Cascadia

Cascadia is a quiet, puzzly tile-layer. Habitat tiles and wildlife tokens come out in pairs, and on your turn you take one pair and add it to your own growing ecosystem.

There is no interaction beyond taking the pair someone else wanted. Everything is decided at the end, by how well your wildlife matches the scoring cards and how large your terrain corridors are.

The game lasts exactly 20 turns each.

Setup

1. Shuffle all the wildlife tokens into the bag.
2. Randomly select face-down habitat tiles — without looking — according to player count:

Players	Habitat tiles used	Or simply remove
2	43	42
3	63	22
4	83	2

3. Randomly pick one wildlife scoring card for each of the five wildlife types and return the rest to the box. First game? Use the cards marked A in the bottom right.
4. Each player randomly takes a starter tile.
5. Reveal 4 habitat tiles face up in the middle, draw 4 wildlife tokens from the bag, and pair each token with one tile.
6. Put the nature tokens out.

First player is whoever most recently saw one of the game’s animals in real life — or just pick randomly.

How a Turn Works

1. Check for overpopulation — before anything else

Look at the four wildlife tokens on offer:

• All four the same? Remove all four and draw replacements. This is mandatory.
• Exactly three the same? The active player may choose to wipe those three and draw new ones, or leave them and draft as they are.

Wiped tokens go back in the bag, which then gets a good shake.

2. Take one habitat tile and wildlife token

Take one of the four pairs as it stands — the tile and the token it is matched with.

3. Nature tokens (optional)

If you do not like the pairings, spend a nature token to do one of:

• Take any habitat tile with any wildlife token, breaking the pairing entirely.
• Wipe any number of wildlife tokens and replace them before you choose.

You may spend as many nature tokens in a turn as you have.

4. Place the tile and the token

• The habitat tile must be placed adjacent to a tile already in your environment.
• The wildlife token must be placed on an empty habitat tile showing a matching wildlife symbol.

If you cannot place the token — or simply do not want to — put it back in the bag and shuffle.

If you place a wildlife token on a keystone tile (the ones marked with a pine cone), take a nature token as a reward.

5. Refill

Replace the missing habitat tile and wildlife token without rearranging the others, and pass clockwise.

About the tiles

Each habitat tile shows one or two terrain types and one to three wildlife symbols. Terrain never restricts where you can place a tile — it only matters at scoring.

Scoring

The game ends immediately when the face-down habitat tiles run out, which will be after exactly 20 turns each. Then score four things.

1. Wildlife scoring cards

Each of the five animals scores by its own card, and each card works differently — this is what makes every game feel new. The general shapes:

Animal	Scores for
Bears	Groups of an exact size, in any shape. Groups must not be adjacent to one another.
Elk	Groups of an exact size, usually in the exact shape shown unless the card says any shape. Groups may touch, but each elk counts for only one group.
Salmon	Continuous runs of salmon that do not branch. Some cards cap the maximum run length; some also score adjacent animals.
Hawks	Spreading out — lone hawks, hawks with line of sight along flat hex edges, or pairs.
Foxes	Adjacency to other animals — variety, pairs, or being surrounded by a single type.

Read your five cards carefully at the start; they change what a good ecosystem looks like.

2. Habitat corridors

Score 1 point per tile in your largest contiguous corridor of each terrain type — mountains, forests, prairies, wetlands and rivers. Tiles are contiguous when they share a side showing the same terrain.

3. Corridor majorities

The players with the biggest corridors score extra, and it depends on player count:

Players	Largest corridor	Second largest
Solo	2 points per habitat type with 7+ tiles	—
2	2 points (tie: 1 point each)	—
3–4	3 points	1 point

At 3–4 players: if two players tie for largest they each score 2 and nobody scores second place. If three or four tie, they each score 1 and again nobody scores second. Any tie for second place scores nothing.

4. Nature tokens

1 point for each unused nature token, which is a real reason not to spend your last one frivolously.

Highest total wins. Ties are broken by most nature tokens remaining; if still tied, the win is shared.

Solo Mode

Set up as a two-player game but with only one starter tile, and place the face-down habitat tiles to your left — the direction matters.

Each turn, choose your habitat and wildlife as normal. Then, before replacing them, discard the rightmost habitat tile and wildlife token, slide the rest to the right, and add the new ones on the left.

The game ends normally when the face-down tiles run out after 20 turns. Score as usual and compare your total to the chart in the rulebook.

Variants

• Family variant. Set up normally but use only the family wildlife scoring card, which scores each group of matching wildlife in any shape. You may also skip corridor majorities entirely.
• Intermediate variant. As the family variant, but using the intermediate card, which scores different group sizes differently.

Achievements

Cascadia includes a hiking chart for tracking achievements across games, for up to five players. You can earn them through scenarios (which supply their own scoring cards plus one to four objectives), through a normal game (no more than one achievement per game), or through rule restrictions in a multiplayer game, where the winner marks the chart. For solo play, start with scenario 1 and work up.

Common Mistakes

• Drafting before checking overpopulation. Four matching tokens must be wiped, and three matching tokens give you a choice. Both are resolved before you take anything.
• Thinking terrain restricts placement. It never does. Any tile can go next to any tile — terrain only matters for corridor scoring.
• Forcing a wildlife token down. If there is no matching empty tile, the token goes back in the bag. You still keep the habitat tile.
• Missing keystone tiles. Placing wildlife on one earns a nature token, and nature tokens are worth a point each at the end anyway.
• Spending nature tokens too freely. Every one you keep is a point.
• Rearranging the display on refill. New tiles and tokens slot into the gaps; the rest stay put.