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Back in February, Games Workshop announced via the Warhammer Community pages that the Revised 4th Edition of Talisman would be getting a reprint. Following the longest 9 months in history and an awful lot of speculation, the game along with six expansions went on worldwide sale in November!
Thanks to the UK distributors, CoiledSpring Games, I now have my grubby hands on a copy of the reprint and can hopefully allay some of the worries that players had about compatibility between the new printing and the 2008 printing of the game by Fantasy Flight Games.
The first batch of games I have received were the base game of Talisman, plus two of the smaller expansions, The Blood Moon and The Harbinger, though I will be bringing an overview of the remaining expansions when they arrive from my eFnsLGS (Extremely Friendly, Not So Local Game Store!), Fan Boy Three!!
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| First batch of reprints in shrink. More to come! |
I think it’s safe to say that any worries that people had about how the different printings would match up were unfounded, as they will blend seamlessly when mixed together. I will cover the general comparisons here, and anything that needs a bit of further explanation will appear below after the images.
The main changes are the removal of Fantasy Flight Games‘ branding, along with references to the Licensing Department at Games Workshop, as that is obviously no longer required. There are also new bits of legal blurb on the box as required by law in the UK.
The dice, tokens, counters and playing pieces are the same as they obviously use the same moulds as before. You’d also be hard pressed to tell the difference between the cards in the two printings, as I had a bit of trouble keeping them in their respective versions when taking these images earlier today! If anything, I would say that the colour of the reprinted cards is actually richer.
(Note: Images are actually larger than they appear here. Right click and open image in new tab to see more detail.)
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| Talisman Base Game Box Front | Talisman Base Game Box Rear | ||
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| Talisman Base Game Contents | Talisman Base Game Credits Page | ||
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| Talisman Base Game Adventure Cards | Talisman Base Game Card Packaging | ||
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| New Character Base Examples | New Character Bases |
Three things in particular excited me a tad more than they should have when I opened up the box to the base game of Talisman, though they are useful additions for different reasons.
Firstly, the Adventure cards are shrink-wrapped as they were in the early days with Fantasy Flight Games, after which they moved to plastic baggies, however these shrink-wrapped cards have tear strips to make opening the packs a breeze!
I am sure I am not the only one who was frustrated in the past trying to get a sharp knife across the edge of the packaging without damaging the cards!
Secondly, the game now includes plastic covers in six different colours that clip onto the bases of the playing pieces to help differentiate between them on the board until you get around to painting your minis.
Obviously they won’t work for the larger playing pieces like the Ogre Chieftain or Dragon Rider, but you should be able to tell those apart!
Finally, as you can see in the images of the contents, you also get a little leaflet in each box telling you all about Talisman: Digital Edition and Talisman: The Horus Heresy from Nomad Games, which comes with a FREE code for Talisman: Digital Edition on Steam so you can get playing the game online too!!
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| The Blood Moon Expansion Box Front | The Blood Moon Expansion Box Rear | ||
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| The Blood Moon Expansion Contents | The Blood Moon Expansion Credits Page | ||
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| The Blood Moon Expansion Cards | The Blood Moon Expansion Cardbacks |
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| The Harbinger Expansion Box Front | The Harbinger Expansion Box Rear | ||
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| The Harbinger Expansion Contents | The Harbinger Expansion Credits Page | ||
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| The Harbinger Expansion Cards | The Harbinger Expansion Cardbacks |
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| Character Card Comparison | Alternative Ending Comparison | ||
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| Playing Piece Comparison | Talisman Base Game Insert | ||
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| Board Fold Comparison | Board Text Comparison |
As you can see in the images shown above, there is very little between the two versions, though it might have been nice to have the insert for the base game retooled slightly so that the card slots in the top right of the picture were deeper. This wouldn’t have solved an “all expansions” storage solution, but it would certainly have helped a little.
It’s great to see that the board has been cut a different way this time around so that the inside is protected when it is folded up, much like the board that comes with The Cataclysm expansion.
Interestingly there is a small difference with the font used on the board and elsewhere, which you can see if you compare the wording of the Tavern space in the image above!
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| Talisman Base Game “R” Comparison | The Harbinger Expansion “R” Comparison | ||
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| Talisman 4th Edition “R” Comparison | Talisman: Digital Edition “R” Comparison |
The printing of the base game has an interesting throwback in that the font used for card titles and the like is a slightly different version that was used to print the Fantasy Flight Games version.
It doesn’t actually affect anything in use or play at all, but the R in the Windlass font has the trailing version of the character, rather than the truncated one. You can see that this only affects the base game (and I believe The Reaper expansion), as The Blood Moon and The Harbinger use the normal version.
I suppose this could be considered a bit of a homage to the original 4th Edition of Talisman from Black Industries, where both versions of the R were used on cards and you can also see above that Talisman: Digital Edition from Nomad Games uses the trailing R exclusively.
In closing, I would suggest that if you are missing a couple of the expansions, or even the base game of Talisman from your collection, you can relax and snap up these reprints!
I have seen in posts on BoardGameGeek that there might be a small issue with the rulesheet for The Dragon expansion, but I shall be sorting Part Two of this overview as soon as the other boxes land, so look out for that. If necessary, I will post a file with any rules that might be missing too!
If there is something that I haven’t covered that you’d like to know about, just send me a message on Facebook or via email (links at the top of the page) and I will add to the page.
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