I browsed through the Highland deck (though quickly and not thoroughly) and found there were few enemies (with mostly low attributes), a lot of objects, and hardly anything dangerous. If you stick to the first third or so of the board, the spaces are not to dangerous either. I wonder if anybody thinks this region is too appealing early on (making the outer region by default underused)?

I understand that each new region will draw traffic from the other regions, and The Highland deserves it's piece of the pie. But is the Highlands getting too much traffic? Some points that help balance the Highlands:

• Most of the freebies are gold. This is one the one hand not as beneficial as other rewards, but also forces you back to the main board in order to turn the gold into something practical.
• The Highlands is not very good for leveling.
• There are dangerous spaces Higher up. Staying in the foothills restricts your movement, whereas venturing further puts you in more danger next turn.

The Highlands is still a novelty for us, so naturally we're there a lot anyway. I'd like to know how the rest of you are finding it, though?

On a related note, Do you guys find the middle region is suffering? It's got the Warlock Cave and the Temple and a way to the centre, but that's all it really has going for it - there are simply better options for mid to high level characters to top themselves off. Maybe the game could use more water bottles?

Well, I've had this feeling about the game in it's entirety. It seems like I never am in real trouble and always end up with more gold and objects than I know what to do with.

When I do die, it's death by other characters or because I press into the inner region too quickly. There is never a feeling like I am trying to survive on a harsh game board. I would prefer it that way as opposed to running through the game with ease.

The next expansion should be made to be brutal, like really, really brutal.

I'm in total agreement with Bonesaw. Our group has started looking at alternatives that would make the Middle Region desirable again, but so far what we've come up with is hinky and questionable. We are looking at the old 3E "experience" system (with some loopholes plugged), and any modifier to any Enemy from a board space (like the Runes) would gain you more points to trade on Strength and Craft... but even that has problems. There's definitely a tilt in the game towards free addons and powerups that aren't really earned through facing true dangers. It used to be that "realms" (expansion boards) were more dangerous than the main board, or maybe I just mistakenly remember it that wa.

But I think the issue of Brutal may be overstating things. I would like to see a return to opportunities with real challenge that make characters earn leveling up. Even so, if such were added in future expansions, they would get ignored by most for the easier addons acquired through what's already been added to the game. Toughing the game again would require adding more challenging cards to all encounter decks so far to decrease the ratio of freebies. It would need to be done through some legitimate analysis; the two realms added so far need to be addressed differently and not through a hodge-podge of deck expansions.

I just received the Highlands and must get a damaged board replaced. I looked through the Highlands deck and was kind of left underwhelmed. But thankfully the board isn't another back door into the CoC.

We really like the highlands board. We think it is a much needed avenue to get the game moving more smoothly ... EARLY on.

Before the highlands board it always seemed like there was always a transition time while gaining in power that the game could move very slowly (sometimes painfully slow) unless you get lucky with a couple nice items. A missed turn or two and maybe 5-6 turns without landing on anything very helpful ... you are probably looking at almost an hour of gone playtime in a 4+ player game with very little advancement. I have seen this scenario happen many times.

I do agree about making the middle region more enticing though, We are having pretty good success with the following house changes ...

1) We removed all talismans from the adventure card deck. We left the one in the dungeon deck.

2) The Sentinel will let you pass to the middle region by fighting him OR paying 2g to pass.

3) The Warlocks Cave will SELL a talisman for 2g OR give you a quest (card) to gain a talisman.

4) The Warlocks Cave will give you a quest (card) for 1g to gain a random treasure card from the treasure card deck.

5) Players holding a talisman get the following additional benefits, You may add +1 to rolls at the temple & you may heal 1 life for free at the castle.

This has really enticed our players to get to the middle region and get a talisman as soon as possible. The temple bonus and the free heal at the castle really seems to motivate players to get a talisman and hang out in the middle region. It also seems to help with the "nothing to spend gold on"

this may be intentional and thus give FFG scope to deliver smaller box expansions themed to all realms. so for example a small dragon themed set may include harder creatures and dragons etc that you add into the dungeon and higlands deck. Generally speaking FFG tend to release small expansions inbetween bix box ones.

