I recently received both "The Reaper" and "The Sacred Pool" expansions for X-mas. Needless to say I was uber-excited to implement them in my next Talisman session, and did so with gusto, taking a bunch of cards out of the base set and replacing them with the newer cards. However, I found that the game seemed a little off-kilter, even after thoroughly shuffling.
Does anyone have any cool ideas for implementing these cards with the base set? I've been thinking I could merely remove one expansion and stick to one expansion at a time (Until I purchase more perhaps) but I'd prefer to utilize both at once if possible...just, things seem unbalanced when I do.
Advice?

And I apologize for the double-post! My computer seemed to lag awkwardly when I clicked to publish. My deepest regrets for clogging up the forum. >_<

Ignatz_Von_Zwakh said:

Just mix everything together. For the first time, shuffle together the base deck and the expansions by making a layer of base cards, then put above a layer of Reaper cards, then a layer of Sacred Pool cards. This is just to have a mixed start-up and not clusters of each group of cards.

A shuffling advice for every game: after you mixed the deck, avoid traditional shuffling and divide the Adventure deck into small mini-decks about 0.5 cm high, then recombine them into a full deck (or 3-4 smaller decks, from which you choose the one to use). You will usually get a nice variety from the previous games.

Another idea is prepare 3-4 decks and every turn the player decides where to take the Adventure cards, but I'm afraid this slightly increases playtime.

I agree with the warlock, that you should mix the base deck and the expansions together.

This is one of the cool things in talisman.

Try it out. it's fun!

Agreed, it can take a while to properly mix these decks together for this first time.  And it can be critical that everything is shuffled in evenly so you dont end up with all expansion cards in one big stack somewhere.  But adding the expansions does change the game mechanics and can give it a different feeling as you probably experienced.  This is normal, it will take some time to get used to the new cards and how they are used and countered. 

This is also the great part of the expansions, I frequently add or take expansion cards out of the base deck in order to mix the game up depending on what group of people I'm playing with.  When we play this game with a particular group of friends they have 2 younger kids that love to join in the game.  So in this case we like to keep it as simple as possible and just play with the base set.  It can take a younger kid much longer to figure out how one particular card works, so its actually more fun for them to experience the same card multiple times, because thats how they learn to use it.  Where as with Adults, we may like more cards mixed in because the extra cards helps with variety and keeps us from getting bored. 

Thank ye for the advice Warlock, it's most definitely aided my creative process when shuffling the cards about. Many kudos. :)

When we are shuffeling the cards, we spread them all out on a smooth plain surface and just rummage around pile and collect them in small decks and stack them, ofcourse the cards are sleeved or else it would probably not be the best way to shuffle.