My wife and I own all of the expansions except for Blood Moon and The City (obviously).

We finally got around to trying out Dragon (which is awesome, by the way). We've owned it for a while, but with its complexities we decided to hold off on bringing it into our game.

What we have discovered is that when Dragon is in play the Highlands and Dungeon regions are all but ignored. We are so busy trying to keep dragons and dragon scales under control that we can't get into those other areas. So also, we go to the regular Adventure Deck quite infrequently, so we miss out on a lot of really good stuff in there.

We've had a game going on for several nights now (we only play for about 60-90 minutes per night, each playing three characters), and last night once we made it through drawing all of the dragon scales (our second time through the pile, mind you), we finally decided not to draw scales anymore just so that we could play the rest of the boards.

Has anyone else run into this? Is the Dragon just far too overwhelming of an expansion that you really can't include any of the others when you play it?

I have no problem just playing Dragon or just playing the others. I'd like to play all of them simultaneously, but for us it just hasn't worked out very well. And if you don't have any of the Dragon characters in the game it makes it all the harder, since they are more adept at killing dragons when they are weaker in strength/craft.

Many people house rule the drawing of Dragon Tokens in some way to prevent the Dragon expansion from dominating the overall game. Some draw and resolve a Dragon Token when they roll a 6 for movement, others draw a token when a character defeats an enemy, they may do both of those or something similar. Basically, you can use any house rule that will reduce the number of times that a token is drawn.

The number of characters involved in a particular game will also influence how overwhelming the token and scales mechanic can become. With 2 characters on the board, it is fairly manageable as written. With 6, like you are using, it is overkill with drawing at the beginning of each and every turn.

I think with 6 characters in play you could probably go with drawing a token when a 6 is rolled for movement, or even if a 1 is rolled instead. Using the 1 would keep things tidy since a 1 would indicate moving the Reaper, the Werewolf and drawing a token all in one fell swoop!

We trigger dragon token drawing off defeated Enermies. This works out well.Since it makes Dragon Scales somewhat scarcer on the board, we start out the game with the Dragon Spawn variant found in the rulebook. You can limit Dragon Spawning to two players, if you're playing with more.

We've also houseruled Dragon Rage to activate each time a new draconic lord is crowned and affect all players regardless of their position.

If the current Dragon King is crowned again, in addition to his Dragon Rage, all Adventure and Dragon cards found on spaces with his scales are removed from the board.

Haven't tried it yet, but there's a Domain of Dragons variant in the Alternative Endings supplied with the expansion. This does away with dragon token drawing altogether.

Tried it today with Domain of Dragons variant. Found it way too intrusive and confounding. The best way to play with the Dragon is to trigger token drawing off defeated Enemies(regadless of the number of Enemies you defeat on your turn, draw one token only.)

The only exception to this we made was that if you defeat an Enemy from a Dragon card that nets you a Dragon Scale on your current space, do not draw a dragon token in this instance. Keeps things simpler this way.

Osbo25 said:

I have play with the dragon Expansion too, and i have no problems with it.

I still go to the other regions.

You should not focus on the dragon scales too much.

And if the mainboard is almost full with dragon tokens, then you can always go to the Highlands.

Drawing dragon tokens is no problem for me. It is fast and easily. But i play talisman with 2 players.

When you start the game, then you are too weak to battle with dragons. You can encounter adventure cards easily at that moment.

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. It is much appreciated.

In discussing this, we recognized that having six players drastically increased the number of scales dropping. Theoretically, up to five scales could drop in a single round. (Each king has two scales. The first player draws a dragon strike. He then draws a green, crowning Grilipus as king [1st scales drops] and draws another dragon strike. He then draws a yellow, crowning Cadorus as king [2nd scale drops] and draws another dragon strike. He then draws a red, crowning Varthrax as king [3rd scale drops] and draws another dragon strike. He then draws green and dragon strike. He then draws another green and the last dragon strike. He then draws another green, crowning Grilipus as king again [4th scale drops]. The second, third, and fourth players all draw yellow, crowning Cadorus as king again [5th scale drops]. The fifth and sixth players both draw red. When it gets to the first player again, he draws red and crowns Varthrax as king again [6th scale drops] at the start of the next round.) Obviously more players means more scales.

