Lonely River : 1 - 2 player game

Hey folks. The past several months I've been kicking around this site, enjoying reading other people ideas for games. Over this time I've also been thinking through the rulebooks of a few games of my own, and I've struck on an idea that I really love. So I'll pitch the idea to y'all. Be gentle, but not too gentle, I appreciate the feedback.

The game is called Lonely River and I'll take some sections out of the rules I've written to try to give you all a flavor for it. So far I've only thought through a 2-player game, but I think the rules would be moddable into a 1-player game.

The name of the game fits : a new river trying to make it to the sea. But I must confess something... it kinda sorta came from the Righteous Brother's "Unchained Melody". "Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea. To the open arms of the sea." So if you want to do your best karaoke impression while reading, I encourage it. I, umm, definitely have not been doing that.

Game Overview
A game of Lonely River is a 1 – 2 player game that begins at a meager spring high in the mountains. The goal of the Water player: navigate the terrain, grow your river, stabilize the landscape, use the seasons to your advantage, and reach the sea. The goal of the Earth: prevent the river from reaching the sea. The game ends one full turn after the water player reaches the sea or if a turn ends with all riverbeds blocked.

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Water Player Mechanics
The Water player’s primary challenge is managing his deck and deciding which cards to keep in hand for their effects, and which to add to the flow deck. All cards constitute one deck and cards will cycle back and forth between them. The dynamism and cycling of cards emulates the flow of water and presents important strategic decisions to the Water player: Which cards do I hold for their effect, which do I spend buying other cards, and which do I add to the Flow? A successful player will do all three in balance.

Draw Deck
The Draw Deck is the Water player’s reservoir of cards. Turns begin by drawing a number of cards from this deck then deciding which to hold and which to add to the Flow Pool.

Flow Pool
The Flow pool contains cards that represent the number of Water tokens currently in the river. When water tokens are added to Terrain tiles (either at Sources or by Rain), that many cards are added to the Flow pool. Cards in the Flow Pool count as “1 flow card” in activating the Flow effects on other cards. The content and text of a card in the Flow Pool is generally irrelevant.

Once spent, Flow cards are discarded to be eventually reshuffled into the Draw deck. The Flow pool thus takes cards “out of circulation” until they are spent. Water has several ways to control which cards are added to the Flow pool, and some powerful cards cannot be placed there under any condition.

Card Supply
The Supply deck contains cards that Water will have the option to purchase throughout the game. At any given time, 5 cards will be turned up and available for purchase.

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Earth Player Mechanics
The Earth player’s primary challenge is building an economy of earth tokens and Rugged cards in order to play cards and improve workers. The engine of this economy is the workers placed on Terrain tiles. Eroding tiles, obstructing riverbeds, and interfering with Water’s Decks are central to Earth’s strategy. Thematically, Earth is solid and tangible, like placing workers to gain abilities and resources.

Earth workers can be upgraded from the basic Clay worker into either Granite, Sand, or Diamond workers. Each 'school' of worker grants special effects when fully upgraded. Each school also affects the game differently. The Granite school focuses on efficient production of earth tokens and Rugged Cards. The Sand school focuses on attacking the smooth functioning of Water’s deck and Water’s ability to produce new Water tokens. The Diamond school focuses on defending and attacking tiles.

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Terrain
Players start on a Source tile then must advance through tiles of the 7 sectors before reaching the sea. It’s not as simple as a straight line. Tiles have input and output directional markers. Tiles also have Rugged and Instability numbers. Rugged indicates how many Earth cards that tile “holds” and the Instability number indicates how many of those are available per turn. Tiles can have additional Sources, Lakes, are susceptible to erosion, and have a Flow capacity.

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Thanks for reading so far. I've left out quite a bit of the rules and concepts, which is ~3,000 words at the moment (though much editing will happen). I hope it gives you a flavor of the game.

What I'm most curious about for your feedback is the split mechanics of Water and Earth. Does it work to have the players using very different mechanics? Does this remind you of any other game? My goal is to have a high degree of player interaction despite the different mechanics. I wanted to try to translate the feeling of Water/Earth into thematic game mechanics.

So if you would comment on the player mechanics, please do. But general feedback is very welcome as well. I'm sure you'll think of things I haven't, so fire away!!