I have played all the expansions together a few times and find the balance to be fine. the game mechanics do insist on player vs player strife and thats good, it's another level to the game, that said the game shouldn't be too difficult for players who have been killed and have to start over with a new character,

this self leveling ability of the game is its true inner beauty and shows Talsman off to be a great game. In many other games where players are allowed to take a new character after dying tend to be unbalanced for that player. in a couple of my games the winner has been someone who has had to start off with a new character mid game.

I''ve said it before and i'll say it again, if you find things too easy then you should already be at the crown of command and winning. The game is a race and is based on survival of the fittest, this is the game where you tread on everyone else to get the crown of command. There can only be one winner - you - no prizes for comming second.

The Thing In The Attic said:

Tsk-tsk:

"Iceman: The plaque for the alternates is down in the ladies room. "

The Thing In The Attic said:

You're kidding, right? Since when is the fittest the one who gets the most prosthetics and artificial boosts based on luck of the draw? Talisman is a lot more than a race to many, many players. If that weren't the case, there wouldn't be any effort put into the elements for game play beyond on the win.

We've only played a few games with the Highland, but haven't noticed that it unbalances anything yet. Some players tend to want to wander a bit in the Dungeon, while I head straight for the Highland (mostly for its novelty, but also because it's a good place to power up). All of us, I should mention, really like the "adventuring around and exploring things" part of the game a lot more than the outcome in terms of who wins, so this is great for our style of play. It does often take us 4 or 5 hours to play a game, but that just gives us ample time to create interesting narratives out of our characters' game play. We've played several games where nobody even bothered to win before someone had to go home. True, that leaves the story hanging a little, but nobody complained. The house rules we make up generally are there to make the tale more interesting, rather than redressing any balance issues (it's WAY more interesting to randomly fall into some part of the Dungeon with the "Burrow Worm" than just arrive at the entrance every time). Things are so random in Talisman that I don't really feel that there's much anyone could do to destroy the chances of anyone winning or at least coming out the other end with a great story about how he got toaded, fell into the Dungeon, and still managed to escape, killing several enemies with his toady battle skills before dying randomly upon exiting by being visited by Death. I'll use this space to (once again) put in a plug for the Horrible Black Void, the Great Leveller of all things. I really hope that makes it back into this edition of the game.

Nicely put, Z. My group may not like exactly the same elements as yours, but we too have had long evenings of tense moments and the ridiculous ones laughs... and we too have ended games without a CoC winner and not bothered with any rules for calculating a winner. The play was all of the fun, not the end.

JCHendee said:

I agree it’s not just a race,

I said that to describe the game in its simplest terms. other simplistic labels for the game would be chance, randomness, luck and fate... it's all of these and more, but in this game you make your own luck, you have a great deal of influence on your game, do you go left or right? Do you take that item or ditch it, do you cast that spell, do you fight that character, what do you take if you defeat him, do you explore the dungeon region or the highland region?

so when I say its a game about survival of the fittest I wasn't talking about lucky power-up’s I was talking about how you play the game, if you want to take in the sights and play dungeons and dragons with it that’s ok, but eventually you'll feel like 20th level characters in a 5th level dungeon.

Getting back to the thread at hand... Highland probably is easier and for a very good reason, it allows weaker characters to get a foothold into the game, however for my group last night it kicked our behinds in a tough game. We kept drawing strength or craft creatures in twos and three's with the same encounter numbers, and to top off the luck thing we kept rolling low on our attacks and high on the creatures. We had a great night and was playing the hand of doom alternate end in which nobody won. Valkyrrie got to the hand of doom killed me the Alchemist then killed himself with an unlucky roll on the hand of doom. The philophiser sent death to the vampire and took her last life and then the philophiser was killed by the inner region werewolf.

we have a group of about 6 players and 4 of them spend 80 % of their time in the highlands...and they are winning. highland has made many characters better. merchant rocks in highland, with all the trinkets. id like to see a new way to spend gold. ive heard that a previous edition city had a way to pay for abilities. this would be cool. learn to be a theif, learn wizardry( always have a spell ),learn to initiate psychic combat. these should be expensive. i would also like to see a way of reducing other characters str and craft tokens.

btw, i think the best feature of the highland is how it lets u beat the eagle king and teleport to any space in mid/outer region. NASTY

Had my second Highland game yesterday evening, featuring Alchemist, Highlander, Rogue, Vampiress. Alchemist was the winner, but didn't look overpowered. Vampiress dominated the game becoming a great Object/Follower hoarder. Rogue did bad, Highlander had his chance to win with a lucky rush to the Crown (defeat Eagle King -> gain Arnkell -> Portal of Power -> roll a 10 (Str.9) but use last Fate to pass the Portal -> teleport to Crown of Command with Arnkell -> draw Hand of Doom ending -> roll a 2 -> lose last Life), Alchemist won mostly thanks to some Spells.