So I think we are going to try out a house rule where tokens are still drawn every round, but six of them need to accumulate on a dragon king before one drops to the board. We want to keep the scales in play, but we don't want to have to fight dragons when we are weak or suffer dragon rage when the board gets full of scales.

We did look at the Domain of Dragons variant. It completely changes the game. We'll try it at some point, but I don't think it's something that we'll stick with.

The Dragons expansion is an Epic level expansion designed to take over the main game with a powerful theme, so you might say that it is supposed to have a constant prescence. The alternative endings with the expansion allow the use of the expansion without too much influence. The design of the expansion is very clever and I hope to see more Epic level expansions like demons and undead themes with vampire lords and such.

If you use the expansion as written then it's not really compatible with alternate endings, the 3 dragon lords become the endgame so to speak. Using the Dragon expansion is a strong conscious decision amongst the players due to the prescence it has. but as for compatibility with the highlands and dungeon I think the extra 2 regions actually help avoid the dragon scales seeming to clutter the board up as you have all those extra spaces to put tokens on.

This game is just begging for an epic level expansion involving the intrigues and machinations of powerful undead lords.

GrimGuvna said:

I agree with most of this comment. Its why I like the Dragon set so much; it really changes the dynamic in a way that favors Dragons, which are everywhere - - not just in this set. Dragons should be a big deal for these kind of games.

Having said that, my own varient or house rule is either dragon scales and lords, yes, but inlay board mostly no. And I'll still use alt endings - just the hidden ones. My reasoning there is that in a world like Talisman, even if Dragons are the High Muckety Mucks, there still really are a lot of players - demons, and other beings who are looking for their angle to control the world.

Therefore I agree that another epic level expansion could/should involve things like Chaos Demons, Vampire/Undead Lords and others. In some ways such a set (would it have a new board too?) would play off/with the Blood Moon set pretty well, but even so, there are all kinds of cultists and zealots. They do not all have to be for Dragons. It makes sense for various cultists etc to have a hard on for the Old Ones, or the Queen or King of all Vampires. I'd love this!

A side board or one that will fit into the spaces between corner boards? Devoted to The Vampire's Tower? Secret chambers with hidden dangers or awesome treasures and magic objects. Armies of undead minions, zombies etc ravaging the hills and valleys of the Talisman world.

What is the essential plot though? any thoughts?

0beron said:

Those would indeed be fun, small adventure sites would really provide depth to the game world for those of us who enjoy the story element Talisman provides. Small sites like a graveyard. Vampires tower, tavern would be just for fun but "big" expansions should have some sort of alluring angle to make players want to venture that way.

The dungeon is great for combat characters or those seeking powerful stuff and the highlands offer wealth and some more powerful items as well as a way to travel. The city will offor more ways to amass wealth and useful enhancing elements, and I am at a loss to think what the forest expansion will offer in it's own unique way.

I have a fuzzy feeling we will also see an Ocean/Sea/Island expansion as we have no nautical caracters as such yet. A bold idea for further consideration would also be a Desert expansion.

FF Games has really done a good job with Talisman so far.

GrimGuvna said:

To be perfectly honest, the way I play, I can't say I enjoy the board expansions that much. I like the expansions that don't intrude on the original rules too much.

