Delving into the realms of Ebay turned up one lot of the 3rd Edition "Lost Files". The other examples are the result of an email exchange with Andrew Smith of Game Trade Magazine.

I have to admit that the picture below is a representation of one of my favourite pieces in my Talisman collection. It is a prototype copy of Talisman 3rd Edition, complete with all of the Characters that Games Workshop devised for it. Not only that, but there are a few Adventure cards that never made it through to final production too.

The Adventure cards in this box are all mocked up in plain text with no pictures, they are around the same size as the final 3rd Edition cards and are printed with plain coloured backs.

I sorted through ALL of these cards and have to report that apart from a few changes to card names, there are only 5 cards that did not get used in the final release.

Now, it seems to me that a Hacksaw isn't the most mystical of objects you could think of for the World of Talisman and doesn't really go with the game, unless there is a Handyman Expansion in the works! So I decided to make that particular card into another Key.

After this there was the job of sorting through the Character cards. This was pretty easy as there were only 36 of them in the box and most of them had already been released, whether it was as part of the main game or an expansion, or even in a White Dwarf feature.

It seems that the game was still in development when this prototype was made as some of the Characters had yet to be finalised. The Black Orc had been an Orc Warlord, the Assassin started out as a Ninja, the Wizard was a lowly Magician initially, the Pitfighter only made it out when Jervis Johnson released him on the GW website and the poor old Chaos Dwarf didn't even know what he could do!

Then I struck gold! There were 5 Character cards which had never been released by Games Workshop. Two old friends from 2nd Edition (though one had a new name!) and three new guys.

I had made up these cards originally with artwork, very kindly produced by Marijn van der Gaag of Sea Realms fame, but I decided go with the GW method of using miniatures for the artwork as I had found some very nice figures in their Online Store.

Interesting to note (to me at least) is that 5 of the 8 Characters released in White Dwarf magazines - Thief, Necromancer, Wardancer, Dragon Rider and Vampire DO NOT feature in this set. But they do bring the "official" Character list to a hefty 41 cards!

Phew...

The second lot of "Lost Files" I have here are (or rather are NOT) from Game Trade Magazine. In the run up to the release of the reprinted 3rd Edition in 2003, Game Trade Magazine had printed some old White Dwarf Characters in GTM#37 - The Swordsman and the Vampire. They were to do a follow up in the next issue, but due to time and constraints of space they could not. However, Andrew Smith at the magazine sent me details of the miniatures that they were intending to use and I decided to mock them up as "semi-official" cards.

Larger versions of the 3rd Edition cards can be downloaded in a 1464KB zip file here.

The same cards featuring the artwork of Marijn van der Gaag are in a 1485KB zip file here.

Character cards that I mocked up for the Thief and Dark Elf which were left out of GTM#38 can be found in a 369KB zip file here.