The Firelands is my favorite small-box expansion, and like others I've been disappointed when it doesn't appear at all in our games due to deck dilution (we play with all expansions). I've seen some people mentioning using 2 copies of Firelands to mitigate the dilution. Are there any gameplay or balance issues with this approach? Any cards I should remove from the second set?
Using 2 Copies of The Firelands
I haven't experienced any, but I don't play with 2 copies of the entire deck; I just copy all of the Ifrit Raiders, Invaders, Cultists, and the Event card which destroys locations. That gives the enemy Ifrit much more of a presence and impact on the game. Considering you play with everything, perhaps you should double the Ifrit Nobles as well?
I'd advise against doubling the content. You will notice the Firelands cards get a lot more action if you stick to the main board, especially due to their burn mechanic.
While the small box expansions dilute each other, the real culprit is the corner boards. If you just bought Firelands, and the first thing everyone does is rush to the corners, no amount of Firelands decks will help that!
Temporarily removing other content is the cheapest, simplest, wisest and most obvious way to enjoy more of a particular expansion.
I've removed quite a bit of content to tweak the game more to my liking but still play with two Firelands expansions, it's great imo
Quite a few of the extra Firelands cards were removed as well.
-Objects and followers, makes no sense having duplicates.
-Places and strangers, same as above but more of them got to stay (especially if they are likely to be discarded pretty quickly).
I was thinking about removing the Sultan/Sultana but instead we play that you draw a new card if it is already in play.
No balance issues imo.
Playing with all the expansions, too. I do find that dilution makes the Ifrit presence not as daunting. We accept this (2 player game) because we don't spend much time in every corner expansion. Seems to work or have mostly balance with the rest. The Firelands is a great expansion and in a smaller way, kinda changes some stuff, but not as much as Dragons does.
There is no better way than to use two copies of the firelands! Like others, I go through the deck and take out a bunch of the cards and do not add the spell cards to the deck. I originally got a second copy to add some FIRE and TERRAIN changing cards to the deck! SOmetimes it gets brutal, but isn't that the goal of Talisman? Those times when everyone is finishing the game with the character they began with gets awfully boring, no? :-)