Hello,
Me and my friend, who played yesterday are very experienced in Talisman(since 15 years or something like this).
So the rules where very fast explained. We played the first scenario(Mystery beyoned) with 3 players.
Setup was: Sister Sororitas, Inquisitor Malleus and the Techpriest.
After the frist few turns the Techpries was so demoralisied (Dices and Cards), that we allowed him to draw another character and so he played withe the rouge trader.
The gameflow was like this: The Inquistor managed to get some really easy missions and was in turn 5-6 the owner of a relic(a stormhammer), soon managed to smash some foes and leveled up really fast. He was level 8 while the others where level 2-4. But then the sister soritas took the chance(meanwhile level 8) to enter the inner circle, both other characters behind him. She died, then died the Inquistor and in the end the level 4 rouge trader(with a amazing relic, giving him a powercard every turn) won the game. This was a supprise!
So my thoughts/tips:
- First of all: Shuffle the card decks REALLY good , they seemed to be orderd in some way(we saw no single eldar eg.)
- The standard assets(Power Sword, Stormbolter, etc) where very fast very uninterresing - that was pity. We managed to get 2 Relic weapons really fast and so the standard assets where reduced to gadgets, only usefull in very few moments.
-There was very few interaction, also the mission cards gave us very few oppurtunities to deal with the others. There where allys who could drain life from the other agends(under special circumstances), and corruption that worked in a similiar way but i missed the interaction a lot
- There was much infuluence in the game(many chances to get 1D6 Infulence and many enemys dropped Influence) and you got only few moments to spend it
- The missons were very funny as we where hunting for the relics
-there seemed[i did not check it really] no card to be doubled(except power cards), so we are talking about a LOT unique cards - very good!
-The game lasted a bit over three hours - why ist there printed in the box 1-2 hours??? That seems to be a FFG thing.
-There where challeging enemys also in the endgame! Very good!
- There were so many threat cards that we only used 2/3 of them that is also nice!
- The exploding 6 is a very nice mechanic, so was every battle a bit exciting
Fazit: I am not disappointed! The game is very funny, easy to learn[and easy to master har har]. I look forward to expansions and many matches in future.
Please excuse typings and my english!
Best wishes