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Combining River I and River II

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PapaGeek:
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?



Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=5602.0

corinthiens13:
Well, I do only use official rules when combining river I and river II  :yellow-meeple:

PapaGeek:

--- Quote from: corinthiens13 on December 11, 2021, 11:25:53 AM ---Well, I do only use official rules when combining river I and river II  :yellow-meeple:

--- End quote ---

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 tilesRandomly 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!

corinthiens13:
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.

PapaGeek:
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.

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