How to Play Cascadia, a simply satisfying tile laying game.
Watch the Video
Read the Rules
The aim of the game
In Cascadia you’ll aim to build a perfect piece of the Pacific North West, by connecting terrains and placing animals in them, to satisfy the point cards that are drawn.
To set up
- Place the wildlife tokens in the bag and shake ‘em up.
- Take 43 tiles for a 2 player game, 63 tiles for a 3 player game and 83 tiles for a 4 player game, shuffle them and stack them face down into 4 stacks on the table. Put the rest away.
- Randomly select 1 point card for each animal and place them face up. These show how you score. If it’s your first game, cards with an ‘A’ on are recommended.
- Give each player a starting tile and place it face up in front of you.
- Reveal 4 habitat tiles from the stacks and place a wildlife token from the bag below each.
- The player who last saw some wildlife goes first.
To play the game
Now, players take it in turns in a clockwise direction to draft a tile and associated token from the selection and add it to their landscape.
- You must place the tile so that its edges line up with at least one other tile in your landscape.
- You cannot place tiles on top of one another.
- Before placing, you can rotate your tile as you wish.
- You do not need to match up terrains, but doing so will score you more points.
- Once placed, tiles cannot be moved.
- You must take the animal token that is below the tile you selected and it must be placed on any of your tiles with a matching icon.
- There can only be one animal per tile.
- Once placed, animals cannot be moved.
- If you’re unable to place the animal, return it to the bag.
- If you place your animal on a keystone tile, marked by a pinecone, take a nature token.
Once you’ve drafted a tile and animal, replace them with new ones from the stack and bag, now it’s the next player's turn.
If ever there are ever 3 of the same animal in the selection, on your turn, once per turn only, you may choose to return them to the bag and draw new ones. If ever there are 4 of the same animal, they're automatically replaced.
Using your nature token
Also on your turn, before drafting, you may spend a nature token to either; take any tile and any animal, even if they’re not paired OR replace any number of animal tokens with new ones. As long as you have enough nature tokens, you can do this as much as you like.
Game end and scoring
Play continues in a clockwise order, each player drafting and placing a habitat and animal until, after 20 turns each, there are no tiles left to replace the one that was just taken.
Then, scoring begins:
- First, work out player’s scores for each animal card.
- Players then receive points for their largest connected corridor of each habitat, 1 point per tile. For example, my largest area of connected forest is 6 tiles, and my largest river is 4 tiles.
- The player who has the largest connected area of each habitat also scores a bonus: In a 2 player game that 2 points and 1 point each if it's a tie. In a 3 -4 player game it’s 3 points for the largest area and 2 points for the second largest area.
- If 2 players tie for the largest area, they get 2 points each, if more players do they get 1 point each. Ties for second largest score nothing.
- Finally, receive 1 point for every nature token in your possession that you didn't spend.
Whoever has the most points wins! In case of a tie, whoever has the most nature tokens wins and if you’re still tied, you’ll have to share the glory.
That Cascadia, a pretty, peaceful little game where you’ll aim to obtain natural balance.
Enjoy!