I have played the City expansion for the first time today and overall I love it. It adds great flavour and variety to the game.

However I do also feel that both the deck and the addon board are almost all carrot and no stick. 

The enemies/negative adventure cards you can draw there are for the most part very tame while the rewards are amazing.

One card from the city deck in particular comes to mind as a game breaker/ender:

There is a follower called "The Scribe" which lets a character cast a spell without discarding it, as long as you can discard another spell in its place.

This means that if you play some spell-cyclers or have a spellbook you can forever recast the same spell once every round.

It started with an endless "Temporal Warp" spam, whereby that character would take 3 turns for every round,at the cost of just any one other spell, and had his spell cards replenished every turn by a "Spellbook" from the Magic Emporium.

It then continued with an endless "Life Tap" spam, draining health from another player every round untl they are killed.

There is of course a vast amount of other unpleasant combinations such ass constant "Random" until all stats are lost and you are toaded, "Vindicatation" until a character is killed, "Time Steal" to ensure another player NEVER gets a turn, the list goes on.

Alhtough I realise this game is not meant to be "fair and balanced", a card this overpowered has never been so easy to get considering that the city is a pretty safe place to traverse from the start and the number of cards in its deck is low. Hence we decided to remove "The Scribe" from future games, at least for now. 

DId anyone else have a problem with this card or find the number of "You get an item from any shop for free" cards to be really high?

Razum.

Razum said:

I got a quick glance to the cards yesterday and I'm going to play it in a few days.

I've seen the Scribe and noticed there are lots of Followers in a deck with so little Enemies and dangers. I cannot check the Scribe right now but if I remember correctly the only limitation is that you can do that only once per turn (or Round). Being able to draw a Spell at the beginning of your turn, if your Craft allows, allows infinite cycling of the same Spell. Life Tap every turn? Temporal Warp every turn? That's crazy.

I've had the same impression: too many cards where you can get free shop items if you discard something or roll well. Getting a free Potion or Stable Card is nothing compared to Armoury Cards, Magic Emporium Cards or Pet Cards. I think it's easy enough to come into the City and buy powerful items: characters should be forced to spend AT LEAST a lot of time and a lot of Gold if they want. Within the City walls you can improve your character as well as in the Highland or Dungeon, possibly at a higher pace What's the purpose of going into other Regions, then? In the City there's no Hag, Horse Thief, Talismonger, Deranged Alchemist, Highland Raiders, Hidden Chasm, Green Mist or Dungeon Keeper. There are some ludicrous "bad" encounters like the Cutpurse: if you roll higher than your Craft you lose 1 Gold, if you roll less you gain Gold equal to the difference between Craft and die roll. Why?

I'm relieved that unspoiled Pets are not so good like preview Pets. I noticed a panda named Lucky that grants a fate every turn, if you have no fate left (IIRC) and a turtle that allows you to move 1 space instead of your normal move, highly recommended for standard endgame stalemates. The remaining are average or less.

Sounds disappointing I hope not as my copy just arrived today, I was hoping it would be a good place to pick up goodies but if you stay there to long you A) run out of money and B) stunt  your development……

i haven't got to play yet (picking my copy up today) but if the city is that powerful, you could house rule a cost of entering the city, similar to the sentinal, or the portal of power, or just a flat fee (gold, str, or craft). I don't know if this will work at all though. I will want to play 3-4 games before i make any desicions about that for sure.

The Scribe/warp  thing happened to us too,  although its not infinate because you can only scribe once per round, its still crazy and we will ban or nurf him so that he is discarded after 1 use.

Tonight we had our first game with the City Expansion. We played with no new Characters (miniatures under work) and with no other corner Regions.

The Gypsy started well and gained a small Gold fortune (about 5 Gold) and went first into the City. The Priest drew good Objects around (Wand, Flying Carpet, Orb of Destiny) but no Gold and no Enemies at all. Fate was the Priest's best friend throughout the game and 80% of Str/Cft was gained with die rolls.

Gypsy shopped around well, gaining some good things in the Streets (Everfull Purse, Crooked Scales) and finally buying Flail, lots of Potions and a Spellbook. The funniest part was when she tried to fight the City Watch and lost despite a total Str of 7. Then, she encountered the Watch again on the Town Square, tried again and was sent in Jail again. Everfull Purse helped a lot getting out of Jail.

The Priest gave up and tried to enter City without Gold. No problem. He was able to find lots of freebies from the generous City deck, collecting a total of three Pets (Glitter, Singe and Luna; Singe was wrongly discarded after a defeat by the Clockwork Dragon, but that's a Construct not a Dragon), a Spellbook, a Crystal Sceptre and the Full Plate. This required about 3 circles around the Street Area. Most notably, he acquired the Scribe.

