Talisman Alliances Review - Work Together For An Even Harder Challenge

Setting out on an adventure across the world of Talisman, in a quest for the Crown of Command, has always been a perilous and lonely one. With the release of Talisman Alliances Avalon Hill flipped the formula on its head turning Talisman into a cooperative experience where you'll party up with all other players to take on the game itself.

What is in the Talisman Alliances box?

Opening up the Talisman Alliances game box you'll immediately be greeted with a warning. This warning is to indicate to you that while there's a lot present in the box, you need to be following the instructions to not only ensure how to set up the game, but what you aren't allowed to look at.

The box comes with instructions, Doom tracker and token, Villain Strength and Craft tokens, as well as Adventure, Spell, and Villain cards. 

The most interesting aspect of this box to inquisitive players will be the Trial 1 card, the sealed envelopes, and the small boxes that state "Don't Open Until You've Completed Trial X"

In order to be a good cooperative game the team at Avalon Hill haven't just created a way for a party of players to have a focus for their adventure, but they have built a narrative into the game. Each Trial has an introductory story, a relevant loose plot, and a conclusion that tees up the next adventure.

Each subsequent trial also has an increased difficulty and allows you to not only progress the story, but also unlock new characters for the base game. I won't go too far into the spoilers but after completing Trial 1 you unlock the ghostly Will Of The Wisp character adding new mechanics and an expanded way to play not just in the cooperative expansion, but as a way to further enhance the base game.

In this way, Talisman Alliances reminded me of what I've seen for examples of game progression in titles like Frosthaven.

Changes To Setup

The instruction booklet shows you exactly how you're mean to set up Talisman 5e to function as a cooperative adventure.

This process isn't entirely simple, requiring you to filter out a number of Adventure and Magic cards, sub in different cards from the expansion, and then add the Villain Cards in a very specific manner to the Adventure deck to allow for a better pace and balance.

While it might not be simple it does show how much planning went into how to take a game that has historically been very competitive and turn it into an entirely cooperative experience.

How Does It Work?

For Talisman Alliances the goal of the game is to complete each of the prescribed Trials. Each Trial has a sealed and an unsealed state. For example the first Trial has the players obtaining two Talismans, either from the Adventure deck or by completing the regular other Talisman-obtaining tasks, and burying those Talismans in two of the four corners of the map.

Completing this then unseals the Trial, flipping over the card you're now given additional instructions as well as the true villain of the Trial. While this does end up leading you to the center of the map in Trial 1 the rest of the trials take you to different objectives around the board.

Unsealing the Trial will also reveal the winning objective. This is a powerful creature that will have appeared somewhere on the board. Once you've built your strength up enough one, or multiple, members of the party can join up in battle to try to thwart this foe.

These boss fights are hard, progressing through the trials you'll see cases where these monsters aren't just stronger (with stats going into the mid to high teens) but they will also start to have additional mechanics or multiple lives. Cooperation doesn't just become a side effect of the game, but a necessity, as you start filling into certain RPG roles where you can.

If you were the type of competitive Talisman player before then interacting with the game in this way will force you to have just as competitive friends as some of these fights are a real uphill struggle.

The Villains Who Try To Stop You

The primary antagonists aren't the only thing getting in your way as you'll also have to deal with a number of Villains that will be roaming the board.

Villains act as a natural hazard around the game board, some are placed at the start of the game while others are revealed naturally as the Adventure deck is drawn from. Each of these Villains when pulled trigger a turn for the game's AI. Here Villains will progress around the board with simplistic movements until they reach a player and fight them.

It's in the best interest for the stronger players to try to seek out these encounters, while the squishier classes move out of the line of danger.

I played the Troll, a character that starts out very strong, but in a regular game of Talisman his low Craft and Fate would be a massive detriment. In Talisman Alliances where I didn't need to worry about other players preying on my weaknesses, but working to support them, it was a lot of fun coordinating attacks and grouping up to take on some of these terrifying Villain characters.

Talisman Alliances Review | Final Thoughts

I was very interested to try playing Talisman Alliances after my experiences, I wondered how a game build based on competitive competition would achieve this shift and they absolutely nailed it.

Sure there's extra legwork to assemble/disassemble it into it's competitive game mode but the goals to complete and the way you approach even character selection is so wildly different it almost feels like playing an entirely different game.

I do feel like the difficulty scale probably could have started a bit easier, but after a first loss it left my table rearing for another try now that we really understood how each of us had to fit our role.

Keeping in mind that the buy-in to this experience is not only Talisman Alliances but also the base Talisman game I'd definitely recommend trying the original first, but if the idea of playing that as a party against powerful enemies is up your alley then you'll have a blast.

All Talisman Alliance products in this review were provided by the publisher. All screenshots were taken by the author during the process of review.