Carcassonne: The River II - Tips & Strategies

When using both river sets, and all the expansions, you’ll end up with too many river endings. We handle it this way.

1) Place one Spring (start of the river) tile on the table. Put the other away. It won’t be used.
2) Remove all the river endings, and make a pile of them. Shuffle this pile and put it aside.
3) Shuffle the rest of the river tiles, including the T junction.
4) Play starts, and players take turns placing the river tiles, per the instructions.
5) When the T junction is placed, draw one river end tile and shuffle it into the rest of the unused river tiles.
6) Continue playing river tiles. When the river end tile is drawn, play it on one of the ends.
7) Continue building the rest of the other branch until you run out of river tiles, then draw another river end tile and cap the river off. Put the unused river ends away, and continue play normally.

The “no U-turn” rule exists for a reason. If you make a hairpin turn, say 2 left turns in a row, there is a good chance that one of the next tiles will conflict with an already placed river tile.

In reality, U-turns don’t really mess things up as long as you’re careful not to place them too close to one another. We play that there must be 3 tiles between two turns if they both go the same way, AND you can never “aim” the river at another river tile. This latter rule prevents death spirals and dead ends.