Cascadia rules refresher

Read the refresher

You're trying to finish with the most points by building the richest environment of habitats and wildlife in front of you. You'll do it by drafting one Habitat Tile and one Wildlife Token each turn, arranging the animals into the patterns on this game's Wildlife Scoring Cards, and growing the largest connected stretches of each habitat.

For setup, all one hundred Wildlife Tokens go into the cloth bag. Count out twenty Habitat Tiles per player plus three: forty three for two players, sixty three for three, eighty three for four. Pick them at random without looking, stack them face down, and box the rest. Draw one Wildlife Scoring Card at random for each of the five animals: bear, elk, salmon, hawk, and fox. Put those five cards in the middle and return the others to the box. For a first game, the recommended set is the cards marked A in the corner. Each player gets one random Starter Habitat Tile, a little cluster of three hexes, placed face up in front of them. Reveal four Habitat Tiles in a row in the middle, then draw four Wildlife Tokens from the bag and pair one with each tile, in order. That gives you four tile and token combinations. