• Tag Archives Board Game
  • Talisman: Origins

    This game is essentially just a limited version of the main game: There’s no multiplayer and you can’t create your own games.

    What it offers in exchange are a number of puzzle-like scenarios that incorporate both the default setup and the City, Highlands, Dungeon, Firelands, and Dragon DLC. Different scenarios involve different setups. So in theory you could use it as a demo to decide whether or not you want to buy those… but I just don’t see much value to be had there. As for its own clutch of DLC, they feature scenarios that involve content from some of the other base game extensions. So unless you’re an achievement hunting fiend those aren’t worth buying either (I briefly tried Beyond the Veil, which uses content from the Reaper DLC; it’s awful).

    Considering that you can demo the various DLC in the main game simply by playing multiplayer (only the host needs to have bought them; I got to play Cataclysm, Clockwork Kingdom, Ancient Beasts, and Realm of Souls that way and quickly realized I never want to interact with the latter two again), the only reason to bother with Origins is if either multiplayer isn’t an option or you simply don’t have the time to play full-length Talisman games.


  • Talisman: Digital Edition

    The appearance of this game caught me by surprise, as I certainly wasn’t expecting a board game I used to play decades ago to have (relatively) recently been digitized.

    The adaptation as far as I can tell is flawless from a mechanics perspective with the AI behaving remarkably intelligently even when faced with alternate win conditions (you can also play with multiple human characters either on the same computer or through online servers). Visually though it could certainly use some upgrading: Animating the character movement and/or the encounters wouldn’t be unwelcome. Then again, it has a certain retro charm to it as is, it’s far from expensive (on sale for $2 at the moment), and no animation can occasionally be preferable to lackluster animation.

    You may notice that the game has quite a number of available DLC. They are in no way necessary; you can play the game perfectly fine without any of them in fact. They mostly just give you additional options or make winning harder. I’ll briefly go over the ones I’ve played with:

    • Blood Moon adds a situational new mechanic whose usefulness will depend on how many Event-adding DLC you have installed. The new characters are notable for being less situational than most.
    • The City extends the game board with a new Gold-centric region to explore. If you commonly find yourself with nothing to spend your Gold on, or have trouble finding equipment, it’ll be worth picking up (when on sale).
    • The Dragon DLC can make the game harder in two ways. Either by overriding the default encounters with powerful dragon-related encounters, or by making it harder to traverse the inner area with two of the three alternate win conditions (if this DLC is activated, I strongly suggest activating the ‘No Respawn’ house rule as well).
    • The Dungeon expands the game board by the same amount as the City DLC. Unlike that though this new area doesn’t really add anything new to the base game beyond an arguably easier win condition. The characters it includes are less situational though.
    • The Firelands will be more useful the more DLC you have installed, as otherwise its burn mechanic could seriously hinder the exploration part of gameplay.
    • I’m not really sure how useful Frostmarch will be to anyone. It basically just adds more of the same to the base game.
    • In direct contrast to Blood Moon, the Harbinger DLC is apparently more effective with less DLC installed. This is because its central mechanic mostly relies upon drawing specific events… which can end up a rare occurrence when you have a massive Adventure deck.
    • As with the City and Dungeon addons, the Highland DLC also adds a new region to the board. Basically, you’ll want to come here for the new relics to give you that last bit of advantage you’ll need at 10 Strength/Craft to challenge the win condition (assuming the win condition is combat-related).
    • The Reaper is a lot like Blood Moon, except its NPC effect is notably more useful. The instant death result can turn around what would otherwise be a hopeless situation.
    • The Sacred Pool will be most useful if you’re using alternate win conditions. If you only play with the default Crown of Command one there won’t be much point in bothering with it.
    • The fourth of the ‘board extension’ DLC, the Woodland does a number of things. Most notably it adds an entirely new use for Fate which allows you to reroll other players’ rolls rather than your own. Though occasionally useful in the default game, this new Dark Fate is particularly useful for triggering some of the nastier encounter results from other DLC.

    Ancient Beasts, Nether Realm, and the various Legendary Decks were skipped because they just add more challenge (which is not something I’m particularly interested in). Cataclysm meanwhile I’m holding off on until I get bored of the default (DLC-extended) board layout. As for Clockwork Kingdom and Realm of Souls… they’re not cheap enough yet.

