Follower lover (Talisman)

I'm writing up the last game of Talisman now that was played in Vaasa with three players. It's still relatively fresh in my memory.

Characters were the Grave Robber, Bounty Hunter and Sage. We used only the side board expansions this time.

Every character got a decent start, but the Bounty Hunter was above everyone. He got five gold early in game and went to city to get a flail. That he got, for free that is. Some lucky event let him take an item from armoury free of charge. Five gold were spent on magic ring. So we were looking at Strenght 6-7 Bounty Hunter with a flail at around turn 10.

Things evened out a little when Bounty Hunter picked up gremlin follower. Whenever he used an item, it would explode and cause a damage on 1-2, not work on 3-4 and gremlins explode themselves on 5-6.

Grave Robber on the other hand found a talisman straight out of adventure deck and some decent +2 strenght in battle weapon. Things took a turn for the worse for him, too, when he found probably the most horrifying follower ever that's in the whole damn game. Old Man of the Sea was the name, and it takes away your gained Craft and Strenght points at rate of one per turn! If you have none, then you lose life instead. You can get rid of him at the tavern and you gain the Craft and Strenght points lost from him, but... really? If you get that one early in game you have at most four turns to reach the tavern or you just die.

Luckily Grave Robber had one Craft point, and when he was trying to get to tavern he gained another.

Sage found some good items, but the game was more merciful on him. As we weren't using the day/night card it was a little annoying when he turned into a lycanthrope. I guess the sage didn't attract many disciples after that.

After such a random start where two characters almost died, game went on steadily. Grave Robber started gaining Craft and Bounty Hunter got rather disturbing amounts of Strenght. Sage almost didn't get to fight at all, though he had quite impressive fighting capability thanks to some good items.

Grave Robber tried to reach the Crown of Command first, and that put some pressure to Bounty Hunter. Well, I guess it put pressure on Sage too, but he had gained only one point of Strenght during whole game.

It looked like Grave Robber would inevitably win, because Bounty Hunter didn't even have a talisman when Grave Robber started rolling 4+ on the Crown.

Then amazing things started to happen.

Turn 1: Bounty Hunter defeats Eagle King and gets no other reward than Arnkell. That's one of the few items that speed up Inner Region immensely. Hunter teleports to lake of visions in the outer region and takes a quest to visit Cursed Glade.

Turn 2: Bounty Hunter lands on same space as Sage and gives Tricks and Treats to him and takes Phoenix potion in exchange.

Turn 3-4: Bounty Hunter reaches Cursed Glade, finishes quest and teleports to Warlock's Cave, gaining a Talisman.

Turn 5-6: Bounty Hunter reaches Plain of Peril.

Turn 7: Bounty Hunter uses Arnkell to teleport to Valley of Fire.

Turn 8: Bounty Hunter wins the game. He has 1 life when he enters Crown of Command.

Well, technically Bounty Hunter didn't win on turn 8, but because there was no chance to get even a draw and Sage had gained one Strenght and two Craft points now.

In turns 5-6 Sage also made a serious blunder in not remembering to check what card was there on the top of adventure deck. Of course it was the Tornado that could still have ruined Bounty Hunter's game, but instead it threw all the important items Sage had all over middle region.

Sage tried to cycle spells to get something that would affect the outcome of the game, but nothing came up.