Dead twice, crippled twice (talisman)

Played two games of Talisman yesterday with a friend who was visiting me. They were two player games both, yet they were rather entertaining. Both had their up & downs, climax moments and filmatic situations.

Anyway, first game we played was a random ending game (which was found out to be Eagle King ending) and two contestants for the Crown of Command were Philosopher and Dread Knight.

Dreadknight started rocking on the first round already, as he found the Book of Diablerie, which raised his Craft by 2. With the warhorse he is given at the beginning he was beating up normal monsters with strenght 7.

Well, that joy didn't last for long. On turn 3 the dreadknight lost his warhorse to a colossal ogre who he just happened to run into.

The land of Talisman was ravaged, though, as first a pestilence swept through the land, followed by an earthquake and finally Ragnarok dawned.

After that the humiliation was complete when Philosopher came and whopped Dread Knights sinister arse, stealing the Book of Diablerie.

Philosopher started collecting a huge mob of followers, while Dread Knight tried to get to the graveyard to dig up another warhorse.

After a few more unlucky turns the horrible, scheming Dread Knight bit the dust at mountain pass, where an ice elemental with Craft 7 dealth with him.

During this time Philosopher had had a few strenght rises, which Dreadknight removed with Rod of Ruin. I guess he paid for that or something...

Well, the new character that came was the evil Wizard. Good character, no sweat. Yet, stables were found and at this time Philosopher was riding a warhorse. I think Wizard got one warhorse too at some point.

About that time the true nature of Philosopher was found out. Both prince and princess were already following him. However, book of diablerie whispered to him, and the prince was sacrificed so philosopher could gain a spell.

A few turns later it just couldn't be a coincidence, that Mephistopheles showed up and turned Philosopher to evil alignment.

Wizard did have a good run, but eventually he was killed too.

I can't remember a game of Talisman where one and the same player had died twice during the match. It was quite worrying fact, too, as Philosopher had had plenty of character development.

New contestant that entered the fray was the Prophetess. By the way, you want to make bets which of the players made this questionable record of getting killed twice? Yeah, me.

Philosopher had lost his warhorse to some random really unlucky psychic combat.

Yet he had a talisman already and was looking into the inner region. As he had the Gnome follower in his arsenal, he started taking journeys into the inner region.

However, his full strenght was 11 when he reached the crown of command. And then he was facing Eagle King. Philosopher couldn't kill him and it bought Prophetess a little more time.

All in all, Prophetess had, by playing ultimate risking game, trained her strenght in combat to 12. Not a bad accomplishment considering she had been playing only about the 1/3 of what the Philospher had...

But, then, alas. Getting his strenght to 14, philosopher went to challenge Eagle King again and this time beat it easily.

I must say I'm quite bewildered that Philospher actually won another game! And now, since starting this blog, he has won 100% of the games he has played in. Do I need to re-evaluate my opinion on him?


Talisman game 2:

Second game we played was the Sacred Pool revealed variant, where the goal was to get to use 4 warlock quest rewards and then rush to the crown of command.

Characters drawn were the Druid and Priest.

I have always disliked the priest, but actually getting spells from spirits he kills outright is pretty nice ability after all, though you cannot keep those enemies as trophies any longer.

However, the priest had the weirdest karma in this game. Rather early in the game he turns evil when Mephistopheles comes up again (at least the card piles were supposed to be shuffled good... I blame the karma!) and has a little chat with the priest.

Then first warlock quest he completes he gets a reward to draw as many adventure cards until a follower is revealed and then he gets the follower. This follower just happened to be the False Prophet, a follower that you must take and has a negative effect on your character.

Next turn, priest wanders into chasm, where by rolling the right numbers, followers could die. He had been turned evil only a little while ago, and this was the first true evil act he made. Out of all of priests followers, only the false prophet died in the chasm. But to be honest, that was pretty lame "reward".

Luckily he finds "homunculus" follower quite soon after that, which he couldn't have taken had he been still of Good alignment.

All this time the Druid had been tossing spells left and right, always filling up on those at Woods. Now, because of nothing better to do, druid cast the spell "Random" on priest. Dice roll comes out as 1. Use of fate, re-rolling that. Again, 1. Priest was turned into a toad.

Evil toad of Mephistopheles.

Warlock quest rewards started piling up and priest's stunt as a toad wasn't all that painful, as he got all his stuff back.

Druid did a funny little trick later, though, when he was tossing spells around again. He switched priests alignment to "good" for two rounds, which meant that the homunculus was left behind.

Priest was in the highlands at that time, so it was a long way off too, when soon enough priest managed to complete yet another quest.

Well, our evil little priest got a new quest to pray at the temple. Sounded easy.

Yet, the dice wasn't too friendly then and priest was trekking back and forth close to the temple, when he finally stumbled into the Witch. Obviously she turned priest into toad again... except, no. Priest still had one fate counter left and re-rolled the die. Didn't turn into a toad.

Druid, on the other hand, casts another Random on the priest. Fate no more. Die roll: 1. Toad again.

I don't really remember that any player, since the new edition of the game and the add of fate mechanics, had been turned into a toad twice in the same match.

I guess you can bet now which character I was playing... Yeah, the priest. In a way it's nice, as I made some kind of history or a record at these things! First the deaths and now the toads.

Now, as toad doesn't get to roll a die for move and moves only 1 space per round, there was some balm to my wounds from getting frogged again. Priest was standing next to Temple, so, the brave toad moves to pray at the temple. Mission accomplished. Teleport to warlocks cave. Reward. Well, the reward is to pick up a free item from purchase deck. Oh right, I'm a toad, can't pick anything up... second reward that was useless.

As if karma hadn't beaten the priest enough, next round it moves to runes space next to warlocks cave and draws a Catherdal there, which acts as a chapel.

And, being the unholy, baby-sacrificing, terror-causing little frog, holy powers of the cathedral burn the frog...

"This frog is an unholy creature and needs to be driven off from our sacred cathedral!"

Ah well, in defense of priest, despite froggin' around, he managed to discard four quest rewards first and even get the talisman first.

However, the flimsy and "everyone's buddy" druid took all the priests stuff that he had left behind the second time he was transformed into a toad.

Priest had pretty good strenght and craft, but not good enough to go through the inner region. However, the druid had. Once he got himself a talisman and four discarded quest rewards he ran into the crown of command and won the game.

So, a victory for the druid!