We bought two of these rivers, plus we have the original river. We love them. The way we do it, the starting board ends up looking very different from one game to another.

Here is what we do. Put one spring (starting point) out, the remaining springs to the side, and everything else in the bag or upside down. Draw and place pieces one at a time alternating players as the rules state. When someone draws an end, they place it and they also place the next spring. You keep going until all the placed rivers have ends. Sometimes this is only 2 river tiles for each river you own, sometimes it ends up being every river tile you own.

Note the rivers starting and end pieces tend to combine farms. To avoid having one sprawling farm (which can make that losing farmers a bit grumpy) we use the tiles (but not rules) from the Count's expansion set. Then require that each river starts with a road from the count's city seperating it from the start of any other river.

Carcassonne - River 2 is a nice little addition to a great game. It makes the starting plays of the game longer, but allows a great many more potential moves to make. When I play we take the "springs" from the original and River 2 and put them back to back. Then if an end is drawn we close off one of the rivers. If the second end comes before the spring, the person holds it and plays it the next possible time. I would recommend this expansion to anyone who wants to have a little fun at the beginning of Carcassonne.

I don't see any big difference between this and the original River. The one good thing about it is that it has more roads, thus encouraging more "sectorization" of the land. (The original river tended to generate one big area of super-valuable land that could completely overturn the game at the end, depending on who controlled it.)

So don't get me wrong, it's a useful addition and if you are a big fan of Carcassonne, for $5 you can't go wrong. But it doesn't hugely impact the play of the game.