Carcassone Pirates
When playing with the river expansion the first few turns are often not that interesting. Half of the river tiles have nothing to do but farm, and farming that early isn't attractive since you don't know how the bridges will break up the area. So we play with pirates:

Pirates are river thieves. You place your meeple on the river, and they row around plundering their connected area. Their ships are too tall to go under bridges, so the three briges mean a maximum of four pirates. Once they're fully enclosed and can't score any more points you take them back for one point per tile.
It's a small change, but it adds a bit more interest to the early game.
Comment via: facebook