Talisman Digital Edition Legendary Deck Expansion
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Nomad Games has released a new expansion that is not for the faint of heart with the Talisman Digital Edition Legendary Decks. Released on May 7th 2020, this set proves to be a substantial challenge for players looking for tougher monsters, and more crazy items and effects. Let’s dive on in and see how this expansion is broken up and what it has to offer.
First off, if you have not checked out the full review of Talisman Digital Edition, you can find that here. It will be a good way to understand what Talisman Digital Edition is and how it actually plays as this review will only be covering the expansion.
The Legendary decks are a series of cards that are to be added into the game that when drawn increase the lethality or bonus to adventure decks. Our couple play tests utilized all the expansions that these decks were available for and that includes: Base Set, Reaper Expansion, Dungeon Expansion, and Highlands expansion. The Legendary decks do not come with the expansions themselves so they need to be purchased separately. So keep that in mind if you are wondering why you don’t seem to have any legendary decks.
The Legendary deck for the base game offers some of what we already have seen before in the game as well as some new cards to encounter. This is a similar pattern across all 4 expansions.
That being said, coming across a dragon that is 15 strength is enough to send any Talisman player running. It will be a common theme here, but I found that it’s very important when utilizing these decks that you play with a healthy and less risky life total throughout the game cause 2 life swings are very common compared to playing without these decks.
As stated before, the legendary decks contain a lot of ramped up power levels to creatures. One area that was already challenging in the basing version of the expansion was the Dungeon. The Legendary deck for this set in particular is very unforgiving and I saw for the first time the highest power card. If I drew this in an actual game, my heart would sink. a power level of 19 is a joke to no one.
So through the several playthroughs that we did of the game, it was easy to see that there is a very healthy mix of these legendary cards on the board with the classic cards that came with the set. The legendary decks as a whole really add some extra variety to the game at a higher power level. For that reason I recommend getting these expansions, especially if you only have the base game and are wanting to play with some higher difficulty.
The legendary decks are also a good option when playing with others online, these decks add a slight new feel without changing the complexity of play when playing with friends that may have just picked up the game for the first time or have only played once or twice.
Maybe your friends picked the game up on the Nintendo Switch recently or they don’t have all the other expansions and don’t know how to play the other expansions very well. Because the legendary deck expansion is separated out for the base game, highlands, dungeon, and reaper, they only need to be purchased for whatever version and expansions you want to play with. As well these legendary decks can be toggled on and off from the game menu when starting up a new game similar to the activation of any other expansions a player may or may not own.
New Characters for Talisman Digital Edition
With this expansion, players also saw the release of some separately sold character packs as well that include the Witch Hunter, the Ranger, and the Swordsman.
The Witch Hunter is my favorite of the new characters that were released with this pack. Though it may be a little on the over powered side. This character has the ability to change the alignment of another character in the game.
He also comes with a witch token. At the start of a turn, the person playing the Witch Hunter can accuse any other player of being a witch and give them a witch token. If the token was not currently being utilized on a character. This allows for the potential stop of a movement when landing on that character with the token and the start of the trial effect. This allows the character (as long as the alignment has been changed to not match the Witch Doctor) they player of the witch doctor will be able to add 2 to their attack score. A successful attack will result in the reclaiming of the token, 1 fate, and the defeated player must lose 1 file or kill a follower.
Overall, this character looks like a really fun one to play and promotes hunting down other players in the game if that is your play style. 4 strength 4 craft and 4 life seems pretty high for this character. but might align this character with other high end characters in the game.
I was confused right away with this character as I assumed that a ranger already existed, however I was thinking of the scout character. This character starts with 4 strength and 3 craft. The effects are that of a wilderness survival. This character can choose to omit rolling in many of the environment based spaces in the game. In addition, any animal based or dragon based creature allows this character to add 1 to the attack roll. So this character might be better off with the dragon expansion.
This character also gets to always see the top card of the adventure deck which could be pretty handy. Spending a fate with this character allows to omit the drawing of adventure cards on a given space. Finally, no life is lost in the desert.
Overall this character to me is just another to add to the collection. It doesn’t stand out a whole lot, but might be a good consideration based on the expansions to the game being used.
The last of the new characters to the Digital Edition to Talisman is the Swordsman. This character starts with a sword. If one gets lost, landing on the castle or village allows for one to be taken free of charge.
There is also the disarm effect where if rolling a 5 or 6 the opposing characters weapon drops to the ground leading to the dropping of said item. Finally this character has a parry mechanic which allows for 2 attack to be added to a score, but the result will be a stand off, if effect, this makes this character hard to take life against since he starts at 5 strength which is pretty high.
Talisman Legendary Deck Expansion Conclusion
If you are hungry for more Talisman, these expansions are for you. If you are looking for a bigger challenge from the adventure deck, these expansions are for you. If you are looking for new board pieces to play with, there are other expansions out there that will provide that. This is simply a character and a deck based expansion. It adds plenty of depth to the adventure deck and a bigger sense of fear of the power level of monsters and death that I had not experienced since the integration of Death and always being aware that a simple roll could kill my characters off.
These decks are all sold individually, so if you want to try just one, I would recommend starting with the base set legendary deck as this is where most players spend most of their time.
The characters are also sold individually so this release allows for players to pick and choose what they really want to get to add to the variety of their game.
You can pick up expansions to this game including the ones talked about in this review by using the link here: https://store.steampowered.com/dlc/247000/Talisman_Digital_Edition/#browse
A big thanks to Nomad Games for providing copies of these expansions to review. They did not in any way alter my opinions to the expansion.
Be sure to check out other Talisman content below and comment below and let me know what your thoughts are on the expansion! If you have not checked out the review of Talisman Digital Edition, once again, I recommend that you check that out by clicking here.
https://www.dickwizardry.com/articles/talisman-digital-edition-review?rq=Talisman%20Digital
