Combat between players is changed by the addition of an army. Defending player places his army down. Attacker must match strength vs strength and craft vs craft. Cards that can not be matched up attack the player. This is a little too advantageous for the attacker.
Players only attack each other if they're armies are gone.
Combat needs to be reworked, and its clearly a variant and not Talisman. Long setup time. Anyway enough meandering for a day. I still don't know after all this if Talisman is fixable. Maybe Peter was right it is a form of Water Torture.