Hey all!

I'm hard at work putting together my next expansion to send to Talisman Island, and as part of that, I've been working on fleshing out my Harbinger deck.

Now, with my (heavily modded) Talisman set, Harbinger Cards are a very rare draw that only come into play when the world is about to end, so most of the cards I'm adding to it are pretty intense. More intense even than my Nether deck (which was the most intense I had for a while.)

While working on my Harbinger deck, I decided to try out this mechanic, which I really like. Board Killers. See the cards below for details, but basically, these very rare apocalyptic draws can really force the players to work together to keep the world from ending. Nothing motivates like the entire Highlands falling into an ocean of liquid magma, eh?

Included in these are also Board Killers for all my expansion side boards, the Rune Networks and Semblance (when using two core boards.) These will be released as part of my expansion when I get it finished (soonish) but I wanted to share them now before I finish everything. Enjoy!

I read this post before bed and after having yet another frustrating Digital Edition game with the Harbinger, so of course I had a nightmare about these cards. I ended up destroying the Region I was in almost immediately.

Which did get me thinking, what if they weren't immediate destruction? What would you think of recasting these as Lunar Events or something similar (Doomsday Event, Prophetic Event?) that will potentially be active for a couple turns. The players then have a chance to save the doomed Region by performing some task.in the allotted time or try to evacuate.

As a possible example, to save the Dungeon, players could perform a ritual a Summoning Circle by discarding Spells (helpfully gained by researching in the Library), if X Spells are on the Doomsday Event before time runs out, the players have saved the Dungeon. Saving the Isles might involve sacrificing a Talisman, a Relic, or a Treasure to the Volcano Goddess.

Oh man! Haha! Yikes!

Making them longer-term events could work. I'll have to think about that one. At the very least, it definitely has the appeal of "bam! That one guy suddenly has three turns to escape the Dungeon" and he's going "omg! omg! omg!" trying to escape. It's the terror of it that's exciting, haha. Of course, you also get that if one of the boards falls away (and you're dealing with new players who are suddenly horrified, realizing sudden board destruction is a thing) motivating them to end the apocalypse before they lose any more boards. I'll have to think about it and see what I come up with.

Also, I've modded my game so that being "killed" is not the end, it's just a delay. The afterlife basically allows you a quick, 1-2 turn Reincarnation (pick a new character, go to that character's starting space) or a slower Resurrection that brings your dead character back to life, which could be useful in a cooperative game where it's everyone against the boss and you don't have to worry about stuff being stolen. A lot my mods involve spiking up the board so it creates a challenging coop experience.

I guess it also depends on whether the Harbinger is a thing that's constantly out and about as normal, or if its something that only appears as part of one of your Ripples. I was thinking in terms of normal Harbinger rules, but if you're using these cards in a way that lets players knock the Harbinger out of the game for good, then you already have a way for them to prevent this destruction.

Since the Semblance is the bridge between the Light and Dark Worlds, how would players get from one to the other once its destroyed?

That's pretty much what I'm thinking, yeah. With the Ripple system, there's a path to end each Omen stack before completion. Conversely, there's also a (very) small chance that the players might have to deal with more than one Omen stack before they defeat the Boss. (I plan to add more Ripples eventually to dilute this chance.)

Good question! I thought about that. Both the Light and Dark world have a solid number of permanent Rune Gate Places, so even if the Ley Line Overload card is played and the Semblance is destroyed (very rare chance that both would occur) there are still Gates in the deck to link the worlds. There are also items that allow phasing from Light to Dark (like the Magic Mirror - upcoming, concept borrowed from Zelda: A Link To The Past.) Also, there are permanent gates in the corner board decks, allowing connections there as well, along with the hinterlands and deep realms (In my set, the Dungeon is in the Dark World and The City is in the Light, etc.) If players get separated by the Bifrost Asunder card, all roads still lead to Rome (as it were) as the Crown of Command spaces link to the same area where the Boss is. The Semblance is just the easiest and most direct way across.

Do you only play with both boards and an End Game boss? Otherwise, how do the double boards handle the standard Crown of Command ending? If I want to stop someone on the Crown in the Light World from casting the command spell while I'm in the Dark World, can I just go to my own Dark Crown and face off with them? Or do I have to get to the Light Crown first?

Hmmm, I guess with competitive play, you'd have to figure out what the best way for you is. My group only does cooperative play against bosses.