So, me and my buds recently got ourselves a 4th revision talisman alongside highland, dungeon and reaper expansions, and we've been having a couple of conflicts here and there, most of them we've managed to handle lookin up the forums but we still had some issues in specific moments and we'de like ur ruling about it.

since my memory fails, I'm just gonna ask what I can remember atm and add more questions later.

so last night we had a game that ended in battle royal, so here a few questions we had :

1. Battle Royal states you can choose to fight in battle or psychic combat, does this mean characters who cannot engage in psychic combat (example, valkyrie, thief) can attack a character with psychic combat? or only characters like wizard and vampiress who can initate psychic combat may choose this option? the reason we're asking this is because theres variant cards and spaces that say a bit different wordings, but imo all mean exactly the same.

dark lord, eagle king(both space and ending), cerebus and battle royal (theres probably more i just cant recall from the top of my head) all have both craft and strength, but some state "may choose to fight in strength of craft" or just say "x has y strength and craft", imo they all refer to if u have the ability to engage in psychic combat then u can choose craft, else u can only fight normal battle of strength, what do u think?

2. this question is split into a few parts, first 'land on abilities' occur when u LAND ON, this means they dont end ur turn (like sorceress beguile)?

but if im not mistaken they force u to 'encounter' the character, so, i suppose a thief or vampiress cant 'land on' someone else and steal object/follower without then attacking the player (e.g encountering the space instead of the character they used a special skill on)

about this, in the end of our game, we had assassin, thief, vampiress and valkyrie in battle royal (assssin summoned every1)

now I believe i read somewhere (maybe it was only relevant to 2nd edition) that the assassin may use assassinate when he 'lands on' the CoC space (if someone is there) but afterwards he cannot use it anymore when he keeps fighting there, is this relevant? (even so that would mean he can only use it once )

the real question is, the battle royal doesnt really have 'turns', we would really like some clarifications about it, we realize every attack is a different battle, but are there 'turns' and if so do they end, the reason we're asking this is also cause when the vampiress and thief got their chances to 'attack' (after winning) they said, since they 'encounter' the character, hence encountering the space, its like they 'landed on' them, and they can use steal object/follower, can they use their special skill in this case, because theres no movement done, they aint really 'landing on'?

3. Whats the rules about healing in battle royal/coc (if theres any difference) , for example, our valkyrie had st.josephine, which he can discard at any moment to heal himself to his full life value (like heal spell), can he use it? or are heals blocked inside the battle royal?

4. speaking of valkyrie, are there any final clarifications about her controversial talent of ressurecting followers?

we agreed that her talent refers to any follower that 'dies' in any way (since almost all cards say discarded regardless) she may ressurect him, for example, if the grim reaper forces u to lose a life or a follower, we assume he's not taking his follower for a walk, he's taking his life, hence he dies, just like 'lose 1 life or 1 follower' events, chasm, and so on.

the dillema is regarding her 'may resurrect EACH follower ONCE PER TURN', this phrasing is super-confusing and we would really love to have some clarification towards it, our valkyrie just happend to have the friendly giant aswell, which she would just resurrect each time he died in combat for her, though she had much strength she didnt use him much.

thx in advance

Got a few more questions :

1) Swashbuckler's Ability grants him an extra turn after defeating an enemy, lets say he draws 2 cards, one craft and one strength, he defeats one, but then loses/standoff the other monster, does he still play an extra turn afterwards? and if theres an item under them, what happens? can he encounter the same monster again or does he have to move on?

2) Similar scenario with dark cultist, defeating an enemy grants a wish, could u defeat one monster, get a wish (say +1 craft, lucky!) and then fight the other monster, or would u need to defeat/standoff the other monster before being able to summon the dark forces to grant you a wish (or 2 if u win both)?

3) Alchemist (Character), I've been reading around the forum and seeing a lot of ppl say he's really powerful, we only had 2 players play him briefly and I was wondering what makes him so powerful, we probably didnt understand how his special abilities work, the way we played him was that you may alchemise -as much as u want- in one turn, but it is intead of your turn, e.g. : you can turn ur sword into gold and then purchase a spell and turn ur trinket into gold and purchase some life, all in one turn, but afterwards you cannot roll a die for movement and end ur turn, was this the right way to play him?

