Dragon's Tower is the third supplement for Games Workshop's Talisman game. The first two expansion sets allow you to enter the four great Realms which surround the Talisman land. Each of the Realms offers great opportunities as well as terrible dangers for those adventures bold enough to explore them. With this latest supplement, the Realms are joined by the foreboding Dragon's Tower which lies at the centre of the Talisman land. This tower was once the home and fortress of the wizard that ruled the realm, until he was slain and his place taken by the Dragon King! You must defeat this evil creature to win the game. To do this you must first make your way through the fire-blackened rooms and treacherous stairways inside the tower to where the Dragon King sits, perched on the ruins. However, this journey is fraught with peril, as many of the traps and guardians left by the wizard are still intact and ready to attack the brave adventurer as he attempts to reach the top of the tower!

Talisman - Dragon's Tower contains four new characters; the seductive Sorceress, the powerful Chaos Sorcerer, the learned Alchemist, and the wise Astronomer. Each new character is provided with a full-colour character sheet detailing the character's strength, craft, and special abilities, and is represented by a superbly detailed plastic Citadel miniature hand-crafted by the Citadel design team.

Dragon's Tower includes a cleverly designed game board which is put together to form a three-dimensional model of the tower and the rooms within. The game board is crowned with a fantastic multi-part model of the Dragon King, which sits glowering from the top of the tower. This imposing structure is placed on the centre of the game board from the main Talisman game, covering over the Dragon's Tower space on the original game board.

In the basic game an adventurer that reaches the central space must encounter a special set of cards and then fight the Dragon King. This all takes place in the same turn and will either result in the player winning the game or being cast out of the tower. With the Dragon's Tower expansion, the character enters the first space on the Dragon's Tower game board, and must then travel through the tower until he reaches the Dragon King space at the top. This makes the game a little longer, but also gives other players a chance to try to stop the player before he reaches the top of the tower. In addition, it makes the final stage of the game much more exiting, as there is no guarantee as to what the adventurer will meet as he travels through the crumbling edifice. If he is lucky he may find items that will help him against the Dragon King - if not, he may fall foul of the traps and guardians that protect the Dragon's Tower.

The basic Talisman rules are left pretty much unchanged, and the game is still won by defeating the Dragon King. When in the tower a player must draw cards from the Tower card deck, rather than the normal Talisman Adventure card deck. In addition, is a player's character starts a turn in the tower he must roll a special dice to see how many spaces the character may move. The dice is included with the Dragon's Tower expansion set and is different to a normal six sided dice. It bears the numbers 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4 instead of the normal 1-6 pips. You will notice that this means you move more slowly in the tower, which is as it should be because the tower is full of traps and monster. The special dice is only used for movement, you use a normal six-sided dice for battles, psychic combat, or anything else that calls for a dice roll.

All of these fantastic additions to your game expand upon the perilous and magical land of Talisman. With all three expansions you can venture into the realm of the Wraithlord, evade the cruel beasts of the Dungeon and now you can dare the horrors of the Dragon's Tower!

We couldn't fit all of the new characters we had written into Dragon's Tower, so we've included two of the extra ones we had to miss out on the page opposite. To use them, simply cut out or photocopy the character sheets, and glue them to a piece of thin card. The next time you play a game of Talisman, simply shuffle these new cards in with the rest of the character sheets when you choose your adventurers.

The Vampire is ancient and cunning, and as one of the Undead he controls the very forces of life and death. His unique powers allow him to gain sustenance from living creatures, draining them if the essence of life. At full strength the Vampire is almost invulnerable, raising legions of the slain to do his bidding and reincarnating himself from even the most mortal wound.

The Swordsman is a highly skilled and dedicated fighter who lives for adventure and the challenge of single combat. Using his considerable prowess with a blade he can send an opponent's weapon spinning out of their hand, or fend off a flurry of blows with a series of lightning fast parries and ripostes.

Ó Copyright Games Workshop Ltd 1995. All rights reserved.