The Reaper expansion was fine, the new adventure and spell cards added a lot more depth and variety to the game. The Warlock Quest cards immensely improved Warlock Quests, because the original quests were somewhat lackluster. However, I found the Reaper bordering on pointless; he rarely ever did anything. Let's note the odds (I am aware you can use house rules, but other than selecting characters in a special way, I don't use any); Rolling a one for movement requires a 1:6 chance, not including indeterminate factors such as whether you use a Speed spell, or a Riding Horse, or whatever. Then he has to have characters within his one-die-roll limit: Realize that there are forty spaces on the board, not including the Inner Region. The reaper has a range of 12 spaces around him, in either direction, with the exception of when he crosses from the Tavern to the Temple or the Sentinel space to the Middle Region Hills. If characters aren't in there, his movement roll is basically ineffectual, with the exception of him moving from one space to another. Now think about the fact that he has to directly land upon a character to interact with that character. Let's ignore the character-within-his-range factor, as that is far too random for lazy me, and assume that the character is already within the reaper's range, and he is the only one. He once again has to roll a specific number on the die; 6 times 6 is 36, a.k.a. a 1:36 chance that on a turn where the character is in range of the reaper, that the reaper is going to be landing on him (and keep in mind that this is not including the whether-or-not-he's-in-range factor, and that the player may choose to not have the reaper land on him, as his movement is under his control). Let's say there are two characters in his range, at different distances from him. That adds another number, which increases the odds to a mere 1:18. Now, with three characters at different distances; this would increase the odds to 1:12. But that's ONLY if the reaper has three characters within his possible grasp, and those are still bad odds. Here's a very simple, very reasonable set of rules to use; the Reaper moves EVERY TURN, as opposed to if you roll a 1 (Alternative: 1, 2, 3 will get the reaper moving). Additionally, the reaper simply has to pass by a character, and then he stops and pours his dastardly dice into the character's hands. This may or may not make the reaper an alright addition to the game, I never played with these rule variations, so I didn't test this, but it seems reasonable. (This is pretty much the same for the Werewolf, if memory serves.)

The Dungeon expansion wasn't great for me, because of the excess enemies and high risk. That wasn't too much of a problem, per se, however the fact that it just sort of stood there for a long time while you gain enough strength/craft (and confidence) to enter. I don't like the way extra boards work; I wish that extra boards could add extra spaces to the outer/middle regions, although I do realize that this is essentially impossible. I dislike the concept of it being a track into one point at the end. Also I don't like the idea of board expansions having their own personal deck, but that's just me, really.

The Frostmarch expansion was also fine, albeit not too different from the Reaper expansion. I think that this is where Alternative Ending cards got their start, but that might be the Dungeon, I'm not too sure. I'm sure most people can agree that Talisman's ending is its weak point; but reading through this alternative ending, it dawned on me that these weren't too good either. In fact, the majority were worse in my opinion. The Crown and Sceptre was ridiculous. The Blood Moon's Horrible Black Void has an apt title. It's horrible. No other word could better fit this stupidly unfair card. "Hey, congratulations on making it all the way to the Crown of Command! Oh, guess what? You lose. Sorry."

The Highland expansion wasn't as bad as the Dungeon expansion, but it still made the board odd in a mutant way. Also, the place was positively layered in objects and followers and that sort of thing, unhealthily rewarding in that regard. In other words, dungeon board was unnecessarily brutal, highland board almost babied you. Whenever we played with it, we all found ourselves hightailing it for the Highland board and basically playing the game on the stupid thing. I naively didn't realize this for a while. (Now I play without any board expansions (although I keep the spells and characters, and the Rune Gates)).

The Sacred Pool expansion was actually my first expansion for the game. I freaking loved it. The quest rewards (especially when combined with the Warlock Quest cards) made the Warlock Quests actually worthwhile after getting a Talisman. I felt like I was actually on a quest, for a reward. (Let's face it, the Talisman just feels like, with all due respect to its relative importance, a crippled old man you have to push on a wheelchair in order to win the game.) The Stables cards were good too.

The Dragon expansion… well, let me put it this way: Whenever I think about the fact that I bought it with money, I go, "Ugh." It positively DOMINATES the whole game. I got sick of those stupid chips that littered the board after a while. I hated how it seemed as though 75% of those cards were terribly overpowered enemies or generally unhelpful items I didn't want. I hated having to keep track of the stupid dragon kings, and I couldn't ever finish a game with the stupid rules it enforced. I stopped playing with it a grand total of two games after getting it. I still play with the character cards, though, although the Minotaur likes to tip over because it was, I assume by accident, molded far behind the center of the base, much to my chagrin. (Also, Minotaur + riding horse = not fun to play against.)