    You may notice I didn’t mention any of the single-release additional characters. That’s both because they’re obvious rip-offs and because the characters in this game aren’t exactly well balanced. Their strengths are very much situational and whether one will be better than another will depend heavily on which content-adding DLC you have activated.

    As for


  • Hand of Fate 2 & Shadowrun: Dragonfall

    The second Hand of Fate game is essentially a slightly refined/expanded version of its predecessor. If you’ve already played that then you’ll know whether or not you’ll like this, and if you haven’t then you may as well just start here.

    As for its recently released DLC… well, you might as well grab that too. While the new cards aren’t really anything to write home about, the new companion is remarkably useful.

    Similar to the above, Shadowrun: Dragonfall is mechanically just a refined Shadowrun Returns and you’re basically paying for the base campaign. Which, granted, certainly does feature more roleplaying opportunities and choices than the earlier game. What’s a bit odd though is how most of the various NPCs in your central hub have evolving storylines which don’t actually go anywhere; they’re pure flavor text.

    A few quick things about it:
    – Your PC has to be a Decker to access everything.
    – Decking and Charisma don’t need to be higher than 6 for dialog checks.
    – The Security and Corporate etiquettes are both useful for avoiding annoying fights.
    – Bonuses (such as those from cyberware) can’t raise your stats above 11.


  • Heretic Kingdoms – The Inquisition & Hand of Fate

    I have not played much of Heretic Kingdoms – The Inquisition (originally titled Kult: Heretic Kingdoms), just the opening Monastery map. Basically it struck me as Diablo with much fewer character building options. Allegedly there’s more to it than basic Action RPG mechanics, and hopefully that’s true because without Diablo‘s skill system the combat looks like it will get real old real fast.

    The reason I stopped playing the above so quickly was because Hand of Fate grabbed my attention. This game is not quite like anything I’ve played before; it’s half board game (composed of cards you collect and build decks from) and half arena-hack&slash. While the combat is for the most part fairly simple (enemies basically attack you one at a time, you can dodge/counter/attack), it’s also remarkably well detailed and the arenas are nicely varied. The board/card game part is the real draw though, where you get to travel a series of paths made out of encounter cards pulled randomly from a deck you build beforehand while managing various resources and the protagonist’s equipment. Most encounters provide a choice and can result in combat, a pick-a-card minigame, or resource trading/acquisition. Traveling the randomly generated paths is interesting enough on its own, but combined with the unlocking mechanic (where landing on one card will unlock another related card if you meet certain requirements) it becomes quite addicting.

    At the moment I’ve defeated the King of Dust and have unlocked all possible cards at this point except the Merchant Guard Fate’s (while the Iron Hunger cards can theoretically be unlocked at this point, I don’t think it’s likely in practice). Something I realized very late, shortly after defeating the King of Dust, is that you should replay each story point until all available cards are unlocked before moving on. This is because as you progress your deck size gets larger, making it less likely you’ll draw the card(s) you need to unlock the further you progress. It was a real pain unlocking chains like Blood Auction/Charity and the various Fate’s cards halfway through the story… although this turned out to be the perfect time to unlock the Lion Prince’s.

    So far my favorite Fates are Shadow Agent (easy pick-a-card segments) and Lion Prince (the health gain mechanic), though Iron Hunger may make the list once I get the hang of building a deck around it. The least fun have been the Nomad (sketchy start), Monk (no gold gain is a real pain), and Apprentice (easy mode is really easy). Quest-wise the Kraken chain stands out for its set-piece end battle (killing the lizards is a trap), The White Minotaur stands out for the insane number of pick-a-card segments you have to win, Decent Into Hell stands out for the unexpected requirements of the second-to-last card (a high-damage weapon and at least three rings in your inventory) along with its rather unfair final battle, and The White Council stands out for how anticlimactic it ends.

    Starting out I suggest unlocking the various Fate’s cards (most added by the Wildcards expansion), particularly Apprentice to teach you the basics of combat, Soldier to give you practice building combos, and the first two Warlord cards to unlock a fantastic helm and solid artifact card. Then play with the Shadow Agent Fate for a bit until you get the hang of how the pick-a-card minigame works (it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize the card shuffling wasn’t random). After that point just try out each of the Fates until you unlock all their cards to figure out which ones are the most enjoyable for you. Note though that Shadow Agent can’t be fully unlocked until after the Jack of Skulls, Nomad until after the King of Dust, and Warlord/Monk until after the King of Skulls. Also, while theoretically possible earlier, to unlock the Lion Prince & Iron Hunger cards you’ll probably want to wait until after defeating the King of Dust (Lion Prince) and Jack of Scales (Iron Hunger).


