In this version of talisman you are all working together to collect the 5 talismans of power to make sure some evil prick does not get them and take over the world as you know it. Let us take a look at the basic info;
Players: 1 - 6 Age: 14+
Time: 20 - 40 minutes
With that out the way lets jump right into what you get in the box.
What is in this box?
Nothing! It is empty, you got played, fool! Well not quite you do get a lot of tokens you need to punch out, I have to say that becareful punching these out as they are shockingly bad at tearing! Several of mine are damaged from this process.
12 Location tiles
6 Heroes which come with;
1 Male version
1 Female version
1 Tag for hero bag
7 Hero tokens for each hero
5 Adventure scrolls
102 Adventure tokens
6 Toad tokens
1 Time token
1 Travel dice
5 Health tokens
24 Reward tokens
1 Reward tag for reward bag
15 Talismans
Talisman scoreboard 7 Cloth bags Rulebook
You do get quite a bit in this game, it is just a shame that the pieces are easy to damage when punching them out. I would probably recommend a really sharp scalpel and use that to help remove them.
Setting up the game
In this game you pick the adventure you are currently on or you start from the 1st adventure.
Now depending on the adventure you are playing you would set up the tiles differently and the encounter tokens as I like to call them.
The rulebook does a great job of explaining to you how to set up the tiles and tokens for the first adventure.
It is going to be hard to explain how to set up the game as it is different each time.
We can cover the basic set up that you will do for each game and then you will need to use the rulebook to set up the adventure! Find all the reward tokens and place them in the reward bag, give it a good shake to mix them up, you will also need to put the reward tag on the bag. Then find all the 7 hero tokens for each hero and place each set of 7 into a bag so you have 6 hero bags filled with 7 hero tokens each. Make sure you put the matching hero tag onto the bag so you know which one is which.
Now each player needs to pick the character they wish to play! Take the character and pick male or female, take the hero bag for the matching character, make sure you read your hero tag on the bag to see what you have inside the bag and any powers that you have.
Put the travel dice in an easy to reach location on the table so all players can grab it when they need it.
Make sure you have built the talisman score board inside the box to keep track of which adventure you are on and how many talisman and score you have gained thus far.
I would also recommend that you separate all the different tokens by colour and then by border (some are jagged others are not on the picture side) and have them in piles on the table ready for the adventures, this makes your life easier as you play the game.
Now you pick the adventure you wish to play and then follow the set up for that adventure, usually this will mean you place the tiles in a set pattern, you place encounter tokens on certain tiles and so forth. It is really easy to do and like I said the rulebook really makes this bit easy.
That is all I can really cover! Now let us find out why the hell we are here and what we are doing..... In the game not in life, I have no clue on that one!
How do you win?
In this game you win by completing the current adventure you are on, you must complete all the tasks one by one to progress through the story, when you reach the end you claim a talisman with the level you completed the adventure on these are;
1 = Easy
2 = Medium
3 = Hard
You do not die in this game like usual, you will never receive damage from combat but instead time is your enemy, if you ever get a forward time symbol you move the time token along the track and if it reaches the end it is game over!
How do we play the game?
Talisman legendary tales is one of the easiest games that I have played in a long time, it really is basic and I think it was aimed at a younger market or families to get them into this style of game. It feels as if it is a beginners game to get you started.
Though I have to say we had a lot of fun playing this game so do not be put off by the above comment.
In this game you perform 3 actions on your turn in order;
1: Roll the travel dice and move
2: Complete an encounter
3: Collect rewards
These are the 3 basic actions you will take per turn and we will cover them more in detail now.
Move:
To move you first must roll the travel dice, You can move up to that number of tiles, you can only move through tiles with a connecting path. There are two special dice faces;
4 - Move up to 4 space but also advance the time token one space, this one is a killer! We want to avoid moving time forward.
6 - Portal, teleport to any tile no matter the distance! Pretty cool! Now in the rule book it states you must decide if you are going to move or not, this means if you are in combat from the last turn you can roll the dice and runaway like a scared hero, not very heroic if you ask us!
