Hi there!

After purchasing all 6 expansions I feel forced to trim the adventure deck since it's not really practical to use a 350+ cards. So I am trying to decide which cards to keep and which to get rid of, my goal is to end up with a 150-160 card adventure deck.

I have removed all enemies of Strength and Craft of 1 for start, as well as many annoying cards that no one wants to see and slow the game down such as the Ekor, Poltergeist, Leper, Centaur etc. I have also removed all Talismans from the adventure deck because it feels cheap to find a Talisman lying around but kept alternative ways to obtain one such as the Casket, Hermit and the Tomb.

1) Now what do you think of high risk/high reward cards such as the Cave or the Tomb which I mentioned above? Do you believe that they add to the game or are they just too random for players to consider encountering them?

2) How about the place cards where you put 4 craft/strength/life/fate/gold tokens on them and every time a character interacts with the square can take one token, do you guys think that these are cards that make the game more interesting or do they make the game too easy since it's free stats lying around for everyone to pick up?

3) Regarding the Academy card, I have been debating whether this is even worth including since spending 3 Gold and losing a turn for one point in Strength/Craft just feels too much, compared to the pool cards which I mentioned above where you put 4 tokens and can improve your stats for free. Does the Academy feel like a rewarding card or just plain tedious and slow?

I will add more questions later since I would like to see what your opinions are about improving the game and what cards could be classified as "fun" and interesting compared to tedious and cards people would avoid using.

Demarki said:

Well I don't believe in trimming the deck at all. The game is about having an adventure with different cards coming up every single game. This is the point of the game. Immerse yourself into a fantasy realm for an evening. We often play 6 player games which last between 3-4 hours worth of play. Considerably less time with fewer players. It's uo to you but I wouldn't recommend it!

Ell.

Demarki said:

Hello,
you're free to do any alteration you wish but, as a player who felt a similar urge for adjusting the Adventure deck, I ended up putting everything together again and never think about shuffling, trimming and adapting. You might want to remove old cards to see more of the new cards, at least for the first games; then, I suggest to remove expansion-wise (remove all Reaper, all Frostmarch or all Sacred Pool cards).

If you want to remove cards for a particular purpose (e.g. you think they're lame, they drag the game, they're too good/bad), always remember that this is a card-draw game based on luck. A card is never meaningful by itself but it always depends on the circumstances when it is drawn. Realize this and you'll realize that trimming isn't really worth doing.

Demarki said:

I don't understand why you removed these cards.

Easy Enemies are meant to give a chance to weak Characters and to be a wasted turn for stronger ones. They are an important game equalizer, especially if you don't play with big box expansions where stronger Enemies are easier to find.

The other Event/Stranger cards are annoying for the one who draws them, why do you remove them? Aren't they part of this game fun?

Demarki said:

I had the same thought and I removed Talisman Adventure cards for a while, then I understood that they don't mean a thing with all the cards we have now.

Demarki said:

Depends on the Character, as always. The one who draws the card doesn't have the choice, the others will decide when they have the chance to land on. Circumstances will give the answer, not speculation.

Demarki said:

They're just fine, except when the Conjurer is in play.

Demarki said:

It's rarely seen and used right now, but a weak Character with a lot of Gold will be happy to miss some turns there.

Demarki said:

I don't want to discourage you to improve the game as you feel necessary. If you don't like some card types just remove them and see how it works. I only remind you that Talisman is a game with a low strategic profile and high random fun. It's not a Character building game, where you make choices with long-term rewards; it's a light-hearted adventure game where you have choices to do and resources to manage (better: that you mustn't forget to use), but ultimately it's not balanced, not fair to everyone, not about maximizing-minimizing what you get from the Adventure cards. You don't have control over it, period. Trimming can be done as you wish, but there are no criteria to apply besides what you like/dislike.

Demarki said:

It's not necessary to trim the adventure deck.

If you choose the cards for each game, then you always know which cards will show up. This is not fun.

My advise is that you must not remove the cards from the game.

Just shuffle all the cards, pick the first random deck of cards and use it. After that, pick the second deck etc

This is Talisman.

The other questions has already been answered by the_Warlock and Talismansilat.

Don't trim!!!!!!!!!!!

We played over 30 games since I bought the game and have all expansions. Even now we see cards we never encountered in past games and it's really cool and refreshing!

Trimming would attenuate the flavor of this game IMO.

SolennelBern said:

I agree with this, our gaming group never looks through the new adventure cards so I'm not sure I've seen all the cards the game has to offer yet. In one of our last games we had our first encounter with the highland raiders, a nasty surprise indeed...

SolennelBern said:

I got over 350 Adventure cards with less than 100 creatures (many of them being of str/craft of 1) so some trimming is necessary in order to keep the enemy percentage to around 35-40%. Not to mention there are dozens of cards that add nothing to the game except for slowing it down and make it tedious to play such as the Maze, Ekor, Dungeon doors etc.

My goal is to have a 180 adventure card deck and so far I am using 70 enemies, 40 items, 20 followers and 50 places/strangers/events all of them being interesting cards and I find my gaming experience a lot more pleasant instead of using a 350 card deck with every single card included.

Demarki said:

If the adventure deck would be around 50% with enemies, then it's not fun.

I have no problems with the enemies on the mainboard. we drew very strong ones in our last game, and it can be still dangerous there.

we have 374 adventure cards. They are somewhat 105 enemies in the whole deck.

That's not bad because talisman is all about adventure.

We need cards such as the maze, ekor etc.

And on top of that, we have regions to go to. You don't stay the whole game on the mainboard.

But you must do what you want of course. But i think that most talisman fans will use all cards in the game.

The more, the better!

Demarki said:

Again, if you have such clear ideas and you are convinced that they will make the game more enjoyable for you, go ahead. Maybe you will notice it's not worth it and change your mind, maybe you'll be fine with the deck you've put together.

I'm just saying that it's not very easy to discuss about changes like these, nobody here knows how it will impact on the game, because nobody had the necessity for such an accurate trimming so far. I did some kind of minor adjustments in the past but when Frostmarch came out I stopped doing that because it was a waste of time. Shuffling to see different cards every game and avoid Enemy/Object clusters has a purpose, trimming the deck has no purpose, IMHO.

Demarki said:

Well if it's going to make the game more enjoyable to you, go ahead.

My point is, the heart of Talisman is the adventure to the top. In every adventure you can't control the events of the day. You can hope for something to happen but most of the time something will surprise you on the road. I just love how on some turns I just jave to face an Event or Stranger or something completely random and chaotic, which doesn't help me al all. Every game we have laughs here and there beause of such events. Trimming the Adventure Deck, it's only my opinion here, would "water down" the entire experience. Controlling the events of the game will end up playing the same game over and over again. Leaving the 350+ cards, shuffling them and dividing them in 3 smaller decks will end up playing a different adventure everytime Talisman is on your kitchen table.

I just LOVE that after over 30 plays, I still get to encounter lots of new cards. That's what make this game a surprise everytime.

But it all ends with what you think you and your group will enjoy and the beauty of this hobby is you can do whatever you like to make a said game more fun for you.

I'm still convinced it's a bad idea though

A good tip on how to reduce the volume of the Adventure deck is to remove duplicate cards (except for enemies for obvious reasons) and also remove items that can be purchased from the Market/Stables/Blacksmith such as basic Armor and Weapons, Water Bottles, Mules etc