And a third (Talisman)

A couple of days ago I was visiting friends at Salo.

We played still one game of Talisman (we even started fourth, but then came... distractions.

Anyway, we played again with a random ending. Which happened to be the Eagle King, which was a bit lame, because it was so similar with our last random ending.

Characters that were drawn were Prophetess, Philosopher and Swashbuckler.

Prophetess found the Mercenary -follower pretty early in the game, which boosted her battles considerably.

Swashbuckler, on the other hand, played two turns in a row almost every turn. The speed in which Swashbuckler trekked from battle to battle was intimidating. I guess he lived a too dangerous and blood-quenched life, because it didn't take too long for him to turn into Evil alignment.

Philosopher. Uh. Now that one is a bit sad tale to tell. The player who got it thought that best tactic with Philosopher is to kill him right away. Which was done soon enough. A new character was drawn, which was the Dragon Rider.

And it's painful to say, but it seemed that the tactic worked just fine.

Once Dragon Rider had acquired a dragon mount, she went nuts with Warlock Quests. I've never seen that many warlock quests finished in a game of Talisman. I think Dragon Rider finished something like 10 quests.

But the dragon mount was perfect for "grinding" quests. Many quests are "travel to somewhere" -types of quests, and with such a powerful way to affect movement roll it's quite easy to get where you want.

Prophetess got a couple of lucky additions to her Strenght and went to dungeon with Swashbuckler. There her strenght just continued to rise, pretty much thanks to Mercenary. In fact her Strenght (without additions from items) was a lot higher than her Craft!

Swashbuckler started the end game by entering Inner Region. Dragon Rider came just a few steps behind him (thanks to Spiteful Imp). At this point Prophetess had unsportingly undermined Swashbuckler's items and even base strenght with Syphon Strenght -spell. She had highest base stats around, but was missing one vital piece to enter Inner Region - The Talisman.

However, once Swashbuckler got into Crown of Command it was revealed that the players were facing Eagle King. Swashbuckler beat King once, but lost second fight and was teleported to the Crags.

Pretty much same happened to Dragon Rider.

At this point Prophetess had finally managed to find herself a talisman. Swashbuckler and Dragon Rider were in a hurry to get just a few stat rises. To buy themselves a little more time they threw quite a lot of stuff in front of her. A "random" spell was cast (which made her lose all her gold - not good for the Mercenary's paycheck!) and she was forced to take a warlock's quest. Which was rather devious plan, actually. If she had had the requirements done, she'd have been teleported to Warlock's Cave. Also Swashbuckler stole her Energize spell, which would have been put to good use at Eagle King.

But in the end Prophetess went to the crown and mauled Eagle King.