Fun expansions to add for beginners

[mitknacker]

Hey all,

started Talisman some weeks ago and having a blast. Got all expansions from Humble Bundle and, of course, I am overwhelmed right now.

I wanted to meet with some friends next month and start a round, but asking myself which expansions would make sense to have a fun and chill, but also a little challenging round?

I tried some out and so far, the City is being disliked, so I won't add that one. The Dungeon ist very cool and besides these I use Reaper and Frostmarch now. I want to avoid Highlands as well, as I don't see it as very useful. I am more looking for something which is added to the base deck. What can you recommend and why? :)

Cheers

[Waylander]

I play with the highlands, dungeon and the city. The highlands aren't that much harder than the normal game and have some fun items like the follower death wing and the magic mace +2.

Dungeon is a challenge but again has good cards if you can defeat the master guy and the city lets you buy stuff to help you out. I don't really play the 4th board and the dragons bit as well.

[Rafcor]

As said by Waylander, Highlands, Dungeon and City offer more places and options on the board, since there are more places, there can be less direct player interactions (battle and some spells/items), so beware what kind of game do you and if you play with other people like.

Still on the must have I would add Sacred Pool, Frost March and Cataclysm. It add more cards options to the table

Now going on the medium difficult would be Firelands, which add fire tokens (when you land at a place with fire token, you lose a life at the end of the turn).

Woodland is a mixed opinion, it adds the last corner of the board and do provide some interesting options, such as light/dark fate (summary, light fate = your re-roll, dark fate = re-roll other player dice), path and destiny cards (offers new passives but it can be hard to get). I like it but I would only play it with gold runes since it brings a lot mechanics and some hit really hard on new players).

Realm of Souls adds the ghosts character when you die and also can be a mixed bag. When a character dies you lose all your items/followers/spells (keep strenght, craft, etc) and it becomes a ghost with zero life, as a ghost you have another board with just that only ghosts faces. When you win a battle you earn a life back. If you have zero life and lose another one, you die just like the vanilla game. If you have at least one life and return to the tile you die, you are resurrected. This mechanic is useful if you die as a strong character so you have a chance to come back again with stronger stats.

The Nether Realm does not affect the game much, mostly new endings that can be hard for newer players. If you play with random endings, it could be interesting to add this expansion to the pool.

Clockwork Kingdom, its feature adds the Cog ship and materials, get 3 materials and you can invent a new item that can be really powerful. It does add another new mechanic to the game but I fin it very fun. Would play with others first and when you are used to them, then add this one.

Now the harder expansions:

The Dragon Expansion, this adds a few new mechanics, that without reading the manual, it took a while to understand what was happening. Also this does the make harder, which can make the game last even longer. It also adds a new option of the inner board. I find it fun and challenging since it can be harder at the ealry game and at the end stronger characters start to snowball their strenght and craft leves. Playing this with runes also is recommended if you having difficult decisions.

Blood Moon and Reaper: the problem with my group and both expansions is that they add each add a NPC on the board and sometimes kill you instantly (looking at you Reaper) and Blood Moon is interesting adding day/night phases but can made the game less fun for us. I would try it by itself to see if you would enjoy both.

Harbinger, also adds a NPC on the board but it is less annoying then both Blood Moon and Reaper NPCs. It does add the Omens mechanic which are basically passives to all players. It does make the game harder but as such as the dragon expansion, my group likes the game changing that it brings. Also suggest to play with gold runes, specially with more lives.

Ancient beasts are also a mixed bag for my group because some of the beasts, which become enemies on the board, have fun mechanics and others we really dislike. If I remember correctly, one ending even makes the game a coop between players.

TLDR

I think it is easier to say what my group does NOT play with the following expansions either because it is not fun or too difficult:

-The Reaper
-Blood Moon
-Legendary decks

*We use the characters from the expansions above

The following expansions we play with either one but not both at the same time:

-Harbinger
-Ancient Beasts

All the other expansions and characters we enable.

[mitknacker]

Thanks for your Imput, you two, appreciated!

I haven't seen the reaper killing someone in my games so far, but can imaging this will happen at some point and then will be very annoying. So I think I will try Realm of Souls to counteract this event.

I don't want to add another boards, because you can avoid the direct confrontation too easily and that's something I really want to have. The direction you face should matter and maybe it's better to get on the Crags, than being near the Thief. Keeps it interesting, I think.

I will have a look into Sacred Pool and Cataclysm to add some more interesting cards to the main deck.

[Rafcor]

Originally posted by Ears14U:

The DLC is madness. It's a shame they don't drop all of it to .99 cents per cost. They would get many more people playing it. And I would likely purchase it all. I'm playing Mystic Vale also and learning both games. Refreshing after playing FPS's for over 40 years.

For newer players, there was a Humble Bundle last month with all DLCs for less than U$ 0.99/DLC and even before there were a few bundles with all DLCs. Even with the game going F2P, it didn't add so many players to it at still the average of less than 500 players so I don't know if setting the price of DLCs cheaper would have any effect on sales at all.

Talisman isn't a boardgame for everyone, but everyone can play it. People have different taste and opinion of game and for a lot of people, even for most of modern boardgame players, a 90% luck based on dice game is not charming.

I decided to help newer players in any way it is possible to have fun with the game. So the issue of having a players getting all the DLCs is that such player might add all DLCs at the same time, as you would on other games, but it would be a huge trap, specially in online games that do not offer tutorial teaching the new mechanics.

[mitknacker]

Well, going into a game with all DLCs was, of course, very overwhelming. But somehow fun anyway. But so many new rules, that's not for everyone. And I have at least 2 players completely new in the round, so I want to make it as fun as possible for them.

I looked into Cataclysm and have to say, even with the new board looking awesome, I don't like the style very much. Especially the Denizens and that you don't have the regular places I dislike. So I won't use that. But Sacred Pool added some nice cards. Don't like the endings very much, but overall this one seems pretty nice.

So I think I will go with Dungeon, Reaper, Frostmarch and Sacred Pool for now :)

Thank you for your input :)