The River variant: taking the ferry

[Boondocker]

I'm a new member, so I'm sorry if there's a format that people prefer these to be in. Let me know if I need to change anything.

I've been trying to make the River expansions a little more interesting since we started using them in our games. I've always wanted there to be a mechanic involving the river, rather than it just being another boundary for farms (a role that The River II and the GQ11 spring tile play much better than the original River, in my opinion). I toyed with the idea of treating rivers like roads: meeples placed on rivers would give points based on the length of the uninterrupted river (like aquatic thieves... or pirates, I guess), but this seemed too unbalanced, especially as the first player could plop someone down on the fork tile and have a large advantage. I thought about treating rivers like fields, but that seemed really hard to do (then I read the Fishermen variant on this site, which was better than any of my ideas, so that nixed that).

Then I ordered Abbey & Mayor, and got an idea from the wagon. So I thought I'd try my hand at mechanic that uses a river-as-transportation theme, with the mechanics stolen from the wagon follower. Originally, I thought it would just be another way for the wagon to move around, but that didn't seem fair (to those without that expansion) or fun.

So, here it is; a very simple variant.

When a feature which contacts the river is scored¹, players with followers on that feature may ferry them to another feature which also contacts the river². The destination feature must be both unoccupied and incomplete to be a legal destination, but it may be at any point along the river (i.e., destinations are not restricted to those that contact the same section of river). This movement occurs after scoring.

Should more than one player have followers in the origin feature, they ferry one follower at at time, in turn, beginning with the active player, and moving to the left. If there are no legal destinations for the followers (i.e., there are no incomplete and unoccupied features contacting the river), then the followers are returned to their players' supplies.

Any follower can take the ferry, but only if they are otherwise allowed to occupy the destination feature. Figures (e.g., builder, pig, barn) can not move in this way.

¹ Farmers scored via placement of a barn can take the ferry.
² Moving followers via the ferry is not mandatory; they may instead be returned to their players' supplies.


That's it. I would like feedback, if anyone is so inclined, as to any problems this might cause, ways it could be made more interesting (perhaps knights in cities under siege could escape via the river), clarifications I should make, etc. If someone wants to playtest it, be welcome; I haven't gotten much time to play lately.

Thank you for reading!

[CKorfmann]

That sounds like an interesting idea.  You should pursue it.  Have you seen the list of river expansions?  All the expansions from our site are on THIS page.  Not sure if you may have seen it. 

[Boondocker]

Thanks, CKorfmann. I thought the CC variant registry was the only resource; I hadn't seen that one. There are a lot of fan-made expansions!

I haven't had a chance to playtest this with anyone yet, but I'll keep on truckin' (if that's what you meant by 'pursue' it).

[CKorfmann]

Yeah, go for it.  Let us know how it turns out.  I would think the number of features the actually connnect to the river would be limited though.  For instance, there are only one or maybe two tiles I can think of where the city walls actually touch the river.  All of the tiles (that I can recall) where the road crosses the river do wo with a bridge, so I'd think it might be difficult to suggest ferrying to that point.  That would leave farmers and that could be pretty interesting.  It would make a big fight over the farms there.

It sounded like maybe you hadn't seen that page.  Enjoy looking.  There are a lot!

[Boondocker]

Well, I playtested this (by myself) using two players, the base game, and either the River or River II. I placed meeples as I would if I were playing, prioritizing cities and dropping max one farmer.

The final verdict? Dreadfully uninteresting.

Across the two sets (River and River 2), there are only five roads that cross the river and two cities that touch it. Many or most of those will be occupied by the time the river is finished; this is only exacerbated by increasing the number of players in the game (i.e., more players means fewer features to go around, meaning more will get claimed). I played a few games, and moved a meeple twice; both times to a road. Not terribly exciting.

So, it's a variant rule that might get used once or twice per game -- to little impact -- and probably only during the start of the game. Not worth pursuing further without some major rethinking, I think.

[djdahmer]

Across the two sets (River and River 2), there are only five roads that cross the river and two cities that touch it. Many or most of those will be occupied by the time the river is finished; this is only exacerbated by increasing the number of players in the game (i.e., more players means fewer features to go around, meaning more will get claimed).

Have you considered combining these rules with the Fishermen series of expansions? If you look at the tiles for the Fishermen expansion alone there are quite a few tiles which I think would fit in well, and if you add in any of Fish Huts, Kettle of Fish, Swan Lake, Tributaries, Trifecta & Whispering Woods you might have a much more exciting variant.

[Boondocker]

I'd thought about it, and I can theorize about it, but I have no way to playtest it. I'll take a closer look at the (numerous) river fan expansions and see if that would be fun or a case of too many cooks.

I'm all right with it not working, however. Gotta crawl before you can run. 

[CKorfmann]

Hey man, don't worry about it.  It was a very good effort for your first time.  If your underlying motivation is to use the river for something under a decoration, the fisherman expansion is probably a good place to start.  If you don't want to go that far, I'd suggest looking at my Fishing Boats expansion.  It uses the boats from Seafarers of Catan on the river.  It would work best with the Fisherman series, but I could see it being possible with just river 1 & 2 perhaps with a little retrofitting. 

If you are anxious to get your feet wet working on an expansion, I'd suggest maybe a small group of us could get together and work on one of the archived expansions or maybe something new.  We' just need someone with good graphics skills. 

[djdahmer]

I'd thought about it, and I can theorize about it, but I have no way to playtest it.

If you're wanting to do just a quick playtest it shouldn't take too long to print out a few sheets of tiles (they don't even have to be printed in colour) on ordinary paper & cut them up with a pair of scissors. Since the aim is a proof of concept / refinement of an idea it should give you enough of an idea if it's going to work as you'd anticipated.

[Boondocker]

If you're wanting to do just a quick playtest it shouldn't take too long to print out a few sheets of tiles (they don't even have to be printed in colour) on ordinary paper & cut them up with a pair of scissors. Since the aim is a proof of concept / refinement of an idea it should give you enough of an idea if it's going to work as you'd anticipated.

Ha! I can't believe I didn't think of that! Print quality doesn't matter a fig, either. This will really help me playtest my current project.

If you are anxious to get your feet wet working on an expansion, I'd suggest maybe a small group of us could get together and work on one of the archived expansions or maybe something new.

I'm currently hashing out a Catapult variant (I'll get a first draft up soon), but I'd be happy to have board members contribute to it, or help refine something older or work on something new! Just as long as I get to mess around with Carcassonne.

I appreciate the encouragement, guys.