Gypsy was drawing cards in the Middle Region when Priest landed on the Hidden Valley from the Wharf. A nice combo emerged: Witch and Talismonger on the Hidden Valley and the Priest repeatedly landing there with the Flying Carpet, using Luna to re-roll any bad result and replenish Fate by the Witch when needed. Luna is exceedingly good if a character has a high Fate value. Gypsy stopped the combo with the Goblin Sapper.

Priest got the Blessed Spell and used the Scribe to keep the Spell in hand and continue replenishing Fate and gaining stats thanks to Luna. Then he got Life Tap but he decided to cast it only once (this was "fair play"). Then the Priest ran for the Crown with the Gypsy following shortly after, but 3 turns of disadvantage meant 3 Life losses with the Command Spell (that's Luna…). The final fight was terribly one-sided, no matter if the Gypsy was stronger in battle with the Flail. She had 2 Lives left and died with a Soul Shatter Reflection (Priest initiated psychic combat).

It was a good game, but I'm still convinced of my first impression. With the City there's no need to travel around to find Gold or Objects. Inside the walls you'll find everything you need, at least in a two player game. Perhaps with 4-5-6 the City resources will be scarcely distributed and nobody will get too powerful just because he visited the City.

There are no big dangers in the City and lots of opportunities. It's advisable to go there as soon as possible; after you've grabbed enough powerful Objects and Followers, the dangers in Talisman world will be a breeze. Ther's only PvP left and the most powerful cards are going to make the difference (Flail, Luna, Scribe).

Doesn't the rule that says "you can't cast more spells in a turn than you started the turn with" preclude endless cycling of any spell, scribe or no scribe?  Particularly since you have to discard a spell every time you use the scribe's power.  

It only limits it. You can't play Life Tap 10 times in a same turn, but you can play it "only" once per turn. Which is still lethal.

guciomir said:

Seems like they should have added a gold cost to Scribe. I wonder why they didn't.

I have played another game with the City expansion which forced me to reconsider some of my initial analysis.

Yes it is true that "The Scribe" is too good and the City is a very safe place to score some of the best items in the game early on. However the downsides of staying in the city for more than one or two loops become apparent.

Having been blinded by the promise of easy loot within the city all six of players in my latest game beelined for it and remained there for most of the game. Of course we all got great items fairly quickly as both gold and freebies are easy to come by. However around two hours into the game we noticed something: our characters were pretty weak. Sure we had spellbooks and flails and pets but not one charactre had more than 3 strenght tokens to augment their base, and some had not gained srenght/craft counters  at all.

Something like that would have been unheard of in previous games where comparatively by that poin in time a 5-10+ Str token count would be standard. The lack of enemies within the city also leads to a lack of trophies, and its a severe one which stunts your character's development. 

Therefore I would not recomend staying in the city for long, even early on. Go in to try your luck, but leave once you get 1-2 items or you risk falling behind a player that never went there, despite your shiny flail or platemail.

Thus I am content that the city has found its niche (at least for me) within the game rather than eclipsing all the other expansions.

One thing I have found somewhat problematic is the combination of "Flail" and the pet which lets you chose the result (or six) whenever you fate. The way we interpreted this rule is that for the cost of one fate you can auto win a battle by forcing doubles by rerolling one of the "Flail" dice to match the other. Which seems a bit too powerful. Did anyone else encounter this?

PS: Playing a Thief and chasing keen shoppers around the City is some of the most fun Ive had so far. :)

Some quick questions…

Bounties can be collected in any region right?

One bounty is for a Construct Enemy. Isn't there only one Construct in the entire game and expansions, being the City's Mechanical Dragon?

Ta!

The same with the alignment bounty, when there isn't good character for example 

The trophies for the wanted posters can come from any region.

I think there are at least a couple of constucts in the dungeon expansion, but yes there are very few such cards in the game.

Stomski said:

Here's a comprehensive list of Enemy-Constructs so far:

Battle Hulk (2x) (Dungeon)
Clockwork Cabinet (1x) (City)   
Clockwork Dragon (1x) (City)  
Ebony Sentinel (1x) (Sacred Pool)
Flesh Golem (1x) (Blood Moon)
Gate Smasher (1x) (Dungeon)
Grinder (2x) (Dungeon)
Herald of the Dawn (1x) (Blood Moon)
Ivory Sentinel (1x) (Sacred Pool)
Living Statue (2x) (Dungeon)
Scarecrow (1x) (Blood Moon)
Stone Golem (1x) (Reaper)

Of course buying the Wanted poster with the Construct is not so smart, but you can claim the bounty directly if you have the trophy.

As for the alignment Bounty, there are 3 Evil character bounties, 2 Neutral character bounties and 1 Good character bounty. The rationale behind this is not so difficult to understand.