I haven't gotten the Blood Moon expansion yet, so I don't have any opinion yet. Looks good enough.

After realizing that the board expansions made the game worse for me in a way I just couldn't put my finger on in its entirety, I got rid of the board, subsequently making my play experience better. I'm truly sorry if you guys don't agree with me, but it's my preference, is it not? If it's not fun to me, it's not fun to me. And it wasn't much fun with the people I play with either (although admittedly I'm probably the most devoted of any of them).

Since I have reintroduced Blood Moon into the overall adventure deck, I can't play without it. While some of the artwork is reused from previous expansions, it adds some of the more interesting monsters/strangers, etc, , and while the Day/Night cycle can be at times distracting, it also adds some strategy as to when you encounter certain cards.Plus, the roaming Werewolf is fun.

The olny houserulre we have added is that a chaacter who has contracted Lycanthropy suffers the same penalties during the day as any other monster/creature.

Our favorite expansion is the Dragon. The way we've houseruled is just lots of fun, plus the dragon scale mechanic injects the Dragon adventure cards into regular play without it feeling intrusive or tacked on. Of course, if you don't play it as written!

In fact, our houserule, with drawing a dragon token each time you defeat one or more Enemies on your turn, became so second nature to us, that on the rare occasion when we play without the Dragon, simply defeating an Enemy and claiming it as a trophy without drawing anything feels strangely unengaging.

We started playing a game where dragon scales drop every sixth token instead of every three. I'm liking it so far. The dragons maintain a presence without becoming overbearing. Characters are building up using the regular deck, so that by the time the board fills up with token they'll be able to take them on.

Spherithex said:

What a rambling wall of text this is, all I can gather from you is that you hate every expansion other than Sacred Pool - what was the point of this other than to get it off your chest?

Spherithex said:

I don´t like the dungeon too. It´s not really a adventure there.

Regions boards have always their own deck. This is the same as in 2th and 3th edition. There is nothing bad about that.

If you don´t like the region boards, then you can always play with the mainboard:)

lovfinion said:

You obviously exaggerated all of what I said for yourself and used that as a weapon. So I'll try to clear up anything you may have missed; I didn't say I hated all of them, I like expansions for the new adventure and spell cards. However, I don't tend to like when they implement new, somewhat gimmicky ideas. I liked the warlock quest cards from the Reaper and Frostmarch, the Quest Reward and Stables cards from the Sacred Pool, and the Adventure Cards, Spell Cards, and Character Cards from all of them. These are all my opinions. I don't like the alternative ending cards, except the Battle Royale (I may or may not have included that in the text). The Reaper isn't something I hate, just something I think could have been executed better. The board expansions distract from the original game, the highland board rewards you way too much, and the dragon expansion creates a whole new game; it's a bit like turducken, you love it or you hate it. I happen to hate it. So let's see… I dislike the Highland and Dungeon boards, as in, I'd play with them if the majority wanted to, I think all of the mini-expansions are great (blood moon, like I said, I don't have, but looks good). I hate the Dragon expansion, as in I would not play with it. They even robbed us of any spell cards it could have come with.

That's a grand total of 1 expansion I hate, as opposed to the 6 that you suggested I do.

I don't hate any of the expansions. We use them all, and don't really use much in the way of house rules. We occasionally find we've been doing something wrong and correct it. We sorta have "behavior" house rules. Since its only my wife and me (who will never read or post here) we tend to not beat up each other. She's pretty competitive but gets pissy if I attack her, or send the Reaper or the WereWolf towards her.

I will go into the Dungeon, but usually don't get all the way to the end; I flee. She never goes in there. She goes into the Highlands more than I, sorta a reverse of the Dungeon. She almost always avoids dragon scales, by choice or by not going there, if that scale's Dragon is the Lord. I will often pick the scale over the space or card on space. I will brag when I defeat a worthy foe, or receive, even the "unwanted" magical object or whatever.

