Talisman: The Reaper
2-6
9+
60+
Will You Look Death in the Eye?
An unearthly chill creeps through the air. The Wizard stops reading his ancient tome and gazes cautiously over his shoulder. The Warrior feels an unfamiliar fear as he draws his mighty sword.
A shadow has fallen across the countryside. Death himself wanders the land. Can the heroes fulfill their epic quests with the spectre of the Grim Reaper hounding their every move?
User Reviews (5)
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Components.
The Reaper expansion isn’t the largest of add on packs for Talisman but so far it’s one of the better ones! Adding 90 new adventure cards (making the adventure deck ma-hoo-ssive) and 26 new spells to add to the pile as well as 12 Warlock cards, which doubles the amount of quests represented on the board.
The new characters are interesting for the most part, the merchant and the sage both have interesting stats and abilities but the standouts are the knight and the dark cultist. The knight has the staying power and strength to win most if not all fights he has and a very good chance to avoid damage if he doesn’t due to starting with a suit of armour. The Dark Cultist, in my groups experience, has the potential to become insanely powerful rather quickly as whenever she kills or wounds an enemy she gets to roll on her ‘gift from the forces of darkness table’ and get a perk, where she can gain strength, fate, life, craft, spells or gold. Get past your first couple of fights and with a few good rolls, you have a brutal mage class fighter who can storm the crown of command well before anyone else!
Last but certainly not least is the big bad reaper himself! A randomly moving killing machine who has the power to instantly kill a player or improve his stats dependant on a d6 roll if you are unlucky enough to be landed on by him. The reaper only gets to move if a player rolls a 1 for their movement, in which case at the end of their turn they roll for the reapers movement and move him accordingly (to avoid favouritism or victimisation our house rule is that the reaper must move towards the nearest viable player) and should he land on the same space of a player then they roll a d6 and consult the table on the reaper card and see what fate has befallen them.
The components are simple and well thought out and well worth the price tag and the reaper makes an interesting addition to the game. 8/10.
Gameplay.
The new characters play well and are quite balanced with the existing ones although if left unchecked, as I’ve said before, the dark cultist can become awesome in a very short time!
The reaper is a fun and random addition and can lead to some amusing of equally devastating events throughout the course of a game. For example in one of our recent games the reaper landed on our most powerful player and he rolled a 5 on the reaper chart, this is called ‘there has been a mistake’ and the player can then send the reaper to another player of their choice. Vindictive choice made the reaper made for his chosen victim only for her to roll a 5 also! We all had a laugh and continued…… 5 again! This was getting odd!…… another 5 rolled and the reaper made his way, once again, to his first victim who rolled a 6 and got a strength boost! A full tour of the board just to end up rewarding the original victim for sending him on a vacation of sorts!
This is why I like the reaper. Random things like that can happen or he can simply kill the heck out of your hard as nails character and force you to start again while your ‘friends’ laugh away to themselves! Brilliantly random, amusing and devastating in equal measure. 8/10 easily and well worth buying if you enjoy Talisman.
This expansion adds 4 new characters (with figures), 90 new Adventure Cards, 26 new Spell Cards, 12 Warlock quest cards,and the Grim Reaper figure! This is more than enough to justify getting it for my Talisman world.
However, add in that the dark figure of Death is for players to manipulate against each other and you have a whole new element to game play. Purists may fear the changes, but it is like a new game from this point on. Players who were once burnt-out on the game, suddenly were back! We don’t use the Reaper every time, but we definitely keep him on stand by!
New characters:
Merchant – not one I have played yet, seems underwhelming
Knight – player starts with armor and sword and has prayer bonus
Dark Cultist – player can perform psychic combat and gains bonuses from killing enemies
Sage – another I don’t envision me playing, too weak
This expansion may not appeal to cooperative player groups that are hesitant to attack each other! We don’t have that problem. All-in-all, easily worth the cost if you want to make your Talisman a little more uncooperative! 🙂
I’m not a huge fan of any of the Talisman expansions as I feel they do little to improve the base game, but of them all I like this one the least. Reaper not only adds little, I feel it detracts from the game as a whole. The character of Death, I’m sure was meant to add an additional element of randomness to the game, but instead just makes a long game run even longer. With the ability to outright kill a player, it can make for a truly long, boring, and joyless game. The few other additions this expansion does add, don’t improve upon or bolster any flaws the base set already had. In my opinion, save your money for something more fun.
I think that Reaper is a good expansion.
Adds some chill to the game, but too expensive in my opinion for 1 figure and some additional cards.
good expansion