to die, losing a life and then having a very unfortunate encounter with Death (someone forgot to keep a Fate on hand), and was replaced with the Dark Cultist. Next was the Dervish, who slowly got whittled down over the course of the game and eventually ate it on a random encounter, being replaced with the Prophetess. Finally the Gladiator near the end of the game, who also got whittled down bit by bit, and by that point it was so late that we didn't bother replacing him. Only the Swashbuckler and Wizard managed to do well, the Swashbuckler taking full advantage of Fields and extra turns to get some respectable power, and the Wizard simply by not dying and getting a decent amount of Craft monsters. Since we had limited time, we eventually decided that whoever beat the Dungeon first would win, which turned out to be the Swashbuckler. She would have grabbed the Talisman as her reward, as no one had drawn one or gone for any Warlock Quests to get one yet, which would have given her a clear run to the Crown while the rest of us were still in the Dungeon. About the only chance would have been the Wizard, as he had a couple of useful spells and might have been able to get a Talisman in time if he picked a decent item from the Dungeon.

Some observations from this game:

-The early game really sucks, and I'm probably going to either look into picking up Highland soon or start with Cataclysm to help that. The weaker monsters are getting too spread out in the Adventure Deck, and Events and Strangers are only situationally helpful depending on what you get. We got almost no Objects or Magic Objects either for a long while either, and a lot of 5-point monsters kept showing up that kept beating people on good rolls. Even with the 5-point turn in, it took a long while to see anyone gaining stat points.

-I feel like going into the Dungeon adds more time to the game than it's necessarily worth. By the time someone is out of the Dungeon, they're more than powerful enough to head for the Crown, but if they haven't already they need to find a Talisman. Maybe we've just been getting unlucky, but we've not drawn or been gifted any Talismans from the Adventure Deck in recent plays, and just getting to the Warlock Cave, much less completing whatever quest he gives, can be very time consuming.

-The Swashbuckler is either insanely lucky in our games, or is just that powerful. I'd have thought they'd be about equal to the Dervish, and yet both games it's the Swashbuckler that comes out on top, and by no small margin. I'm guessing the two cards in Fields spaces helps significantly, as it gives the Swashbuckler more opportunity to draw Enemy cards and get their extra turn.

-Does the Dungeon Deck count for card effects that cite Adventure Cards? We said no, but now that I'm thinking about it we might have misplayed that. I thought they were considered separate decks.

-Getting the wrong spell on the Wizard sucks. If he can't cast it, then there's no way for him to take advantage of his ability that lets him keep drawing spells. I know there are some people here that say people hold onto their spells for too long, and I tend to agree, but when I'm sitting here with Reflection and no one in the group is casting any spells because...well, so few of them have spells to begin with, it means I'm just stuck with it (guess who played the Wizard!).

Another game, yay!!

(Wish my group would finally manage to get get the first game of the year going already.
It's been very slow planning this time around.)

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Sound like you got really unlucky this time.

We had something like this happen a couple of games,
but worse, as we only got enemies starting from 5 up to
ridiculous numbers of craft/strength for the early game.

It can happen, as variance dictates.

You might also want to consider manipulating the card distribution
a bit before you shuffle them for a game.

Same numbers on top of each other do sound a bit suspicious.

Yes, the Highlands might help with the early game, in terms of people spreading out more,
because having 5 or more people drawing cards on the main board will inevitably
result in some of them not drawing enemies / not drawing some they can beat.

There really are not that many straight up Talisman cards within the base adventure cards,
but there are others that can give you one in certain circumstances.

Yes, the Warlock Cave remains the main source to get one of them;
also, I do realize with just the expansions you have at your disposal,
it's not that easy to get there.

[ I guess the easiest path would be to get an Axe and get to a Woods space.
That is, if you can't beat / evade the Sentinel. ]

The Dungeon:

Talking about randomness and variance again - yes, I know, I'm repeating myself^^ -
we have had games where no one or just one or two players went there,
but we've also had plenty of games where the region saw a lot of action.

Of course, as of now, we do use multiple corner boards,
so that enables even more variance for every game.

Speaking of which, adding Highlands might provide easier access to the middle region as well,
since there are some cards in the Highland Deck that can take you there
or give you a Talisman.

Beating the Boss of that region includes a teleport that can take you
to the middle region as well.

The Dungeon cards are, rules wise, considered to be adventure cards, yes.

Sometimes you do really have to watch the wording, because there are effects
that are only applied to adventure cards of a certain region.

So far, I can only agree with you about the Swashbuckler.
We have seen him be incredibly swingy in both directions,
however he hasn't won many games around here.

But that might just be because he got unlucky
trying to finish the game and died (multiple times).

Yes, getting a spell with no target on a spell cycling character sucks,
but sometimes the fates are cruel.

There are cards / spaces in other expansions that allow you to sell spells
you don't want or can't use [for ex.: Frostmarch (adventure cards) or City (board space)].

See, I know in theory there aren't that many Talisman cards in the Adventure Deck, but for most of the games I've played a majority of our Talismans have come from the Adventure deck. That's starting to change now that I have more Adventure cards in there though, so I'm glad I at least have the Warlock Quest cards from The Reaper. I'm also looking forward to Cataclysm thanks to all of those new and fancy talismans that make doing the quests worthwhile.

It's not that we got a lot of the same number cards, it's more that we just kept getting 4-6 Str/Cft monsters and bad rolls on them, which made it rather difficult to power up. Most of the Strangers and Places we found were also rather unhelpful, so I figure it all comes down to a bad draw for most of us. It didn't help that the placement of some cards made things rather difficult for movement, as we usually got stuck between having to land on either a Place/Stranger that wasn't helpful, losing health in the Chapel/Graveyard depending on alignment, or having to take a risk on the Forest/Crags. Several rounds I wound up with no way to draw Adventure cards, as did some other players. Except, again, the Swashbuckler. Did I forget to mention she also got a Riding Horse? She was bounding across the regions with no problems whatsoever. I know it's relatively tame compared to some characters, but the potential to draw 2-3 Adventure cards per turn really ramps up the ability to get good stuff.

I think my group is just too afraid of the Inner Region. We very rarely get our hands on a Water Bottle to make the Desert safe, and the Runes spaces tend to be a bit worrying to run into. When the only thing worth going for in there is the Warlock Cave and the Temple, and the other spaces are much more threatening, we tend to want to avoid the risks.