4) Alchemist (Follower), theres many items like opals and such which says you may turn them into gold at the alchemist in the city, some of my friends for some reason decided the alchemist follower is not as professional as the alchemist follower because he is not in the city, and because of the specification in the card he cannot hand in the amount of gold offered by the item, they said he is like the alchemist character though, which can turn objects to 1 gold and magic objects to 3 gold, i'm disagreeing and I think he's just like the alchemist in the city, its just frigging stones and he's an alchemist, he doesnt need ******* tools and a building to do it!

ShikukuWabe said:

Hello,
I'm trying to reply to your questions point-wise. My answers are not official but I hope I could help you on most of these matters.

1) In Battle Royale every Character is allowed to wage battle or psychic combat. The attacking Character chooses which type of attack.

Enemy Cards like Cerberus or creatures like Lord Of Darkness/Eagle King have a Strength and Craft value, but the Character encountering them has always the option to choice in which attribute they will fight. There are Enemies like the Eastern Dragon or the Felclaw that force a Character to attack where with the weaker attribute (normally you'll choose your best value between Str and Cft).

2) When you choose to encounter a Character INSTEAD OF the board space, you may choose whether to attack him OR to use a Special Ability (only one at a time!). “Land on” abilities always require to encounter the Character to be used and are effective each time you encounter another Character, including at the Crown of Command where you're not moving anymore, but still encountering the opposing Character/s.

The Assassin can never assassinate at the Crown of Command in Revised 4th edition, including when he moves on the Crown and encounters a Character there. Normally he wouldn't need to assassinate to win a battle, considering the impressive amount of Strength he can acquire in a single game.

The Turn problem with Battle Royale is still an open point. This has not been clarified yet (I didn't notice an official answer) and the only suggestion I can give you is to consider each combat as a player Turn for Spell duration and “start of turn” abilities. Remember you must fight in BR, cannot use abilities instead.

3) No healing is blocked either by CoC or Battle Royale ending. The only ending where you cannot heal is Crown & Sceptre. Remember that you cannot wait until you lose the last Life to heal, when it's lost you're dead, so you have to heal when you're reduced to 1 life.

4) I think this was clarified and you should follow the “killed” keyword whenever possible. Followers that are discarded when used cannot be resurrected, because they're not dead. Followers sacrificed to Vampire's Tower, lost in the Chasm, killed by some Spell, Reaper or combat effect (see Gladiator card) or killed in combat can be resurrected by Valkyrie.

As you noticed, the Valkyrie with the Friendly Giant (but also with Champion Follower) can have the Follower fight in her place and resurrect him every time. Valkyrie is invincible in battle with the Champion and invincible in psychic combat with the Faithful Hound. If you need to fight to win, better surrender or find another way to win.

ShikukuWabe said:

1) Still plays an extra turn, since he won the battle outright, but he has to roll the die for movement as in any other turn, he cannot stay on the space.

2) Dark Cultist get her reward immediately after defeating an Enemy or Character. In your example, after winning the battle she rolls for the Dark Gift, then proceeds with psychic combat with another enemy.

3) Alchemist ability can be used during his Turn at any time; this doesnt' imply that he loses his Turn doing this, he has his Turn as normal and in the meanwhile he prepares potions with useful effects. Your interpretation the Alchemist is realistic and well balanced, but it's not how it's played according to the rules. With the Highland the Alchemist can accumulate tons of Gold/Objects and this makes him virtually invincible in a standard Crown of Command ending (almost endless healing).

4) The Alchemist follower turns 1 Object (either normal or Magic) into 1 Gold at any time. This is what he can do, period. Every card, Character or alternate rule that came out with future expansions

Thanks a lot!

I'm sure our next games will be a bit more interesting now

And sorry for the messy writing I was kinda throwing it straight out of my head without thinking too much so we were afraid ppl might not understand the questions

ShikukuWabe said:

No problem, my writing was messy as well as I didn't re-read what I wrote (the last sentence of second post is incomplete, for instance).

I'm happy that I've been of help, your questions were many but many were not obvious answers or questions for which we don't have an official answer yet. Besides the length that requires some engagement in answering, I think your points were interesting. I hope that we're going to get more official support for Talisman FAQ here. The Unofficial FAQ in BoardGameGeek is useful, but I prefer to have it here with FFG stamp on it...