Hey all, first time poster on the site!
Back in the day at high school me and a few mates played talisman 2nd edition, and had a blast with it.
I recently purchased 4E and the dragon expansion and have invited the same group around to play again. The general consensus is the game is still alot of fun but very ambigious with its rules. I'm not sure if it's the new edition of the rules or just us growing older and "wiser", but there's alot of arguing around the table regarding... well, everything!
Basically we play the rules according to our best knowledge of the rulebook and what the card says, which at times simply isn't enough given other mitigating situations. We keep coming back to a few things that just aren't well explained in the rulebook, so here I am to get some feedback from the more experienced members of the Talisman community.
We've played about 6 games since I purchased it and keep on coming back to the same issues. Clarification on the following would assist greatly:
Trophies: After a successful combat you keep the enemy card in your inventory as a trophy. Once a total of 7 combined points of either str / cra are obtained, these creature cards are then discarded and exchanged for a str or cra token (obviously only str enemies can be used for str, same for cra). However we're running into situations where some players are hoarding their trophies and turning in multiples of 7. Are you allowed to keep enemy cards if they run over the limit of 7 and turn them in for 2 x tokens when a total of 14 is obtained, or must trophies immediately be discarded once you obtain 7 or over?
Faceup cards on a tile: Basically we are stuck on this. If there is a faceup card on a tile, do you action this card and THEN action the tiles rules as well? For example say someone draws a ghost and it goes to the chasm, does the player landing on the chasm have to fight the ghost and then deal with the chasm? Do the same fules apply to a draw adventure cards tile?
Another example was we had someone land on the oasis and draw a demon, a sword and a gold. Combat was lost against the demon so all 3 cards remain as per sequence rules due to card numbers. A few turns later another player lands on the oasis, do they first deal with the 3 cards and THEN draw an additional 3 cards as per the tile rules? What if there is only 1 faceup card on a draw 2 space, does the landing player draw 1 card to make up the difference in cards they should be encountering?
Player combat and tile rules: What happens when a player lands on another with combat and tiles? If the rolling player chooses combat, does he then ignore the tile and only do the combat with the other player? Upon completion of the combat does the losing player lose EITHER a life, gold, follower or item, or do they lose a life AND either a gold, follower or item?
Items and non-combat events: A player lands on the mines in the inner circle. Obviously this is not combat so they cannot add the str given by their sword, however they have a ring which staes simply "add 1 to craft and str". Do they get to add these bonses to their base scores when dealing with the mines?
Fountain of life / str / craft: The card states that any player landing on this card takes 1 of the tokens on it. My friends argue that as you are drawing the card you are not technically landing on it, and you don't get to take a token, so when the card appears it stays on the tile face up with 4 tokens, and the person whom drew it does not receive one of these tokens. Evil semantics of the card's rules are creating confuzzlization!
Assasins power: Another example of the just mentioned "landing on" catch 22 described above. My friends state that the assasin can only use his power on a creature that is already faceup on the board, and that drawing an enemy does not constitute as "landing" on him, so the assasin can not use his power unless he lands on a faceup enemy or another character.
Spell pickups and rules: Caster characters such as a the wizard have a rule stating they always have 1 spell card. Do they pickup another spell immediately or upon the start of their next turn? If immediately can they then cast this new spell and redraw ad-infintum? How many spells can you cast per turn?
Sorry about the length of that, I'm sure there are more that we've argued about but those are the ones I can remember for now. Any help would be greatly appreciated!