With innsmouth horror it takes me 3 hours to finish a 3 players game. 

Cutievalkyrie said:

I guess it's not the number of expansions, but the number of investigators you play. Assuming that you go for a sealing victory, playing 6 investigators implies it's enough that each of them seals one gate. Playing 3 implies that each of them seals two gates, doubling de facto the time you need to collect clues and so on. My games (2 expansion board and 1 card expansion always in) tend to last 11 Mythos (on average) if I play 5 investigators, and 16 Mythos (on average) if I play 4.

Julia's spot-on about the number of Investigators.  I play 95% of may games solo, with every expansion (yes, I know about dilution and it doesn't bother me, seriously) and four Investigators ~ the games take, on-average, 3 hours.  Now I've made some House Rules to make it a bit more interesting such as Rifts actually open in Kingsport (so you don't have those pesky things moving into Vortices); some Rumors are based upon 2 Investigators; and the -1 to closing Gates for the Lurker only applies to those who have taken Pacts, for instance.

As already stated by Julia and The Professor, the number of investigators is what matters most. I tend to play with other people, and we usually play four investigators. We almost always play with an expansion board, which usually ends up being Innsmouth, because we think it's more fun to go there. You get to see all the funny fish-people, and there might be a party taking place at Devil Reef or Y'ha-nthlei. You really don't wanna miss that! =P We also add in the cards and replacement gates from Lurker, plus investigators and Ancient Ones from Dunwich. We usually spend more time than three ours on our games, but this is most likely due to discussions and careful planning in the Upkeep Phase of each round. ^__^

Each board expansion after the first actually reduces  time to play, because there are so many more things that will threaten to awaken the Ancient One!

(I play with all expansions.)

All the small cards, monsters, Investigators, Ancient Ones and other material from every expansion, including the custom expansions (Gilman Wing, Dark Corners, Cult of the Golden Scarab) Sometimes we ignore Personal Stories and/or Relationships.

Usually two to three boards from the three official expansions and Vermont / Lovecraft Country / Dreamlands (Arkham Nightmare version) More boards than that is asking for a migraine, although one day I'd like to try this: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/1383608/neverenoughtime

I am playing with two friends of mine. We are using one board expansion (KH), and from the small expansions we are using Lurker, Dark Pharaoh and Black Goat. Every game that w ehave played lasts from 1 hour to 2 hours. Of course, there are some times that game can last much longer. I remember that we have played for 4 hours in a single game.

My wife and I play 2 investigators each and usually one big expansion, favorite is Innsmouth. I really like the look of it also. We play personal stories, relationship, injury and madness, epic battle, Miskatonic and the gates from Lurker. Occasionally we play a herald or a small expansion. I don't seem to get much out of the small expansions however except the Curse of the Dark Pharoah because of putting the expansions cards on top to get more theme. I suppose as far as new product for this game there will not be any. I do wish I was better at card printing etc for some of the fantastic player cards and expansions. One guy her a year or so ago had a really neat expansion from the River Docks I think.

One. Always and only one.  In addition I separate the decks so half of the Mythos cards come from the expansion I'm playing.  But as others have noted your question really seems to to be about game length and that has to do with the number of players and therefore the number of player turns.

Drakson said:

Do you have any more information about that "river Docks" expansion? I must have missed that one - unless you mean Door to Saturn, where you can travel to Arabia and Antarctica and the like. (It's a v. good expansion, BTW, well worth a look)

As for custom material, I discuss this in depth in the design notes for Lovecraft Country (see my sig), but basically, with the exception of monsters (which have a tactile quality that is difficult to reproduce manually) if you've got a lot of custom material in any deck, it doesn't matter too much as you're not going to remember what's custom and what's not. If you haven't got a lot of material, you'll need to moderate it in some manner. Some examples might include:

• When a monster surge occurs, draw your a monster from the custom monster cup and place it on the surging gate.
• Use spawn monsters in your monster cup, when you draw a spawn monster, replace that monster with a draw from the custom monster cup.
• Draw your custom mythos / gate cards / small cards, etc. whenever the Ancient One is at the end of a row of the AO track.

In my opinion, you're very lucky to have 3 hour IH games.

Most of my IH games have lasted less than 2 hours and complete in a crushing defeat.

It doesn't always happen that way and usually when we win, it's 2.5 or so hours.

Basically, I'm saying that you're finding ways to last longer with Innsmouth in the game than I am lasting and I'm jealous!  

Full Doom Track said:

What are you doing to make Innsmouth such a horrible place? *curious*

Jake yet again said:

It was in the section above that players make up. Had good cards etc and was a side board off the river docks with ships, swimming from island, rusty weapons, all kinds of stuff. I remember a few people here printing it out. I just wasnt and still not good at printing out cards etc and making them look very good

I suspect you're talking about Sea of Horror by Kroen. Forgive the pun, but I think you've missed the boat on that one. There were some interesting ideas in the expansion, and I appreciated the effort the writer had put in, but I didn't much care the end result myself. If I recall correctly, Kroen had a relationship with most forum members as tumultous as his eponymous sea and the .eons are no longer available. You might that a few .jpgs are still available in the fourm posts or you could ask around, maybe someone else snagged them.

Sea of Horror: IIRC, Suicide Puppett has collected almost everything ever done for Arkham. Try to get in contact with hm via Private Message; he's a cool guy, and I think he will gladly help you :-)

Eit,

At this point I want to attribute it to 6+ games of horribly shuffled Mythos decks.  But after that many games I am beginning to suspect something.  Innsmouth is, by FAR, hardest expansion I've found to date!