Author Topic: Combining River I and River II  (Read 1818 times)

Offline PapaGeek

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Combining River I and River II
« on: December 11, 2021, 10:04:45 AM »
The 12 River I Tiles create a significant feature when you are also playing with the 71 standard Land Tiles in the Basic Game.  But, they lose some of that significance when you add 18 Inns and Cathedrals Tiles plus/or 24 Traders and Builders Tiles to the game.  This has led our group to consider the addition of the additional 12 River II Tiles to the game.

When you combine the River I and River II tiles you end up with: 2 source spring tile, 1 T fork tile, 10 straight river tiles, 8 river turn tiles, and 3 river termination lake tiles (1 plain, 1 with a city, and 1 with a Volcano).

The WikiCarPedia suggestions for combining River I and River II suggest things like:
  • Starting with the fork and working back to the springs and lakes.
  • Starting with the lake city tile and working back (with random fork placement) to both springs.
The Volcano has little meaning with the basic or big box game rivers, but throw in the extra 30 tiles from the Princess and Dragon expansion and things get really interesting!

You can’t place a meeple on River II’s Lake Volcano tile because the Dragon has to go there and it will eat your meeple!  If a player decides to end one of the 3 river paths with the Volcano, should they get a Volcano second turn, similar to the builder second turn?

So, on to the reason for this post!  What unofficial house rules do you use when combining the River I and River II tiles, and what changes do you make to those rules when you also include the Princess and the Dragon?



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Offline corinthiens13

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Re: Combining River I and River II
« Reply #1 on: December 11, 2021, 11:25:53 AM »
Well, I do only use official rules when combining river I and river II  :yellow-meeple:

Offline PapaGeek

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Re: Combining River I and River II
« Reply #2 on: December 11, 2021, 10:04:42 PM »
Well, I do only use official rules when combining river I and river II  :yellow-meeple:

The only official rule that I see on WikiCarPedia is:

Combining The River and The River II

You can combine The River with The River II from base game to make a very long river. Keep only one source and one lake.


This rule defeats the entire purpose of River II (it eliminates the fork) and it does not discuss the interaction with the Volcano and Dragon.


Looking at the house rules for the river: the opinions seem to go all over the place:  You can’t place meeples on the river tiles, mixing river and non-river tiles, play the fork first, play the city/lake first, etc.


Our group does not have the River II tiles yet, they are on order, and we talked tonight about what our house rules might be.  The first thing we talked about is to make the house rules wide open so that the river could be different every time we play the game, variety makes Carcassonne far more interesting!  So, the steps we have basically decided on are:

Divide the combined River Tiles into two stacks:
  • 2 source springs, 1 T fork, and 3 lakes tiles
  • 10 straight and 8 curve tiles
Randomly select the river starting tile from the first stack.
  • If the starting tile is the T fork, just start randomly playing the 18 course tiles.
  • If it was any other start tile, insert and T fork into the course tiles stack and mix up the stack before you start randomly playing the 19 course tiles.
When all of the course tiles have been played:
  • Turn over the remaining spring/lake tiles and let the next players chose which fork they want to terminate with which tile.
  • If you are playing with the Princess and Dragon expansion and a player chooses to terminate a fork path with the Volcano tile, they get a Volcano second turn.

With any luck, playing with these three steps will help the river to be different for every game we play.


As stated above, we don’t have our River II tiles yet, they have been shipped from overseas but not here yet.  While we wait we’d love to hear everyone else’s opinions on our approach!




Offline corinthiens13

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Re: Combining River I and River II
« Reply #3 on: December 11, 2021, 10:14:13 PM »
Oh my, you're right, so I play a house rule in fact: Discard river I source and lake.

I then play with official river II rules (place the source as starting tile, fork at the top of the stack, volcano lake at the bottom).

Worked fine for every of my games.

Offline PapaGeek

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Re: Combining River I and River II
« Reply #4 on: December 12, 2021, 03:46:44 AM »
The problem with having the fork at the top of the stack is why even bother to have a fork at all!  When the fork is the first tile played at the start of the river is that you end up with only one single river path with a 1 tile bump on the side of it.

Offline Meepledrone

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Re: Combining River I and River II
« Reply #5 on: December 12, 2021, 03:52:46 AM »
This always seemed odd to me.

In my first games I always mixed the fork tile with the rest to add variety to the river shape. Later I stuck to the rules and placed the fork right after the source. Mixing the fork seems more fun to me... But you may lead to issues if it is drawn towards the end of the river placement and only river curves are left (the fork may create a U-turn-ish situation).
Questions about rules? Check WICA: wikicarpedia.com

Offline JohannesD

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Re: Combining River I and River II
« Reply #6 on: December 12, 2021, 07:45:47 AM »
Well, you just struck a chord right there... :-)

Rivers are one of the features that we like very much and each time we play, we use 2-4 river sets in order to make the terrain even more pleasing to the eye with those light blue streams meandering across the land (after all one of the reasons we enjoy playing Carcassonne so much is the aesthetic aspect of the game and its guaranteed variability). So we start with 2-3 sources which we usually place around the "City of Carcassone" using one or two forks almost equally distributed in the rest of the 20-30 river tiles, keeping the river mouths apart and face down (of course one has to count the correct number of river mouths to use according to the number of source tiles and forks). On his turn each player is free to continue whichever river/branch he chooses and can also end the river if he pleases.

We also use one more river set by mixing its source tile in the tile stacks after around 100 tiles and when it comes up we immediately place the rest of the river tiles as if it were the start of the game. We try to position the source next to such a tile that wouldn't create "problems" with the placement of the rest of the river tiles, but should such an occasion arise, we leave it aside for later, draw the next river tile and use the one we left aside after this one.

Each time we play we use a different combination of river sets (we have 1 C2 base game river, 1 Big Box6 river, 1 anniversary edition river, 2 Exp.6 river sets and 1 BigBox 2021 river). We also like using the double source tile of the anniversary edition next to which we sometimes attach 2 forks!

I know it sounds a bit(?) extreme but we really like to have so much of the element of water on the terrain (we always include the "Ferries" too!). I'm attaching a couple of images so that you can get an idea of what I mean...
I think that one of the best qualities of Carcassonne is the fact that one can adjust it to one's taste and enjoyment while the mechanics of the game stay intact.

J.

Offline kothmann

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Re: Combining River I and River II
« Reply #7 on: December 12, 2021, 07:53:29 AM »
If anyone else wants to go River-crazy (this does look super cool), I have two extra copies of C1 River-I that I would be happy to send out.  Just PM me.

Offline Meepledrone

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Re: Combining River I and River II
« Reply #8 on: December 12, 2021, 12:32:29 PM »
Awesome images, JohannesD!

+1 merit from me.


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