We left Dungeon board out of the game and played with Highland, which was of course the most visited place with almost 80% of the deck exhausted. Vampiress found a ridiculous amount of Objects, most notably Trinkets, but failed to permanently improve her stats. This is what Highland is about: gain lots of Gold & lots of useful Objects/Trinkets, but not very focused on Str/Cft increase.

I like the mechanic of Trinkets but some of them feel overpowered, at least in comparison to base set Objects. A Trinket should give you temporary bonuses or be a discard-to-use item; Trinkets like Crystal Shard and Eagle's Talon give permanent bonuses and should have been treated like normal Objects, otherwise they make Belt of Strength look a little bit outdated. What I mostly felt unbalancing are the Luckstone/Dawnstone/Spellstone Trinkets. They give very valuable bonuses with no inventory consuming, too good for me.

Some Characters in the Highland look very powerful if the Highland board is used. Alchemist won't be that powerful in the Dungeon (where should he look for the Objects and Gold he needs? He'll stay on the main board and hope) and so will the Highlander. Rogue would be good to tackle the Dungeon (many chances for double-enemy encounters), while she feels under-used on the Highland. Sprite, Vampiress and Valkyrie look great for any situation, very strong Characters. Vampiress looks the best one for now, especially if compared to the Sorceress. The Beguile ability is random and Graveyard life replenishment is a lot more "solid". However, she's not unbalanced by any means.

But I think opinions are always affected by the game events and final outcome. In both games I saw Rogue suffer and never use her double-the-Strength-value ability because she never found multiple Strength Enemies. In both games I saw Highlander as a possible winner but not good enough, perhaps because he never had the Spells he needed (not too many ways to gain Spells in the Highland), while the other Characters were always quite comfortable (Sprite won the first game by toadifying Sorceress on CoC, Alchemist won the second with a successful rush against Vampiress). Valkyrie still waits her chance to play.

NIce write-up, Warlock. Thank you for that.

Yes Warlock I enjoyed the read. I still havn't picked up this exp. I need to try soon though.

Regarding the racial issue:

Talisman is a very light strategy game, and as such it attracts a casual gaming crowd. But whether you acknowledge it or not, Talisman is a competition - hence the declaration of a winner (or sometimes a draw). The object is to beat your opponents. If the game seems easy, it is also that much easier for your competition, which in turn makes it relatively more difficult for you. Hence the race aspect of the game.

If it is harder to level up, this doesn't make the game any more challenging - pressure is alleviated by the fact that your opponents are struggling to level up too. Difficulty in leveling makes the game not more challenging, but simply longer and more epic. Some people prefer that. I do not, because such a structure widens the gap between the characters who are doing well and those that are not. But this is really a matter of tastes.

On topic:

My concern with the Highlands is not that it makes the game too easy (by which I mean fast), but rather that it may be so friendly as to obsolete the other regions (particularly the outer region). If this is true, the highland board removes variety rather than adding it.

Having played a bit more, I think it's probably okay. Stronger characters may be lured to other regions in search of more enemies, and anyone who's there long enough will want to come out eventually and spend their gold (especially if we ever get a city board). The outer region is at the very least an essential through fare from region to region, but has some appeal beyond that too.

The Thing In The Attic said:

That's a good point. We play with the optional rules that each character starts with a bonus strength or craft plus the rule that five points of enemies makes a level up. Without these rules, I would be very pleased with a less dangerous region for low level characters.

I would disagree on equating fast to easy, though some of your other points are savvy where general players as a whole are concerned. There are plenty of games that are easy to learn and play that are not fast. There are some that are long to play. And difficulty is not always a factor, and doesn't have to be, in game length. The true difficulty is what you've pointed out without acknowledging it... stronger vs. weaker "starting" characters.

