iOS, Android, PC/Mac •
All the big news coming out of the Nomad Games‘ camp the last few months has revolved around their gamebook/RPG mashup, Fighting Fantasy Legends. We’re so jacked for the FFL release next week, that it’s hard to remember that Nomad makes a few other pretty great games for your touchscreen or desktop, namely that old standby, Talisman. This weekend Games Workshop is having a “Skulls for the Skull Throne” feature on Steam which features all of GW’s titles on sale from 25-90% off. You can find those here, but we’re going to focus on what this means for our favorite roll-and-move board games, Talisman and Talisman: Horus Heresy.
As part of the celebration, players who log into Talisman or Talisman: Horus Heresy will find themselves gifted with new characters. When I say “gifted”, I mean just that, free. The new character for Talisman is the Witch Doctor, who can witch doctor-y things like places curses, healing, and casting spells. If you’re into the Warhammer version of Talisman, there are two new warlords waiting for you in Talisman: Horus Heresy: Sanguinius, Primarch of the Blood Angels Legion and Ka’Bahandha the mightiest of Khorne’s servants. There’s no way I just cut/pasted that last sentence. Nope, none at all.
Apart from the two new warlords, you also get four new game endings and seven new encounter “data slates”. If that’s not enough new stuff for you, they’ve also just released the latest expansion for T:HH, The Shadow Crusade. The expansion isn’t free, but it is on sale right now for 10% off. The Shadow Crusade offers six new warlords, new stratagems, places, strangers, and events, so it’s kind of a big deal.
All you need to do to get the free stuff is log into your games. If you are one of the few who hasn’t yet purchased these titles, now’s the time as the base games will be 80% off all weekend, with expansion content discounted up to 60%.
- Talisman: Digital Edition for iOS Universal, $2 (on sale)
- Talisman: Digital Edition for Android, $1.50 (on sale)
- Talisman: Digital Edition for Kindle, $3 (on sale)
- Talisman: Digital Edition for PC/Mac via Steam, $1.60 (on sale)
- Talisman: Horus Heresy for iOS Universal, $2 (on sale)
- Talisman: Horus Heresy for Android, $2.50 (on sale)
- Talisman: Horus Heresy for PC/Mac via Steam, $3 (on sale)
Awesomeness! I forget, does Talisman (Warhammer) have async multiplayer? That would probably take about a year to finish a game but might be fun…
No. Real-time only. Which makes sense because most of us can easily find a few hours to sit down with friends who also have that exact same chunk of time free…
Yes, and we are all in the same timezone, not spread out over several different continents
Unfortunately, asynchronous doesn’t work because of the “interrupt” nature of some of the spells. It would be cool if they changed the rules a bit to make it work asynchronously (like CGE did with Galaxy Trucker), but it’s been out so long now without any changes to the online system, I think any chance of it happening has long since passed.
That is a very very good point.
The AI is really reasonable though, so I could imagine it deciding interrupts for players who are not online, and also taking turns for people if they haven’t taken their turn after a certain length of time. Then the rules could stay pure, but it might end up AI vs AI when people get too busy.
Oh well, I’ll just wait for the kiddos to get old enough to play the cardboard version, I think I still have a 25 year-old second edition box set in storage somewhere.
[pedantic edit: I actually looked up the box covers and realized I had a second edition box, not first, where the cards were B&W. I can’t wait until my new job starts, I clearly have too much time right now, I wish I could bank it for when I’ll have too little time in the coming months…]