  • Armello & Gothic II Gold

    Armello is a remarkably fun board game with pleasant visuals and a few different ways to win: Combat, prestige, or by collecting enough of a specific item. Each method has its own strategy involved, but there’s enough overlap so that you can usually fall back on a secondary method if your primary one ends up unfeasible for whatever reason. The only real issue it has right now is that there is no multiplayer matchmaking (you can only join a game lobby if you know its passcode), and the CPU AI isn’t particularly challenging once you get a hang of the game. Oh, and there are very few ways available to reduce corruption.

    So I mentioned Gothic II Gold earlier, saying how it wasn’t really grabbing me in the beginning. Well, it finally did once I was able to actually kill things somewhat reliably (with a Fine Short Sword, 34 Str, and 34 1H). I’ve been playing more or less nonstop since and now I’m about to start the 2nd Chapter with all of the Island areas cleared except the Skeleton Crypt, the Skeleton Cave on the mountainside behind Dexter’s camp, and the two armored Skeletons guarding the Dragon Slicer sword. I’m going for a Fire Mage build, currently wielding the Master Sword and a Composite Bow, and my naked stats at level 19 are 57 Str, 60 Dex, 42 1H, 26 Bow, and 35 Mana (Skills: Sneak, Lockpick, Pick Pockets, Skinning, Ancient Language 1-2, and all Mana Potion Alchemy recipes). The plan now is to put all my LP from this point on (20 available at the moment) into Mana, the last Ancient Language level, and a few key spells: Ice Lance (5LP), Ice Block (10LP), Create Stone Golem (15LP), Destroy Undead (10LP), Summon Demon (20LP), & Rain of Fire (20LP). Speaking of spells, I had a hell of a time finding a site that listed the game’s spells with their updated NotR/Gold statistics.

    Magic, at this point, seems incredibly underpowered. It’s slower than melee and, unlike Str/Dex in regards to melee/ranged attacks, Mana does not increase your spell damage. The 1st level damaging spells do a whole 25 damage for 5 mana. 25 damage is nothing… can that even kill a goblin? It’s not until you get to the 4th circle that magic damage looks to actually be a viable alternative to melee/ranged damage, and of course you don’t get access to them until the 4th chapter. Which means if you’re trying for a ‘pure Mage’ playthrough you’re going to have some serious trouble, though I suspect it may be doable if you rush your way into the Monastery (by running past enemies until they give up chasing you) and then rely on Summon Goblin Skeleton (Goblin Skeletons are very quick and hit surprisingly hard).

    Melee seems the most effective strategy at this point (the problem with ranged is that hitting something will aggro everything near it, so unless you’re standing on a ledge it’s very likely at least one enemy will make it into melee range), though melee is a bit weird. There is of course the whole ‘janky movement’ issue, but the main problem is that enemies always seem to have a significant advantage over you where damage is concerned. If you wield a Heavy Branch (10 damage) you’ll have severe trouble killing anything bigger than a Rat or Young Wolf, yet Black Goblins and Goblin Skeletons wield just that and can completely murder a PC with 300 HP and 30ish Armor in short order. I’m not sure whether the inequality stems from enemies having too much Strength or too much Weapon Resistance.

    Due to the above, the prevailing melee strategy for everything other than trolls is to simply wait for the enemy to attack, hop backward (you’re invincible here), then attack. Against creatures you’ll want to do your full melee combo before jumping back again, but against humans and skeletons (sometimes also orcs and wolves) you’ll want to do only a 2-hit combo at most before hopping back. That’s because those enemies have quick attacks that they’ll often be able to hit you with during the split-second breaks between your swings; getting hit in melee is like playing Russian roulette and you need to avoid it at all costs. As for trolls, just run behind them while they’re doing their initial roar and you can strafe against their back faster than they can turn to face you (2-attack combo and tap right/left in the opposite direction that they’re turning, repeat).