talismanisland said:

 Sorry about that. Okay, so I guess I never noticed that, ever.  What else did they do?

Umm…. nothing!

But I think the idea added a touch more theme and the chance to expand upon the water/fire nature of the barriers for making cards etc.

Nidhögg said:

Nope. I'm like you in that I'd like to see the game capped, though I'd prefer they cap it with a Miskatonic Horror style expansion to link the corner boards. The fans can then create their own custom expansions to fill in any gaps.

There is a difference  between Arkham Horror expansions and Talisman expansions. While it's true that the expansions in both contribute to the variety, Arkham is a considerably heavier and more complicated game. Plus there are FAR more decks of cards in AH.

Talisman has only two main ones: adventures and spells,   and a few supplementary mini- decks.

Arkham Horror is a bloated monster by comparison, and setup time is considerably longer with all expansion elements.  I actually hope that Miskatonic is the last expansion.  I own all expansions  and it looks kinda scary: I've got : 4  game boxes packed to the brim with components.I like the game, but enough is enough. Variety is fine, but it crossed into the  distasteful kind a long time ago. 

The only small expansion for Talisman I'm still short of is Frostmarch. It's bound to arrive soon. And then I think I'll stop for a while. I'd like to get the other expansions(Dungeon and Highland) sometime,  mostly for the new characters and endings. The extra boards don't really catch my fancy. There's enough ground to cover on the main board as it is.

It would've been nicer if they had  introduced new  overlays for the middle and outer regions, like they did with the Dragon. New boards that don't take extra space are a neat idea.