I'm fairly new to card sleeves and was glad to find an online game store that had the yellow label card sleeves required for Talisman in stock (since FFG has been out of stock for a while now). I'm also a big Talisman fan and have all the expansions including the recently released Highland.

Now, after spending a few hours with a ton of sleeves and a ton of Talisman cards, I have a question. How the heck do you play/setup all those cards?! We all know there are a ton of adventure cards. Even *without* sleeves I used to only shuffle about half the cards to pick from. If we went through the whole 1/2 stack in a game I would bring out the other 1/2 to pick from.

Now, with card sleeves, it's more than just the adventure deck that is unruly. It's the adventure deck, the spell deck, the dungeon deck, and highland deck. They're all too big and slick to stand on their own or fit in any single tray slot. I managed to find a pretty good way to store everything ... I turned the cardboard insert in the Highland box upside down. In one half I put the Highland and Dungeon decks (on their sides), seperated by coin, fate and die baggies so they don't slide together. In the other half I have the adventure deck and all of the miniatures. In the original box I have all the smaller decks in the original tray spots (with all the strength/fate/life counters).

I haven't played a game since putting all the cards in their sleeves, so I'm still not sure what I will do. I'm sort of tempted to leave everything the way they're stored and draw from those decks in a style similar to Trivial Pursuit where you pick the first card that is at the front of the box. Has anyone else tried to conquer a fully sleeved Talisman with all expansions?

I realize this may be a bit hard to explain ... I am planning to take some pics of my storage layout and post them later when I get home from work.

Sounds like you've got a plan already, and everyone has a different approach. Those sleeves are nice, but they are a little slippery for stacking a deck. Containers for the decks are about the only way to go. For some other notions, see the following topics.

Really Useful Boxes

Card Boxes, Handmade

You might also take a look HERE for some other ideas. I'm sure you can find other vendors in your area. A typical playing/trading card box can hold two stacks of Talisman sized cards; you might need to stick in a divider between them to keep the stacks separate. You pull the stacks out when playing and stick them in one end with a piece of cardboard of paper behind the left one. Discards are place behind the this paper/cardboard marker, face out, so the top discard is always visible.

Just keep shuffling them, the slickness goes away pretty quickly. I don't have Highland yet, so I "only" have 288 card Adventure deck , but sleeved it stands at 15,5cm tall (6" and change). Hasn't tipped or fallen over once in the 63 games since sleeving. Although yes, I do shuffle that deck in two halves, seems 150-160 cards is about the limit I can overhand shuffle (at least with this thickness of sleeves, penny sleeve decks go over 200).

As for setup, I have the Adventure and Spell decks in the Inner Region (Pits and Crypt), with their discard piles trimming Crown of Command space down in size (not that CoC really needs a lot of space). Dungeon deck is in the Hall of Darkness space (since it is almost never landed on), Dungeon discard beside it. Remaining four decks (Purchase, Talisman, Align and Treasure) are above the Dungeon board's end on the Tavern-Village edge of the board (from my POV).

JCH,
Thanks very much for the links to boxes. I will definitely be making a purchase soon. And that custom made box is pretty incredible!

Dam,
Thanks for the heads up on the shuffling. I found that just letting the cards sit stacked against each other for a day or two reduced the slickness.

Oh, and here's a pic of how I store everything right now. The main Talisman box is on the left and the Highland expansion box is on the right. I actually store all the expansion boards under the cards and stuff in the Highland box, and the main board and paperwork in the main box.

Woops. That pic didn't come out as I had hoped. Here's the link:

http://www.funketyme.com/images/games/TalismanLayout.jpg