The newest take on Talisman – the Revised Fourth Edition – has arrived today, so look for it in your local stores or grab it directly from the FFG site. To me, the most interesting news here is the olive branch Fantasy Flight is extending (well, selling, actually) to gamers who picked up the Black Library edition not long ago, in the form of the Talisman Upgrade Pack. Priced at $19.95, FFG describes the Upgrade as “an affordable solution for players who have already purchased Talisman 4th Edition and want the improved game components and expandability of the Revised 4th Edition.” I suppose a free download wouldn’t have worked well, nor would a proof-of-purchase mail-in program for a free upgrade. Paying to upgrade to an edition that can pay for add-ons is somewhat amusing, though.
True, Alan, but it’d be company suicide to offer a free upgrade for decisions made by the previous company that owned the game (and apparently didn’t care one way or the other) … and you’d never get the quality out of a PDF download that would’ve been even superior to the quality of the original game.
BTW you can download the fourth edition rules here:
http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/Talisman/Talisman%20Rules2.pdf
Will it provide all the details? I had heard that the board might have different artwork – if so, would this be purely cosmetic changes, or actually funtional?
Or has someone been leading me wrong?
Ah, that’s a good point – the rules written on the board for certain spaces, like the Chapel, Graveyard, Village, and Desert have changed slightly. As near as I can tell, the Upgrade Pack doesn’t replace those with stick-on spaces or the like – maybe those changes are simply summarized in the rulesheet.
Hi James. Your comment got hung up in the spam filters. All fixed now.
I completely agree, James – FFG has enough former GW legacies to continue, it doesn’t need to offer a helping hand to customers of older editions. From a company perspective, thinking that way lies madness (and fiscal suicide, as you said).
But not upsetting owners of the fairly-recent fourth edition seems to have been a priority for FFG, in order to make sure the expansions would be seen in a more favorable light. Seen from that angle, a PDF or other free upgrade could have maximized the good will the Upgrade Pack was obviously designed to inspire.
I understand why it was handled this way. Just amused by it, is all.
I love the back of the box. It’s got a photo of the BI edition and says something along the lines of “If your Talisman looks like this then you need this upgrade!”