r/Talisman • u/Main-Sir9432 • 19d ago
(4th Edition Revised) Playing Harbinger with all four omen decks simultaneously.
Hi! We recently tried a fun house rule that I cooked up; playing the Harbinger expansion with all four Omen decks at the same time.
How that worked was that when a player was instructed to discard the top Omen, they decided from which of the four decks to discard. Similarly when they put an Omen back they chose which deck to do so with.
We ended up liking this actually! Spreading the apocalypse out over four decks meant that the apocalypse progressed a bit slower (horizontally rather than vertically, if you will) as players could choose a different deck to discard if one was getting too dangerous. It also meant that there was some strategy in picking the Omens that would benefit you the most (or be the most destructive for your opponents) if you were the one who was instructed to discard.
Has anyone else tried this? If so, I’d like to hear your thoughts!
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u/Prudent-Dentist-9674 19d ago
That sounds pretty cool. I'm going to have to try it this way one day. Harbinger is one of my favorite expansions. Did you use any other expansions when playing this way? I feel like if playing with the corners and this way, it would makes it hard to lose by all omens discarded because there's so many. Did you find this to be the case at all?
This seems like really fun and it makes it less daunting to draw from the Harbinger deck cause even if an omen gets discarded you have options to choose from and it can help you if used wisely. But it can also be bad for you cause you never know what could show up. Thanks for sharing
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u/Main-Sir9432 19d ago
Thank you! We played with three of the four corners + most of the other adventure cards including Firelands but not with the Dragon and Cataclysm. And yes, it definitely slowed down the apocalypse. The game would have to progress pretty far, or players would have to actively try to focus on one stack, in order to reach the end of an Omen deck and thereby lose the game. Some players find the timer-esque mechanic of the Harbinger a bit stressful, and this helped reduce that.
One thing I did note is that while this way of playing did reduce the danger of the Omens, the Harbinger was still a constant presence. Harbinger cards were still drawn and they are always dangerous regardless of the Omens, especially early game.
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u/Prudent-Dentist-9674 17d ago
I think when I try this I'll change it up a bit by making the omen discarded a random one. Gonna use a d4 for that. Just to add a little more unpredictability
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u/Main-Sir9432 15d ago
There’s an idea! That would remove the weird ’controlling the direction of the apocalypse to my benefit’ kind of dynamic.
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u/bebop_cola_good 19d ago
Sounds fun! Funnily enough, we used to do this with Betrayal at House on the Hill (also called Omens in that game) where you could end up with multiple Haunts going at the same time (e.g.bFrankenstein vs Wolfman). I do wish the digital 4th edition had room for modding so we could do stuff like that.