I'm thinking about removing some cards from the adventure card deck and possibly the spell card deck. My thinking is that there are certain cards that just slow down the game and make it less fun without adding any interest.

Examples of the type of cards I'm talking about are the Maze and the Marsh. It takes up a space such that you can no longer draw adventure cards, and it slows down the game. It's even worse when it only has an effect if you have some low ability score, and everyone exceeds that ability score, so landing on it is just an empty turn for everyone.

Thinning out the deck would also have the effect of making the interesting cards more likely to come up. I think this could become more of an issue as I add expansions.

Does anyone else do this?

What adventure cards do you remove?

What spell cards?

When we only had the base game we used to remove the amulet and the wand when playing with three players, as one would end up with the wand, one with the amulet and the third would be the victim, otherwise we've always played with all the cards. Now, that I've all the expansions and the adventure is almost four times as big, not counting dungeon, highland and dragon cards, we get new cards every game anyway. As we never look through the decks when the game is new, I'm not even sure that I've seen every card the game has to offer. Still I can see your point with marsh and maze, especially in later parts of a game. But I would recommend doubling the card decks with a small box expansion instead.

I've never removed cards because I've always played with expansions and had plenty of variety. However, removing certain cards that you don't like is perfectly fine; I've never did this because I think that those cards are intentionally made to slow down the game at any stage. Both Characters close to victory and pursuing Characters are slowed down by cards such as Marsh and Maze, and the advantage depends on who draws the cards as is typical of Talisman. The only cards that I used to remove when playing with Base + Reaper were the Talismans in the Adventure Deck. I added those cards only in 5-6 player games. With lots of cards, Talismans don't come up very often.

I used to ADD extra cards because I felt that they should come up more often, but I've abandoned that practice too. I had some extra cards because I bought Upgrade kit and then a full FFG box to have the revised board.

My concern is that I'm playing with 6 and 8 year old boys, and I would very much like to get games averaging about 2 hours even... They like the game, but games are taking 2.5 to 3 hours, which is really pushing their attention span at that age.

I'm already have trophy trades at 6 points to speed up the game.

I'm ordering Frostmarch as my first expansion. I'm also removing Marsh and Maze for now, will revisit after we've had some time with the expansion cards mixed in.

Reduce Trophy Point per Attribute point to 5. Both number of players AND average age ( or youngest player ) should always be considered if play time is a concern. In general, I'd knock off a trophy point per player under 12, but it does depend on the individual child. I've played with a 9 and 12 year old who could go all night... and nail some the 20-somethings to the wall in a debate over margin calls on the rules.

More cards can help with some of those base Magic Objects producing inequities. But when you get over the 300 card mark, that inequity can come back. No matter how well you shuffle, there are going to be games where certain cards clump together. Consider that at one point of the Adventure decks growth you might let the discard pile stand from one game to the next. In a following game, just keep going through the deck as it stands so that all cards eventually come up from game to game, and only shuffle the behemoth of deck during a game when its depleted. It doesn't take that much time to do so, and that way you wont' be doing it for every game's start.

AdamX said:

Trade trophy's at 5, Then you will quicker gain a level up.

I think that the frostmarch is a bad choice for your first expansion.

You can better choose the sacred pool or the Reaper expansion.

I agree with the warlock.

I play with all the adventure cards, and cards such as the maze or marsh can fill those spaces on the mainboard.

This is a good thing, because this will make you decide to travel to another region.

Other ways to speed up the game might be to begin with an object from the purchase deck, begin with extra strength/craft, auto-kill each turn (or at least lose life on lower die rolls) at the CoC, choose to heal OR replenish fate at the chapel and graveyard (or buy them if you're neutral).

But I'm with Velhart at removing cards, I think they might speed the game up as they make you move on. Anyway, if you really don't want them you can throw destruction at them.