Carcassonne: The River II is probably one of the most unnecessary expansions that anyone could possibly think of. There has already been a River Expansion released a few years ago. In fact, it was even included in the basic set when I bought it (and probably still is). With that being said, an objective look at this expansion is sort of difficult. But here goes.

You can, of course, expect the usual Carcassonne tile quality – nice and thick, colorful, and well laid out. And for the list price of $6.00, that comes out to about fifty cents per tile, so it’s not a bad bargain. Still, I hemmed and hawed for a while, and decided not to get it. But I DID get it for Christmas, heh heh! The truth is that this expansion is not half bad. Instead of just giving us a new river, the designers have given a us a few small caveats that at least shows that they didn’t just throw a set of river tiles together. One key piece splits the river to go into 2 directions, so it comes in from one side of the tile, and leaves on two sides. One start tile is provided along with two distinct end tiles (lakes). Another tile has a land bridge over the river that joins together a city from each side of it. This set is also designed to interact with other expansions. There’s an inn-on-the-lake, a volcano, and a small herd of pigs, each recognizable to owners of the expansions they represent.

As far as their value to the game, it’s fairly negligible. You can include it with the original river expansion, you can form two separate rivers. You can remove the rivers altogether and use a start tile instead. My personal favorite method is to use the river split as the starting tile, merging all the river (I and II) tiles together and allowing the river to be built in all three directions until one river start and two lakes (or vice versa) are placed.

The sole downside that I see is simply that with all these additional tiles with one expansion after another coming out is that it will lead to longer and longer games. Some will love the additional game length; others will be less than enthralled by it. Whether or not you should add Carcassonne: The River II to your collection might very well depend on which side of that argument you’re on.

Which begs the question: How much Carcassonne is too much? With the two river expansions, Inns and Cathedrals, and Builders and Traders, my current configuration is approximately twice the size of the original base game. Add to that the additional rules and tweaks that each expansion has, and that really adds up to a very large and very different game than the original. I figured I’d draw the line here for now and not worry about Princesses, dragons, mayors, abbeys, or towers (and whatever else is added).

To muddy things up further, there are also stand-alone games like Hunters and Gatherers, the Discovery, and the City. Someone who is fond of Carcassonne and wants to own all the expansions and stand alone games could probably list Rio Grande as a dependent on their tax return. As for me, I think I’ll stand pat with the expansions I have now, and spend my game money on other games instead.