It was over ten years ago that the original version of Talisman, written by Bob Harris, was first released upon an unsuspecting world. At the time, nobody at Games Workshop was quite ready for its run away popularity. Print run after print run sold out, a 2^nd edition was released and sold even better than the first - there just seemed to be no end to the demand for the game! Since then, Talisman has remained one of Games Workshops' best selling games, and is now available in half a dozen languages. Soon after the release of Talisman we were deluged with letters from players asking for new cards and characters, or suggesting their own ideas for the same. These, along with a number of ideas of our own, resulted in a large number of 'expansion kits' being published for the Talisman game over the years.

The reason for Talisman's enduring and wide ranging success is that it serves as an excellent introduction into the world of fantasy gaming. Talisman is easy to understand and can be played by all if the family, combining many fantasy themes with the luck and tactics of a traditional board game. In the game each player becomes one of a group of brave adventurers. The Talisman land has been conquered by the evil Dragon King, and it is up to the players to restore order by defeating him and rescuing the Crown of Command. This is considerably more easily said than done, as the land of Talisman is infested with powerful and dangerous monsters. On their quest the players will meet powerful enemies, discover friends and magical objects, and meet strange beings. Finally, when they have gained sufficient power, they can cross the last and most dangerous region to secure the Crown of Command. Before they can do this they first need to find one of the magical Talismans that will allow them to pass through the deadly Portal of Power unharmed!

Although Talisman is designed to be a light-hearted and entertaining game, it still provides plenty of opportunities to carry out cunning plans and clever ploys that will confound your opponents! This makes it an excellent game for even the most hardened and experienced gamer. Because it can be played by up to six players it is a very good way to pass the time if you have a group of friends round and don't have the time or the space to fight out a full-scale game of Warhammer or Warhammer 40,000, or if the tabletop game you were playing ended sooner than anticipated and you still have a couple of hours of gaming time left!

The rules of Talisman are deceptively simple. At the start of the game each player is dealt a character card. These range from mighty fighters such as the Warrior or the Dwarf, to powerful magicians such as the Wizard and Sorceress. Each character has their own special strengths and weakness which combine with spells and equipment to create unique characters. The magical land where this quest takes place is represented by the Talisman board. The board is split into three regions (the wizard's tower, the middle region and the outer region) each of which is further divided into a number of different sized spaces. Each character is represented by a plastic playing piece, and may move a number of spaces equal to the roll of a dice each turn. The closer you get to the centre, the more dangerous the spaces become. On most of the spaces you will be instructed to draw one or more Adventure cards, and it is these which provide the heart of the game. The various events, adversaries, magical objects, followers and places that the players encounter on their quest are illustrated on the cards. The possible combinations of cards are almost endless, and ensure that no two games of Talisman will ever be the same. Once you start playing the game you will fine that the road to success is fraught with peril; fellow players can steal your hard won treasures, leaving you exposed to the land's thieves, monsters and cut-throats. Victory is never easy, and only the cunning and resourceful gain a chance to battle to ultimate victory.

It's now been quite a while since the last edition of Talisman was released, so last year we decided to put together a brand new edition that would bring Talisman up to the standard of the rest of the games in the Games Workshop product range. The two most important improvements we wanted to make were including plastic playing pieces and proper playing cards with the game. The last edition of Talisman used card playing pieces to represent each player's character. In the new edition the characters are represented by plastic Citadel miniatures, and this alone vastly improves the game. The last edition of Talisman had cards that had to be punched out by hand, which was time-consuming and meant that the cards weren't all that nice, so this time we've had the cards printed and pre-packed as proper decks of playing cards.

The other major improvement to the appearance of the game is the all-new colour artwork produced for the game-boards and cards by Wayne England. Although we were worried at first that the task of producing more than 200 pieces of unique color artwork for the new cards would tax even someone of Wayne's prodigious talents, our fears proved completely unfounded, and Wayne has turned in what has to be his best work ever. The standard of artwork on the new cards and board really has to be seen to be believed, and it makes the new edition of Talisman easily the most attractive fantasy board game ever produced!

The new edition includes a new rules sheet which is considerably shorter and easier to understand than the original version. The actual mechanics of the game have not changed at all, though we have taken the opportunity to speed up the end game by reducing the number of squares at the centre of the board and saying the first player to get the crown of command immediately wins the game (in the previous version he had to kill off the other players, which tended to drag on a bit).

Over the next few months we will be releasing three new expansion kits for Talisman. The expansion kits for the original game were released in a somewhat haphazard fashion and, it has to be said, could have been done with being playtested a little bit more carefully. Each expansion adds new board sections, decks of cards and player characters to the game. The first two expansion kits will each contain a pair of 'L' shaped board sections that attach to opposite corners of the main Talisman board, and which add new realms for players to explore. The third and final expansion kit contains an extremely impressive 3-D version of the wizard's tower which is placed in the centre of the main gameboard, complete with a full-size plastic model of the Dragon King which lurks menacingly at the top of the tower! When the main game and all three expansion kits are used together they make a truly impressive sight, while the sheer variety of cards, spaces and characters ensure that every single game that is played will be different from the last.