Since the removal of banished basic boons in adventure deck 3 and forward is optional, I was curious if anyone planned on keeping any in the game and if so, why?
For me, I have Sajan in the Drunken Master Role, so I'm keeping all the potions in play at least for now. I think Potion of Glibness seems to have the potential to be particularly useful in ally acquisition.
I'm also Ezren in the same group, and though it hasn't presented itself since we started deck 3, I'm thinking about keeping Invisibility in the game. Again, I took the Illusionist role so Ezren can place an evaded monster on the bottom of the location deck. And Invisibility lacks the mental trait which so many monsters might be immune to and carries no limit on the difficulty of the monster. Right now he's carrying Enfeeble, which is nice because he then has the option to leave the monster on the top or bottom of the deck. So if its a regular monster, to the bottom it goes. If its the villain or a henchman and Ezren isn't prepared to take care of it, it sits on top for Amiri, Sajan or Merisiel to come and kill it. But I'm worried that more and more things will be immune to the mental trait, so Invisibility might be valuable.
So what about anyone else? Have you left any of the basic boons in play?
We were keeping extra allies with explores around, because we thought it'd be nice to pick them up and use them. I figured it'd be a good way to dilute the odds of fairly useless allies like the Mayor and Ameiko Kaijutsu. I'm reconsidering now that we've completed our second AP3 run and never saw a black ranger ally the whole time, but plenty of sages and standard bearers, so maybe I'm rethinking that choice.
I'm not removing any boons, largely through laziness (so I dont have to put them back if I play with my regular gaming group). At some point, if it becomes tedious, I might go through the box and purge a few basic cards.
Yeah. I mean I'm not removing anything, but if it ends up being dull ill go back and pull some out. I know that's not the rules, but I play on my own and so far I've got away with it. :)
You also have a negative of BotGs being in the blessing deck: The Werewolf.
I think the big reason people are worried about removing BotGs from the game is that you could technically end up short on cards for building the blessing deck if you banish too many of them. And since the rules are you build locations first, then the blessing deck, if you don't have 30 cards to build the blessing deck you won't have 30 turns in the game.
However, that is a major technicality. You'd almost have to have a large part consisting of the most blessing heavy characters all taking blessing card feats. And if you are following the rules, banishing a BotG should rarely happen. Since they are automatically acquired you can't banish them for failing to acquire them. With other boons you can choose not to attempt the check to acquire and therefore fail and banish the boon, and if it is basic remove it from the game. But with BotG there is no check for you to decide not to attempt. You automatically acquire them. So that option is off the table.
That leaves you only 3 real options. (1) They are in the location deck when you close it (either defeating the villain or defeating the henchman and closing the location). (2) You choose to banish it as the "When Closing" requirement of a location. or (3) You choose to banish it as the "When Permanently Close" effect at a location.
There aren't a lot of locations that would let you do 2 or 3 with a blessing. And even then, if you are no longer keeping BotGs in your deck, you'd have to have acquired one during an exploration to have it on hand. Given that you are more likely to have played it for the explore, you probably don't have it on hand unless you acquired it and noticed you were close to closing the location so you kept it to use a the card to banish. So again, not likely.
Most scenarios don't have a lot of blessings in the locations. Granted if you the villain flees you draw more blessings into the game, so option 1 is increased, but in experience for me that doesn't usually result in a lot more blessing encounters.
Remember, the cards you have acquired at the end of the scenario but do not keep are not banished. They are simply put back in the box.
So if you are following the rules, you won't remove that many BotGs from the game. I've finished HMM with 1 group of 4. We removed 3 BotGs from the game. I did it for the very reasons ryric and huskyskins mentioned. I want the blessings I have to recharge (though that is made less likely as I acquire all the blessings of that type for a character. i.e. acquiring and keeping all or nearly all the blessings of Pharasma for Seoni). And I want the blessing I encounter to be more likely to not be BotGs. But I know that I won't be removing a whole lot of them. It just doesn't work that way.