I am still fairly new to this game and own the base game and FL, FL basically has disappeared into my decks, if I understand correctly MoM I just need to remove the gate tokens and discard the clues if they come out when I am not using the sideboard. Am I safe to assume that strange remnants and under the Pyramids will follow the same pattern? I like the idea of expanding the game but don't want to find out later I have to take cards out just because I want to play against one of the original GOOs.
Expansion integration
You don't have to take anything out.
Sometimes, on certain setups, you're required to set something aside before game starts, but for this reason the cards are all abundantly labeled and named.
For reasons to decrease fiddliness I'd even leave all the Gate Tokens together. Just shuffle them, and when you draw a location which isn't currently in play, just put them aside and draw the next one. Same with [Antarctica]-Clues: leave 'em all together. If Clues appear, keep drawing them from the bag, until you got matching ones, discard the rest. And if an encounter or an ability would grant you Clues, you don't even have to check for locations, just take any Clue from the bag, it doesn't affect difficulty or balance; it just makes an already hugely random mechanic even more random (if that's even possible).
Edited by diceman2k4I do exactly the same, gate and clue tokens are always in. When I have to draw one, if it's not resolvable, I discard it and draw a replacement.
As for the cards: you can always keep all the small cards and the encounter cards mixed in. What changes is the research deck and cards specific to the AO you're playing against, but this is true from core set to Strange Remnants. And I don't think this will be changing with Under the Pyramids (FFG is very aware of overbloating problems, Chris Petersen himself talked about this in his latest InFlight report at GenCon)
Little side-note:
For reasons of faster setup-time, I put all AO-specific cards together into one big stack. So I have a Cthulhu-Deck, containing all Mysteries, Research-, and Special Encounters, then I have an Azathoth-Deck, and so forth. I just shuffle my stack, and look for the next matching card, be it Mystery, Research or Special Encounter.
Then I did the same with Location Encounters (City-Locations and Generic Locations), I just shuffle them together and look for the next card.
It's just Other World-Encounters and the Expedition-Deck, which I keep seperately (makes shuffling the big deck easier, and the Expedition-Deck works differently, anyway).
It's not a big hassle at all, and it really decreases setup time.
You don't have to take anything out.
Sometimes, on certain setups, you're required to set something aside before game starts, but for this reason the cards are all abundantly labeled and named.
For reasons to decrease fiddliness I'd even leave all the Gate Tokens together. Just shuffle them, and when you draw a location which isn't currently in play, just put them aside and draw the next one. Same with [Antarctica]-Clues: leave 'em all together. If Clues appear, keep drawing them from the bag, until you got matching ones, discard the rest. And if an encounter or an ability would grant you Clues, you don't even have to check for locations, just take any Clue from the bag, it doesn't affect difficulty or balance; it just makes an already hugely random mechanic even more random (if that's even possible).
Same way as I do
I do exactly the same, gate and clue tokens are always in. When I have to draw one, if it's not resolvable, I discard it and draw a replacement.
As for the cards: you can always keep all the small cards and the encounter cards mixed in. What changes is the research deck and cards specific to the AO you're playing against, but this is true from core set to Strange Remnants. And I don't think this will be changing with Under the Pyramids (FFG is very aware of overbloating problems, Chris Petersen himself talked about this in his latest InFlight report at GenCon)
What is Under the Pyraminds? Did I miss an announcement or something?
Not yet announce on FFG site. See: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1410509/new-big-box-expansion-announced-gencon