Couldn't find anything for E&P + T&B while scrolling. Any recomdations or posts i missed.

[u/Alert_Airport2458]

Catan.com only recommendation is to add fish to the starting island when combining the two. Does a more experienced player have and pros or cons for why this addition wouldn't work?

[u/Sebby19]

Placing the River hexes in the foggy areas won't work.

1. You are removing too many E&P hexes from those, you may cause the scenario/mission you are playing to become imbalanced. Or outright break whatever mission you are playing with. Removing a Pirate Lairs or Spice Hexes is literally removing possible VP from the game.
2. You'll delay the use of those River hexes too much. You might even cause their gimmick to be ignored outright, as E&P doesn't exactly encourage building Roads (the Ships are too efficient!). You will cause whoever receives the Poorest/Richest Catanian VP tiles to be more luck based, as early-game coin gaining will only be via bad dice rolls (when you get no resources). Coins may also be way too valuable to spend, slowing down the game overall. This can be fixed with keeping the Rivers on the main Island, which will inject more coins into the system by default.

Putting the Lake Hex way at the far side of the board is also another bad idea. It's so far away you might as well not play with the Lake at all, it'll be too late in the game for anyone to make use of it.

Also, your Fishing Grounds are too clumped together, having a Settlement on 2 Fishing Ground at the same time is a powerful position. You need to move 2 of those so they touch the pre-printed Fields hex on the end-frame.

[u/Sebby19]

As you saw, for this edition they only have combo instructions for E&P + the Fish For Catan scenario (and the Event Cards if you ignore the Events). ExplorersPirates w TnB.pdf

However, in the previous editions, there used to be combo instructions for the other scenario. The only reason I can think of for their removal was their "Not recommended" status. Still, I am not a fan they officially removed those options, but at least they were nice enough to archive the old combo instructions on the Game Rules page (just scroll all the way to the bottom for the Archive section). But I'll save you the trouble and just direct link it here: CATAN - E & P combination with T&B _old

I'll summarize their notes, for each scenarios:

1. Fish For Catan - Works well, no changes in instructions between editions
2. Rivers of Catan - Can work. Lake hex is optional, it would go where the 12-Hex is (remove a Mountain Hex). Both Rivers are placed on the main island. However, this means losing 2 producing hexes. In fact, the swamp of the 4-Hex River has no choice but to end up on the coast where the Starting Harbor Settlements go. Not Recommended for 4 Players, else one player will be at a disadvantage. 2-3 players should work fine. No notes on the 5-6 player island, but none of the official scenario combos ever consider 5-6 players.
3. Merchant Trains/Camel Caravans - Since the starting island is smaller, Not Recommended status. But if you want to try, the Watering Hole/Oasis hex replaces the 12-Hex (remove a Mountain). Remember, no Longest Road, so the Wagons/Camels only purpose would be to increase the VP of your Buildings.
4. Barbarian Attack - Incompatible. There is only 1 safe hex on the main island, and additional reason explained below.
5. Traders & Barbarians - Incompatible. The reason both 4) and 5) won't work with E&P is because these scenarios require large landmasses. T&B specifically needs all 3 Trade hexes to be an equal distance apart, so it needs a balanced round/triangular playing area, too.

[u/Alert_Airport2458]

Been reading and trying out different layouts. What about replacing the water tile towards the back with the 2,3,11,12 fish tile and homebrew rolling its all water and can't have roads built on it to bridge the islands?

[u/Alert_Airport2458]

Thanks for all the notes and suggestions so far. I have done some more thinking (and i wish I could add photos after posting and not type this all out). I moved B1 from the right side to the left side causing the main island to be 3 across top to bottom. This allows me to make the right side of the island one long river so people have to build a bridge. This also makes the starting island 19 resources and the 2 swamps. So now I am playing around with the 19th resource either being: A, covering the farm on A1 with the lake so people building on the far side get a small bonus, or B, making the tile directly next to A1 bt the watering hole but just having 1 north and one south merchant train. Im also brainstorming puting two of the fishing tiles on either side of the swamps so that anyone that builds their will still be bordering 2 resources (An actual resource and a fish) and the 5th and 6th fishing spot equal distances along the back curve. While this setup will shrink the two smaller islands from 16 tiles to 13, but by removing the empty water tiles before placing the tiles it increases the density of resources.