Talisman

I feel like, in general, my geek creds are pretty broad. I’m a Linux admin, I play D&D, I have all the episodes of Robotech on DVD, I have a World of Warcraft account and I have an overhead bin filled with Magic the Gathering cards. But every so often something slips through, some embarrassing hole in my experience is revealed. One of these holes is the game Talisman, made by Games Workshop (to be honest my geek creds are weak across all of the Games Workshop products). Well they are releasing a new edition of the game in October, and they had 50 pre-release copies of the game available each day at GenCon. One of my friends wanted a copy and so I agreed to stand in line with him.

The first day was crazy. We got there only about 30 minutes before the exhibit hall opened, and it was packed. I guess they were having some sort of "opening ceremonies" as well (including a balloon drop) and as a result we didn’t make it in to the exhibit hall soon enough to be one of the first 50 people in line. So we decided to try again the next day. We arrived about an hour before the hall opened and secured a spot essentially right in front of the doors. We were pretty confident we’d get a game, until the doors opened, and suddenly there were people sprinting from every direction, leaping over display tables like they were Olympic hurdlers, knocking over exhibits and exhibitors. I could swear the some were even repelling down from the rafters like Special Forces commandos, and all of them were heading to the Talisman booth. Fortunately my friend, who is frequently mistaken for a Sasquatch, let out a warcry of such surpassing power that the smaller skinny geeks (Acneious Yugiohus) were knocked off their feet, and the older geeks (Fatbeardius Wargamerius) paused because they thought they had heard a mating call, allowing us to slip into the line at position 37 and 38.

I had originally not planned on buying the game, but after spending so much effort to get into a position where I could buy the game, I figured what the heck. As it turns out one of my many brother-in-laws is/was an avid player of Talisman, and his birthday was coming up, so it worked out great. We ended up playing it last night. My wife won, I was the last player, other than her, still in the game, which is evidence more of my weakness than my strength. The top three players had a titanic battle in the final square, while I was just trying to get to the final square (essentially I had to roll 8 or less on 3d6 and every time I didn’t I was sent back some number of spaces depending on how badly I rolled). Overall a pretty fun game, with a decent balance between simple mechanics and replayability, of course my wife really liked it, winning a game after a titanic struggle has that tendency.

Germany loses again