If the Highlands is there in part for the weaker characters (and I'm not so sure that was the intent, in part or whole), then that would further point to a lack of mechanics level considerations in design balance, implying that new characters are being created off the cuff without enough consideration of the game as a whole. And again, that may not be the case. But it points to the Highlands as being primarily or secondarily for weak characters as being erroneous. That it worked out that way may be seen by some as a desired effect, but I would hope that would just be happenstance.

Back to easy and hard, and fast and slow. The game has always had a mechanic for that: Trophy Count to S/C token. And any leveling up of characters that comes to cheaply makes doing so meaningless; might as well just strip out the Enemies from the deck, have at it for the magical and prosthetics boosts, and then players could really concentrate on the race and beating each other. I like the Highlands in general, and I do consider it as a region to be a solid step up from the 3E Mountains... but it is easy, undergunned in some ways. I'm not saying it should be deadly, but there's a lot room between easy and hard... and deadly. This has to do with an encounter deck, and this encounter deck needs some work.

Hopefully, there will be some options for that in future expansions. On the easy to hard to deadly range, it would be nice to have more options to customize encounter decks as much as possible. There are times when it would be nice to have a small pure Enemies (or maybe some other cards) supplement whereby one could quickly add in or take out a specific, icon-marked set of cards to beef or tone down a deck for a certain mix of players. Just like you have customized the startup of characters, customizing the start up of other game dimensions would be good too!

After playing many games with all current expansions, I would say that highland is well balanced with the dungeon and the inner region path.

When we first started playing with highland, the current fad had been to beat the lord of darkness by 8+ and teleport directly to the crown. This was making the inner region very lightly used, as it was seen as just as quick to snowball a medium level character in the dungeon as try to get a talisman and go through the inner region.

Therefore, when highland came out, with eagle king much easier to beat, much earlier than lord of darkness, and a chance at Arknell to TP directly to the crown with only an average 8 in a stat, this quickly became the "in" way to win. So much so that we toyed with houserules to restrict the ability to teleport directly to the CoC.

However, what the arknell really did was point out to us players that we were wasting a lot of time in the dungeon snowballing to crazy stats before entering the CoC.

Since then characters have been going for the arknel, going for the inner region path, and going for a high dungeon win, mostly depending on what happens to be the most obvious path for their character in their particular situation in the game, sometimes switching mid-game to different strategies.

Overall, when the dust settled, we've seen at least two games where there is one character about to enter the CoC through the inner region, another character about to teleport with the flight potion/arknell and a third character about to be able to trounce the Lord of Darkness by 8+.

The fact that all of these three ways to get to CoC are back in use and apparently require about the same amount of turns to complete tells me that the highland is well balanced with the rest of the game, and that no change need be made to the inner region for heroes to use it.

Incidentally, I was thumbing through the treasures again and noticed the second ability on the cloak of feathers is better than the arknell. None of our heroes have ever taken the cloak of feathers as a prize, preferring the book of lore, wand of dragonfire, totem staff, bag of holding, etc. Has anyone else noticed the arknell used extensively and the cloak of feathers untouched?

I have yet to pick up this expansion, and I'm hearing a lot of mixed reveiws, some say it's boring and just another outer region, and some say it's great and good for treasures and other magic objects. Can somebody tell me their experiance, I don't want to buy this expansion if it's a bad one.

Hye GRZ. I think it is worth it, though I agree with almost all of the reasoned criticisms of it. How's that for a rec?

Honestly, it is good to have for how the land grows with each additional realm. Overall, I think it leans too much to freebies, and it is too easy (and I'm not just talking about Enemies), the abundance of gold is pointless with nowhere to spend it that you can dependably get to (yet) without magic, but it adds variety to the game just the same. There is new adventure to be had in the Highlands, and the more of that you add, the more there is something for everyone in any mixed group of players all playing different characters in each game.

Go ahead and buy it; you will not be disappointed overall. Just don't expect the Highlands to ultimately transform the game in any way. It's just an expansion, and combined with the Dungeon and others to come, you'll be happy to see your Land grow no matter what. That's how I feel about it, and I don't regret buying it even for its shortcomings.

Well, as long as the Highlands is fun to play, which is the point of this game, theni'll be buying it soon.

The hoarders and racers will always like anything for the free toys and boosts, of course... that's all they play for. But along the way its does have a little bit of ambiance and surprises. For those who don't expect it to be mind blowing or the be all and end all, then yeah, it's fun.

I'll be picking it up then. thanks.