Talisman: The Highland
2-6
9+
60+
Clouds enshroud the mountain’s peak…
Exhausted from the long ascent, you barely keep your grip as the stones beneath you give way and tumble perilously down the slope. But you still keep climbing…
…for the Highland beckons you!
Talisman: The Highland adds a new Region to the game for heroes to explore. A custom-fitted map board and over 100 new cards bring this mountainous realm vividly to life, while six brand-new characters, each represented with a superbly detailed plastic miniature, offer fantastic new playing experiences. Climb as high as you dare, and lay claim to the unimaginable wealth that awaits atop the tallest peak in the world of Talisman!
User Reviews (3)
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Overview
Talisman: The Highland is an expansion for Talisman that introduces a new region (in the form of an extra game board), fresh characters, powerful relics, new alternative endings, and more. The theme focuses on a highland region ruled by the Eagle King, which might be more dangerous to explore than the outer region of the basic game, but which also promises greater rewards to the players who venture there. If they go all the way up the mountain and successfully defeat the Eagle King, they will be rewarded with a powerful relic that is much more potent than most magical objects in the basic game.
Components
As one of the large Talisman expansions (each year usually sees the release of one large expansion that includes an extra game board, and one or several smaller expansions that solely consists of playing cards and new characters), the most important component is the extra, L-shaped, gameboard that can be used to increase the playing area of the basic game. The highland board is beautifully rendered, from green hills and ravines with streams at the beginning to mountain passes, glaciers and snow-clad canyons further up. It contains several spaces that will prove challenging and/or rewarding to the players, including two spaces where you can draw 3 cards, a lost city where you can find a talisman or even an Eagle King relic, and an ice bridge that can kill you outright if you venture there with too many followers!
A thick deck with highland cards is also included (adventure cards only used on the highland board, with enemies, events, objects etc that keep with the highland theme), as well as new spell, six fresh characters (including a valkyrie and a highlander), three alternative endings and a few ordinary adventure cards.
Difficulty
This expansion does not make things difficult in terms of the difficulty of the rules. The highland rulebook is thin and mostly contains examples and illustrations. The rules are easy and do not bog down the game.
In terms of difficulty for the player character, the highland is definitely a more challenging region than the outer region of the basic game. What is more, the higher risks bring substantially higher rewards, which means that the highland has more to offer the characters than the middle region of the basic game. They can go there almost immediately (as compared to the Dungeon expansion, which is much too dangerous to fresh characters) after start and use it to build up their characters.
Will you like it?
If you like Talisman, you will definitely like this expansion. It stays well in tune with the basic game, offers an extra game board that works well during the initial and middle parts of the game (i.e. the parts you spend most playing time on), and offers some interesting new rewards, characters, and alternative endings.
Value for money
It is quite pricy at almost $40 (MSRP), yet as with most Fantasy Flight Games products, it is quite beautiful and really brings needed variation to the basic game. Compared to the smaller expansions (The Frostmarch, The Reaper, The Sacred Pool, and the Blood Moon), it offers much more value for money.
Pros and cons
The pros definitely outnumber the cons when it comes to Talisman: The Highland. In the long run, you need an extra game board to give variation to the basic game. The same is true for the alternative endings; the command spell ending does get boring after a while. The only drawback I have experienced is that the characters get more spread out and thus have less changes of interaction. This increases if you have several extra game boards (such as both The Highland and The Dungeon), so it might be worth considering which extra game board you are most interested in before you make an investment.
Summary
The Highland is an expansion with a well-thought-out theme, it can be used from the initial stages of the game and onwards, and it brings delightful variation both in terms of aesthetic value and game components. It is easy to use with few rules and it contains a huge deck for the highland, which ensures that a visit there is always involves new challenges and rewards.
If you were to purchase your first expansion to Talisman, I would recommend you to buy one with an extra game board. As The Dungeon is so much more difficult, that leaves The Highland as the currently best bet (although the release of Talisman: The City in early 2013 might change this). In my opinion, it is the best expansion to Talisman to date.
Used to play this in college in marathon streaks. We’d go through multiple characters trying to gain the advantage on one another. Now we play a bit less aggressively and it still hold up.
this is my fav expansion… awesome art works