Two things I've noticed: 1) Playing with five characters (4 AI) and the "Thieves Guild" ending. When the Wizard made it to the Crown of Command space my character was not allowed into the Inner Region. It states on the Thieves Guild ending card that more than one character may be on the space, but my Alchemist was not allowed to attempt to open the portal. Anyone else experience this? 2) Not one AI character in two games has entered the Dungeon. They enter the City and the Highlands a lot.
I hope Nomad Games someday would address how the AI uses the expansion content. Even when the computer uses the highlands they seem to just take a stroll into the area and head right back out. Which is fine early game and certain circumstances but I have yet to see them make a serious run at the Eagle King. They use the city quite well but once they enter they kinda have to follow the path until they get back around to the exit which "forces" the computer to explore the area. The dungeon, like you said, is completely barren of any activity other than your own. I believe I may have seen one character controlled by the AI head into the entrance area during one of my games but I could have been imagining it or it could have been an adventure card that placed the computer at the entrance of the dungeon. The AI in Tailsman is serviceable but not much else, like most digital boardgame adaptations. The digital game still has legs with me since I find playing in true solitaire mode surprisingly fun (all characters locally controlled). The pitfalls for playing in such a way is lack of any true gotcha moments with interrupt spells and certain character abilities are nullified but giving each character their own personality based on who they are is generally worth it.
Not being able to go through the Portal of Power can be caused by a couple of things - You have an active Warlock Quest, so complete it first in order to go through. The Cerberus enemy is on the Portal of Power space, it needs to be removed first. The AI will go into the Dungeon, but because of the relatively high stats of the enemies there, it will hold off until it has Strength/Craft of at least 6.
Didn't know that about the active Warlock Quest. Must have had one. Thanks! Even when the AI characters have Strength/Craft of at least 6, I still don't see them going into the Dungeon. They love the City, though!
So this is on sale again and the ex packs are $1.99 each, so I'm thinking about getting some of them. I'm wonder what experienced players' opinions are. I hear there are some ex pack combos that break the game. What are the barebones expansions I can get to flesh this one out without having the balance get outta hand?
Forget about balance that is not what Talisman is about. The more expansions the more fun. The big expansions (dungeon,highlands, city) are better value (and usually more expensive), but overall I think the best are Reaper, Dungeon, Highlands. I have not tried the city yet, though. Forget about runestones. Have fun!
I know it's a tough sell, but I'd recommend all of them eventually. I'm an older gamer who doesn't really care about the AI putting up a tooth and nail fight, so I'm loving all the expansions. I bought each one as it came out and I'm still seeing cards I've never seen, which will tell you how frequently I play it lol. If you have to pick, I'd go for the reaper, since it adds a new mechanic, the reaper piece, and any of the expansions that add a new area, dungeon, city or the highlands. Really just depends on what flavor you want your game to have. You can also disable any expansion you buy, so realistically, you can mix and match them. I'd also highly recommend you check out the wiki, or just look in the game "card catalogue", I know they added the ability to see each expansion's cards before you buy it now, and that way you can sort of make an informed decision as to what cards you're getting. I'd assume trying o figure out which ones of the 500+ cards give op combos would be possible, but not necc worth the time considering the expansions are so cheap (as far as I'm concerned, so you know, grain of salt).
I'd also like to echo this, it's the more empathic version of what I'm trying to say. This isn't a competitive game, and it wasn't designed with an AI in mind, which doesn't mean it can never have a good one, but a human will always make more realistically tactical decisions based on current factors as opposed to a math equation in a line of code. I'm sure there're combos that break the balance, but again, this isn't a "competitive game" like counter strike or Starcraft, more just for fun.
Thank you ColinR. That gives me a lot of perspective. I hadn't considered playing the game like you've characterized it either. I was going right for AI jugulars! Haha!
You're very welcome, I started by doing the same, and I realized I was winning too hard at the expense of having fun. Board games are inherently competitive, but they assume(d) a set of rules which could be too complicated for an AI to properly evaluate, such as taking irrational risks just for the sake of role playing. An AI won't do that, but you as a human player could, for instance, handicap yourself. Let's say you play a priest, who never uses weapons. The game as it stands now, with the expansion, has several ways of getting rid of unwanted cards. So you could, in theory, play a priest with no weapons. Fun? You decide. But deff not competitive. The very few times I played it with friends, it was a lot of fun, because we would (passively of course) alternate between being competitive and just being stupid about it. I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to replayability, and I can honestly say I keep this game around because once every few months, the rules change and more content is actually added, which is why I look at it as an investment: yea, it'll cost me 60+ bucks for everything eventually, but when I wanna get all competitive about a game, I'll go play a fighter or something. This game (solo) is in my opinion more about a chill way to tell an exciting story. It's too random to be skill based, which is why I stopped looking at it as a competitive game. It's an interesting perspective though, just like you said. I'm sure there have to be some forum groups here who play it competitively, maybe you can get in touch with them and find out more. I don't play it online ever, so I don't know who you'd talk to specifically.
I think I'm going to "Xenoshyft" it for awhile, meaning I'm going to control three or four characters and pretend they're a party and if anyone gets the maguffin the whole crew is invited to the victory party. So I guess that said, I understand where you're coming from. Also, I blew $12 on all of the expansions!
Hahahaha that's an awesome idea, sort of like an uneasy Mexican standoff between everybody in a typical D&D party. You won't regret the purchase, I expect. 500 adventure cards I wanna say. That's a level of replayability that's though to beat if you think that you probably spend 30 seconds per turn and maybe draw 1 or two adventure cards a turn. Arguendo, if none repeats, you should be able to play for around 2 hours straight without seeing the same card lol.
Great! We play this one passing my 6+ around with the screen mirrored to our Apple TV. Quick to set up, and you don't have to worry about the 2-year-old knocking over one of the many stacks of cards... (I've got a near-complete 2nd edition set, missing Dragons...)
Does the multiplayer use GC? I fired it up after the recent update to check out the multiplayer improvements and I can't even chose the multiplayer option. Another wonderful game I can't enjoy multiplayer with thanks to this stupid bug
New update makes the game crash right after setting up for me. Not sure if it's the Game Center thing, to be honest, I haven't played this in awhile but it never gets deleted off the iPad, so I'm not sure what happened, but this latest update broke it. Reinstalling did not help
There's a bug with the latest update which means you MUST be signed into GC before running the game. That avoids the crash when starting a new game. This has been fixed an a new update is with Apple.
