Cascadia is a 1-4 player tile laying game in which you will be drafting habitats and wildlife tokens to construct a landscape, while looking to meet the objective cards to be the player who accumulates the most points at the end of the game. It is easy to learn and play, and one I find to be a nice relaxing game.
Setup
Setup is relatively straightforward in Cascadia, firstly place all of the Wildlife Tokens in the cloth bag and give it a good shake to mix them up. The Wildlife Tokens are the round discs depicting different animals and in different colours.
Next create stacks of facedown Habitat Tiles, these are the hexagonal tiles depicting different environments. In a 2 player game you need 43 (so remove 42), in a 3 player game 63 (removing 22) and a 4 player game you need 83 (removing 2). The reason for this is that the game will last 20 turns per player, and this will ensure you have the right number of tiles available.
Next, select the animal scoring cards, one for each animal, and place them where all players can see. For your first game, they recommend the cards with an A in the bottom right corner, or you can just choose at random.
Give each player a Starter Habitat tile at random, and these look like three of the normal habitat tiles stuck together! Reveal 4 Habitat Tiles, and underneath each one, draw and place one Wildlife Token from the bag so you have 4 pairs in front of all players. Place the Nature Tokens within reach and you’re ready to go! First player goes to either the person who most recently saw an animal featured in Cascadia, or determined randomly.
How to play
Cascadia will finish when all players have taken 20 turns, and on your turn you will select a combination of a Habitat Tile and the Wildlife Token that is next to it and play them onto your environment. These will then be replaced immediately before play passes to the next player. At the end of the game, you will score points based both off the objective cards and the largest habitat area you have of each type, as well as any remaining Nature Tokens, but I’ll cover all that in more detail later.
So, first you select a Habitat and Nature token from one of the 4 in front of you, but first if all four are the same animal, immediately wipe and redraw from the bag, or if 3 are the same, the active player may choose to wipe them. Then place the tile and token into your environment, adjacent to one of the sides of you starter tile. The placement rules are that you must place with the one side fully adjacent to an existing tile in your environment and it can’t be placed on top of another tile. Matching terrain is not a placement rule, but is important for end game scoring.
Then place your Wildlife Token, the placement rules for wildlife are that they can’t go on an already occupied space, and the depicted animal must be present on the tile. If you cannot place a Wildlife Token or you choose not to, it goes back in the bag. If you place a Wildlife Token on a space that just contains that animal, congratulations, you’ve earned a Nature Token.
Nature tokens are important on future turns as they will allow you to either wipe as many Wildlife Tokens as you choose and refill from the bag, or take a non paired combination of Wildlife Token and Habitat Tile from the 4 pairs available. Any unspent will be worth points at the end of the game.
At the end of your turn, reveal a new Wildlife Token and Habitat tile to fill the spaces you have taken them from. You will do this 20 times, and at the end, as long as you took the correct number of tiles, there should be no more available.
End of the game
Take out the scorepad, and grab yourself a writing implement! Firstly score the Wildlife Scoring Cards for each player, there are more details on these in the rulebook if they are unclear.
Next, score the largest contiguous habitat of each type, this means count all the tiles of one habitat type that are all connected to each other, and there are 5 different habitats to score. Once all players have done this, score the majority for each of the 5 different habitats. In a 2 player game, 2 points are awarded to the player with a majority or 1 each if it is a tie. In a 3 or 4 player game, 3 points go to the largest and 1 point to the second largest. If it is a tie for first, 1 point goes to each player who tied, and no points to second largest, and if there is a tie for second largest the tied players don’t score.
Finally, give each player 1 point for each Nature Token they have remaining and tally up the totals, if it’s a tie the player with the most Nature Tokens wins, and if still tied those players share the victory!
In the Cascadia rulebook, you will also find a solo mode, and a simpler family variant which you can discover for yourselves!
