Hello Talisman fans! ːTalProToadː
We know you’ve all been waiting excitedly for this one - our remastered update for The City Expansion is coming to Talisman: Digital 5th Edition very soon!
Whenever we’ve opened it up to the community about what expansions you’d like to see, The City is always near the very top of that list. You’ve asked us for it on Steam, on Discord and everywhere else we’re listening, so we know just how excited you all are for this.
Between the bustling streets, shady back-alleys and shops full of magical items, The City Classic adds massively to the Talisman: Digital 5th Edition experience.
With this being such a beloved expansion, we wanted to take some time to talk through what the process of remastering The City was like, and give you all a look behind the scenes at what we’ve done with the expansion to bring it into 5th Edition for the first time.
We originally released the digital version of The City Expansion for Talisman: Digital Edition all the way back in 2015. Matching the positive reception that the physical expansion had received, The City for Talisman: Digital Classic Edition remains one of the highest-rated and beloved expansions from the 4th Edition era.
If you’ve not played with any of the remastered expansions we’ve released so far, it’s something we’ve already done twice now. Specifically, we take the original, 4th Edition version of an expansion and rebuild it from the ground up to fit the new 5th Edition ruleset, art style and user experience.
For The Reaper and The Frostmarch, we took the original artwork from the cards in that expansion as a starting point to create new artwork that fitted within the 5th Edition style. While this was appreciated by players, it took a massive amount of time from our small art team, and meant that those expansions took far longer to remaster than we originally planned. So, starting with The City Classic, we’re adopting a new approach to how we handle updating the artwork from 4th Edition to 5th Edition, sticking closer to the original artwork while still updating it to fit within the 5th Edition style.
This is something we explained in our ‘State of the Game’ update video a while back, where we explained our future plans for Talisman: Digital 5th Edition. And now, we have the results we can show you!
As you can see, we’ve still managed to update the existing artwork from the original City expansion to fit more with the 5th Edition style, but because the artwork already is a lot closer to the 5th Edition style than the cards in The Reaper and The Frostmarch were, we’ve had to make less changes, which has meant we could release this remaster a lot sooner than we could with our previous two.
One of the biggest changes visually between Talisman: Digital Classic Edition and Talisman: Digital 5th Edition is in how we show your characters on the game board. In Classic Edition, your character would be represented as a small cardboard cutout style standee, using the artwork from the character card. In Digital 5th Edition, we’ve taken the time and effort to render each character in full 3D, matching how their physical figures would appear on an actual Talisman board.
Now, for characters from the 5th Edition base game, we had the official physical models to use as a reference - to make sure we accurately represented them in-game. However, there isn’t an official physical release of The City for 5th Edition, so there isn’t an existing model to use as reference, which meant we had to make our own!
After rendering and creating models for all six City characters, we then had to get these new models checked and approved by the team at Games Workshop. It’s important that we make sure all of the character models look consistent and match the rest of how 5th Edition has been designed - even when those models are digital!
Alongside the 3D models, we also created all-new character artwork for each character in The City Classic, making sure we capture the look and feel of their original 4th Edition artwork while bringing them into the 5th Edition style.
The City Classic marks the biggest influx of cards to Talisman: Digital 5th Edition so far in a single expansion. Making sure we properly brought across everything the physical expansion had to offer (while keeping the digital UI clean and readable) was quite the challenge!
For the hard numbers, The City Classic adds:
City Cards (82 cards): The lifeblood of the expansion. Drawn when exploring the City streets, this deck is packed with urban encounters, from corrupt nobles and street thieves to festivals and local events.
Wanted Poster Cards (18 cards): Picked up at the City Gate, these give you a bounty to hunt down specific enemy types out in the wider world for a hefty Gold reward.
Potion Cards (16 cards): Bought from the Apothecary, these are powerful, unpredictable consumables that can turn the tide of a battle or heal your wounds.
Magic Emporium Cards (16 cards) & Armoury Cards (12 cards): Found in their respective shops, these act as a fixed-price menu where wealthy adventurers can outright buy the exact weapons, armour, or magical artifacts they need.
Pet Cards (12 cards): Bought at the Menagerie, these aren't just normal Followers. Each Pet offers a highly unique, specific advantage to your character.
Stables Cards (8 cards): Spend your coin on Mules to carry your heavy gear, or Warhorses to give you a massive advantage in combat and movement.
Each of these card types has its own deck that is drawn from dynamically as you visit different shops and regions.
With over 160 total cards added in this expansion, the possibilities for customisation using the in-game Deck Editor have been ramped up massively. You can tailor your City experience to be exactly what you want it to be. Want a City filled with nothing but dangerous encounters and traps? You can build that. Want to flood the Apothecary with cheap healing potions? You can do that, too.
In fact, if you noticed that we updated the Deck Editor navigation and UI in last month's Change of Fate update... that wasn't a coincidence! We updated navigation through these menus specifically to handle the massive influx of new decks that The City Classic brings to the table, ensuring you can easily mix and match these new cards with your base game and other expansions.
We hope you enjoyed this look behind the scenes at how we’ve brought the bustling streets of The City to life in Talisman: Digital 5th Edition. It has been a massive undertaking for the team, but seeing those new 3D models standing outside the Magic Emporium makes it all worth it!
We couldn't talk about The City Classic without reminding you about the free DLC upgrade for our veteran players.
As a thank you to the community that has supported us for years, if you already own The City expansion for Talisman: Digital Classic Edition, you can receive this new 5th Edition version of the City for free. Once you’ve purchased 5th Edition, all you need to do is ensure you are signed into your free Nomad Account on both the Classic Edition and 5th Edition of the game.
If you aren't sure how to do that, don't worry! You can check out our quick and easy guide right here to get yourself ready.
The gates are opening very soon. Make sure you head over to the store page right now and hit that Wishlist button so you are notified the exact second the expansion goes live!
Until then, you can also join the official Nomad Games Discord, and follow us online in all the places where you can!