Here are some other rules about moving;
a) You can move or stop on spaces with other heroes
b) You can move through spaces with encounter tokens that are face down
c) You must stop if you enter a tile with face up encounter tokens
d) If you end your turn in a space with face down encounter tokens you need to flip them and start an encounter! Encounter:
Not all encounter tokens are evil monsters waiting to rip of your limbs and beat you with them! Some can be items that you need or a bonus! Keep that in mind when moving through spaces with these tokens.
When you do flip over any tokens in a space if there are more than 2 in that space and one is an item you need you must always defeat any monsters first before you can claim that item.
Now combat in this game is very, very and I mean very easy, on each monster they will a set of symbols (Wizard hat or sword) and that is what you need to defeat that monster.
If you have a monster showing a wizard hat and 2 swords you will need to draw 2 swords and 1 wizard hat from your hero bag.
You must draw 3 tokens and place them on the table, you have to check if you get the matching symbols, if you do not you fail. If you do then you need to move on to the final action collect a reward.
I want to quickly talk about the hero tokens and what they mean;
Wizard hat = Used to beat foes
Sword = Also used to beat foes
Hour glass = Move time forward one space, this is bad people!
Hour glass and + = Move time forward and then draw another token from your bag.
Hand going into bag = You can choose to draw a token from another players bag!
When you draw the 3 tokens these stay on the table, you can only put these back into your bag when you or another player needs to draw tokens. Before drawing tokens you can put all your tokens back into your bag but it must be all of them you can not pick the ones you want to use again.
NOTE: Remember that you have an hero power you can use once per turn and they can come in handy when in an encounter so remember to use them! Rewards:
For each enemy you defeated in the encounter phase you can draw a token from the reward bag, rewards add more combat tokens to your bag and powerful rewards that allow you to stop time progressing and some that allow you to move time back one step! These are epic and you want these, this is why running from an encounter is stupid and you should beat the living crap out of the monsters.
Always keep an eye on the adventure scroll and make sure you are completing the tasks, whenever you complete a task you need to move on to the nest part, if it tells you to flip it then guess what flip it! Just move the time token on to the same spot on the other side.
If the time token reaches the end of the board you loose and must start over again.
When you complete an adventure you need to place the talisman you collected (1,2 or 3 rating) and place it on the score tracker you built in the box, also note that adventures require you to have a certain amount to proceed, the 2nd adventure needs you to have 2 to start! So completing the first 1 on the easiest setting is pointless!!!
Some of the enemies are powerful and show heart tokens, you need to place that many tokens near them and must beat them that many times, this means if one shows 2 tokens you need to defeat it twice to win.
Some enemies also show loot icons which means they allow you to collect that many rewards, the good thing here is that you can place this reward in any heroes bag!
Treasure chests in the game also allow you to collect rewards and give them to any hero! That is all the rules to this game! Now in the rules it does not state that when starting the next adventure you keep your rewards! We play it that you reset, you place all the rewards back and start again, this could be wrong but this is how we play it!
Final Thoughts
For a game to get your started in co-op RPG style adventure games this is pretty easy to learn and play. For veteran gamers they might find the simplicity a little underwhelming.
I have played Gloomhaven JOTL and D&D Wrath of Ashardalon and this is really basic compared to those games, but does that make it a bad game? No, far from it, but I would not put it in the same league as those games.
I have the talisman game and I think it is amazing, I really enjoy it and I am a big Games Workshop nerd so it appeals to me, this game is a tough one to call, I find myself wanting to play it again already and so do the other players, however we all really enjoyed it but felt it was a little to easy at times.
The game took us no time to set up and learn and we completed two adventures in about 45 minutes, this game does not take up a lot of your time, we like the idea you can pick how hard you want it to be when you start, we like the fact at the end you get a overall rating based on the talisman stars you collect (forgot to mention that till now!). However saying all of this we all felt the combat was too easy and the lack of punishment for not beating the enemy left us with a foul taste in our mouth.
I can see why this is a family game and it really is more of a introduction game to this style and the talisman family, would I play it again? Yes, Will I finish it? Yes, when? I do not know because even though I want to finish the game and I have an urge to play it I can see myself leaning towards other games of the same genre with a bit more to them. Overall it is not a bad game, it is just a little to simple and that hurts it in my eyes.
6/10
