It was never a given that ye olde Talisman would find a comfortable home on PC, what with the sometimes game-changing power of its dice rolls. Yet Nomad’s digital edition has sold over a million copies across its various platforms, Steam included. The Cheshire studio’s relationship with Games Workshop has clearly been fruitful, since they’re now nudging and winking about something new built in Warhammer’s most popular, war-only universe.
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Nomad tweeted an image of a space marine on Wednesday and, when I pursued the subject, suggested we “keep an eye out!”.
The Warmaster Horus has betrayed the Emperor. Who will you bear allegiance to? #warhammer40k pic.twitter.com/PWZlYstaeg
— Nomad Games (@Nomadgames) December 30, 2015
The first, natural thought is of Relic, tabletop publisher Fantasy Flight’s 40K adaptation of the venerable Talisman formula. But that picture – the saintly figure on the left, and the corrupted individual on the right – and its text refer to a very particular cataclysmic event in 40K lore. The Horus Heresy was a furious civil war that split the early Imperium: the original source of Chaos Marines, and the reason the Emperor is now a strange, spiritual skeleton bound to a chair.
Fantasy Flight released a Horus Heresy board game in 2010, in which one player controlled the loyalists and another the corrupted rebels. The Emperor and Horus featured as units, alongside Titans, daemons and a range of troops steered by a card-driven combat system.
It’s possible that Nomad have something entirely new in mind, of course – but their Talisman translation is notable for its unwavering faith in those 30-year-old rules. What would you like them to be working on?