But she still won't pick scales.

It may be that each of our games is more relfective of our values or behaviors of playing in general, than the actual mechanics?

I'm an expansion junkie and I have them all, except for the Dragon - in fact, I think I'm avoiding getting the Dragon because of all the rumblings I've heard about how it radically changes the game and fills the board up with clutter. I should download and read the rulebook and form my own opinion, but for some reason, my tendency is to resist that expansion entirely.

I really like that the corner boards have their own decks. That way, if you decide not to use one/either of them, you're not drawing a lot of irrelevant cards from the adventure deck. We only use one of the corner boards at a time because our table isn't that big (though that may change since the City and Dungeon will be on the same side). So, each of those expansions being mostly self-contained is a good thing, for us.

I don't go to gaming cons and such, but a coworker who does told me that they use these cardboard 'lengths' - I don't know what they call them, but you can buy at Joann's Fabrics or perhaps other sewing/fabrics stores. Basically they're long and wide and foldable, cardboard/more structured possibly at least 6 feet by 44 inch's I think? Not sure, but essentially wide enough, which is what most people need.

They're actually used for seamstress' and dressmakers to work on, since they may need wide areas for some dresses, etc.

Even though my table appears to be wide enough, I'm considering getting two. I looked at them in said fabric store and think they are around $8 to $10 dollars. I would probably re-fold them in such a way that I could use two and create extra width, which is what I really want, especially once the 4th board arrives.

Since I tend to be restless I'd rather by semi on my feet, running around the board. We're two player and take turns moving the Reaper or the Werewolf, depending on who is closer to their path.

*** As long as I mentioned the 4th board, would anyone like to comment on what its' possible compatibility with the game and/or other expansions would be?

I'll go first. As I analyse and re-analyse the game and how expansions either can or cannot integrete well. Talisman passes the test, mostly. The next set would be nice if it were an expanded idea of woods, with maybe an enhanced presence of the Storm River as it should trail there from the main board. As the upcoming City has a new option to run back into the main board, even the Middle region, it seems, using the river, then perhaps in a fourth board something similar could move you back, or better still, wtihtin the board. I could see a "Mystic Woods" boatman, who maybe has a different price than the City's boatman (example: a magic object). Or a role of the die to determine movement along a river 'path'.

I'd like to see either this board's deck cards or a board space that has a "Dragon's Hollow" when invoked all the Dragons in All regions will go there, etc. (or it could be power level based, above 7 goes, or vice a versa). Anyway this would be an example of compatibility, because dragons exist in all games, but particularly through the Dragon expanson. If you play with this concept and the City expansion, than the new bounty trinkets get an enhanced run too, possibly

I'd also like to see a real Female Big Bad Boss, one on the board like Dungeons or Highlands. She is Queen of all Witches or she is a Dark Fariy Queen. Perhaps she stands over yet another portal, but a new option (provided you win) is you can teleport to any draw 3 cards et. space, in any region. So whether you use all or some, I know the main board and the Dungeon and Highlands all have at least one of those kind of spaces, so I presume that the City might too, but even if not, that would be a major compatibility factor that you would not have to have all expansions to use. And pretty cool in my opinion. Yes, some of those draw 3 spaces are brutal, but sounds fun to me!

Lastly, (for now) I'd like to see cards, spaces, situations that compel or give you options to draw card(s) from " ANY " Talisman deck. So, if you have/use Dungeon, Highlands, City, Dragons, or what ever else comes, GREAT!. But exclude Warlocks Quest/Rewards, Relics, Dark Lord Treasures, Purchase, Stable, etc. - basically just Adventure type decks.

I. J. Thompson said:

The Dragon is excellent. We play with it all the time. The only thing you need to alter to make this expansion playable is the timing of drawing the dragon tokens(at the start of every turn is ridiculous!)

We draw a token each time a character defeats one or more Enemies during his turn, and it works like a charm.