Travels of a Toad
My favourite game is Talisman. I've played the second edition when you all weren't even born yet, I own some boxes of the third edition and all of the fourth. Sometimes I can talk people into playing it with me. Nobody wants to play it twice. Some people stopped visiting me. Fortunately, I am a solo gamer. Friends are overrated.
This year I'll be revisiting Talisman: The Magical Quest Game (revised 4th edition, the Fantasy Flight one) a lot for Solitaire Times. I want to take a closer look at each expansion, as I just threw most of them in when I bought them, making this a monster of a game, with huge piles of cards, that can easily take a group six hours to play. On the other hand, I shelved some other expansions because of the new rules they added. Time to have a look where I spent all that money on.
I started this series three years ago on Boardgamegeek. But I lost my notes somewhere along the way and then forgot about it. So I'll first copy some old posts in the coming months, then play sessions with the expansions I have not covered yet.
***
There are fan made solo variants available. I'm playing my own very simple multiplayer simulation though, as I like the PvP aspect of the game.
Me: a spellcaster.
Opponent: a character focused on strength, that will:
try to kill me until it's leveled up to 9 strength
try to get a Talisman next
go to the Inner Region to try and win the game at 12 strength
If the opponent dies, it will be replaced by a new character. If I die, I lose the game.
***
I aim to post about an expansion every month (sometimes throwing in two small ones at a time), which should get me through 2021:
January - The Reaper Don't Fear the Reaper
February - The Frostmarch / The Sacred Pool Rolling Dice with Death
March - The Dungeon Down in the Dungeon
April - The Highland Higher Ground
May - The Dragon Here Be Dragons
June - The Blood Moon I See a Blood Moon Rising
July - The City Summer in the City
[edit - then there was an unforseen break in posts]
October - The Nether Realm / The Deep Realms I Put a Spell on You
November - The Firelands
December - The Woodland
January - The Harbinger
February - The Cataclysm
Is this fun? Are you kidding me? 😄
Of course not.
There will be times I'll be bored out of my skull. Let's face it, this is no game to play solo. You should play it with a group, drinking lots of beer, laughing at each other's misfortune, then roll a 1 yourself, get turned into a toad and see everybody running off with the stuff you managed to collect in the last two hours.
But when World of Warcraft started all those years ago, I spent the first six months just walking around, sightseeing at leisure. I have such fond memories of that time. In Skyrim I even walked around for seven hundred and forty hours, and I have absolutely no idea how the main quest ends. I'm that kind of person. So I'll survive.
And well, it's my altruistic nature. I will be playing this solo so you don't have to. Cool, huh?