Well said Grandpa Kim, well said.
Undertakr, tell your friend that numerical advantage is no guarantee of sucess in SEIV. I have been in this community a long time and have played a lot of games. I have seen lopsided battle results such as you describe and worse where neither player had the Tailsman.
To beat the player using the Tailsman, you find his weakness and exploit it. Every player has a weakness. And if he doesn't have a weakness he would beat you anyway without the tailsman.
Tailsman has been very in vouge lately in PBW games. Partly becasue there has been all this talk about it being unbeatable. As more people use it, more people will learn ways to deal with it, and there are ways to deal with it. And as players using Tailsman start getting ganged up on and knocked out of games early and often, they will stop using the Tailsman.
The Deeply Relgious advanced Racial trait will soon become a great big target hanging around the neck of any player who chooses to use it.
Geoschmo