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I don't see to many Board Game reviews here on RPG.net, but I just played this new game this afternoon and really thought it would be a good time to kick off with a number of reviews I've been wanting to post.

The game is a fantasy board game which calls itself a Talisman variant. And it is a lot like Tasliman, which is probably why I liked it a lot.

Game Componants: The game comes with a 17" by 22" map, 15 fold over characters, 32 page rule book, D10, 5 plastic character stands, a tear pad for character sheets, and a bunch of small cards in several different colors. The box art and art for the game board rock, but the artwork on the characters themselves could be better.

Game Play: Everyone selects one of the 15 available characters. These represent a variety fo different races, and in a few cases, figures that look like super heroes (though they don't have any super powers -- go figure). Each figure then starts on a pre set territory on the board. Characters have five basic stats; those being Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, and Hit Points, and Money. The map board itself has territories that are divided into 4 color groups. These are blue, yellow, read, and black. In Talisman players get to roll a die to determine how far they may move. In this game they only move one territory, but the player may chose in which direction he moves. Each of the three color groups has its own set of encounter cards. When a character moves into a territory, he then draws an encounter card of that color. Different colors mark different levels of difficulty and benefit in their encounters. Blue is the easiest Yellow more difficult, and Red the toughest. Black territories are special and instead of encounters drawn from the card stock, each black territory has its own event/encounter chart in the book. Some of them have some fairly cool and special outcomes, though its a bit of a pain to always have to reference the book whenever you enter a black territory.

The game gives two ways to win. At the very center of the map is a territory with an ugly looking demon like critter the game calls a Chaos Lord. The Chaos Lord has some mystical item if high value. The first player to grow in strength enough to venture to the center, defeat the Chaos Lord, then return to the territory in which they began the game wins. Naturally if any players gets the that mystical item, everyone else will then try and jump him before he can return to his home territory and win. The other way to win is, at the star of play, every player gets 3 quest cards. As you run around the board a player may get the chance to complete a quest. The first player who completes three quests wins and bypassing any need to fight the Chaos Lord.

As players go around the board they can also collect followers and slaves. Slaves are like the ever famous Red Shirts in Star Trek and mostly disposable lackeys. The followers are just like characters and move around the board like them. What is neat is if a character is killed if they have a follower or two still on the board those followers then become the players lead characters.

Let's see. Combat. Combat is very simple. In various encounters the characters will have to fight or confront foes. The encounter card will dictate on which character stat combat is to use. So Strength, Dex, Intelligence all get used. The player rolls D10 and adds it to his attribute. Somebody else rolls for the encounter critter or whatever. Its open ended, so a roll of 10 lets the player roll another D10. The highest total result wins, and the encounter card tells what kind of negative or positive the player gets for losing/winning. Players may also attack each other, but the defending player gets to chose the stat combat is done on, so its kind of tough to go off trying to slaughter the other characters.

Well, that's it in a nutshell. It was fun. The game isn't released yet, but my friends and I got to play it because we are one of the company's play test groups. Yes, I did ask if it was ok to write the review. The Guild of Blades guys recently put info about the game on the website, so they said a review now would be fine. I confess I may not be the most unbiased person to write a review because I'm a Talisman fanatic and have know the company was going to do this variant for some time. A certain expectation had been buit up while we waiting for our play test material and at first play, the game met most of those expectations. I would say the game would be better f the character art was better, but I have seen previous Guild of Blades products and this new one is way better than their previous stuff, so I won't criticize too much. Anyway, take my review for whatever its worth. Bob Dawson