First ponderings about Talisman: Legendary Tales

As there are only a few days to go before we see just what the new Talisman: Legendary Tales from Pegasus Spiele (designed by Michael Palm & Lukas Zach) has to offer when it is shown off at Gen Con for the first time, I figured I’d do a bit of sleuthing and see if we can glean any information from the images we have so far, which basically means what’s on the back of the box.

Of course, I could be totally off track and will likely revisit this post in the next couple of weeks, but it’s been a lot of fun trying to figure out just what the new game is about.

The overriding impression I get from looking at the pictures is that the game is somewhat like Fallout: The Board Game (hex placement), Warhammer Quest: The Adventure Card Game (story-driven quests) DungeonQuest (time track) and most definitely like the quest system in Talisman Prologue from Nomad Games.

Now, my gaming experience is rather limited to certain titles, so there may be better comparisons to make, but that is what I’ve come up with so far.

Anyway, please read on and see if any ideas resonate with you…

The Adventure Scroll appears to contain the instructions for the particular Chapter. The Scroll also has a blue border, which seems to correspond with the Adventure tokens that are being used in the image.

Given that there are 5 Chapters, and 5 colours of Adventure tokens, does this mean that subsequent Chapters use the red, green, purple & grey tokens exclusively, or could they perhaps be added to the token pool as you progress?

Each Chapter seems to have two distinct phases, as the instructions at the bottom of the card state:

Now turn the Adventure Scroll over and place the Time counter on the space with the same number. Then continue reading.

I’m afraid I haven’t got a clue what the 1, 2 and 3 stars are for above the Hovel, #2 and #4…

The start of the Time track shows the Hovel space, so perhaps the adventurers all begin the game at this space on a randomly created board. It is possible however that the adventure doesn’t trigger until someone reaches that space.

The adventurers are searching for Herb tokens which are found amongst the 22 blue Adventure tokens. You could therefore find them reasonably quickly depending on your draws, but it could also be a protracted affair.

The Time token looks to be advanced by game effects, either from token encounters or from rolling the Travel die (see below).

The Travel die has a Time icon on the number 4 face. Given that on a standard die, 4 would be opposite 3, it looks like this is similar to the Realm die used in the expansions for Talisman 3rd Edition, which has faces marked 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4.

It’s probable this has been adopted due to the finite number of movement options with only 12 spaces, and could also be the reason for the lower Strength and Craft attributes seen in the game.

The Adventure tokens replace cards in this edition, and it is not known whether each space has its own rules for drawing them or whether that is dependent on other game effects.

The artwork seen on the Adventure tokens is taken from the Revised 4th Edition of Talisman, including some expansions. We can see some SWORD 1 Rats using the Rat Pack artwork from The Deep Realms expansion, and a HAT 2 Giant Spider from The Reaper expansion.

As a result of various encounters, or perhaps from abilities, players are gifted Reward tokens which depict bonus Objects and Followers from the Reward bag.

So far we can see an Axe using artwork from Goblin Slayer from The Dungeon expansion that gives a bonus of 2 SWORD, and a Mule from the base game of Talisman’s Purchase deck that appears to allow the adventurer to carry an additional 2 Objects.

As we know from the front of the box, the game comes with 6 double-sided character sheets with popular archetypes from the main Talisman game:

Prophet(ess), Troll, Dwarf, Warrior, Elf & Wizard.


Not forgetting of course the promotional bonus character set, the Druid(ess).

Each of the characters has four attributes that seem to refer to Strength (Sword Icon), Craft (Hat Icon), travel/time (Hourglass Icon) and rewards (Reward Bag Icon). They also have a single special ability, and it is possible that these differ depending on whether you choose to play with the male or female version of each hero.

Prophetess: If you draw a token which makes you move the Time counter forward, you may use this token also as SWORD or HAT.

Dwarf: If you are allowed to draw 1 or more Rewards, draw 1 additional Reward and then return 1 Reward.

Wizard: Once during you turn, if you draw a token without HAT, you may return it. The draw 1 token from the same Hero bag.


Each character begins with 7 Hero start tokens, which confer a number of different bonuses to Strength & Craft, advancing the Time token (with or without reward) and a bonus draw from the Reward bag.





Last, but certainly not least, we see the full range of 12 Space tiles which feature all new artwork by Falk “Zapf” Holzapfel depicting spaces from the classic Talisman game, along with some new ones taken from Adventure cards: Fairy Pool, Cursed Glade, Castle, Tavern, Cave, Hovel, Runes, Forest, Temple, Hidden Valley, Ruins & Graveyard. There appear to be no instructions for drawing tokens on the tiles, but the image shows some tiles with face down tokens on them. Do we place the tokens randomly on the spaces before the start of play? In this instance, do the characters start on the Hovel place and 2 tokens are put on each other space? The token count would make sense at 22 blue. Perhaps further Chapters only use certain spaces depending on the story, hence the smaller count for purple tokens? All will be revealed very soon!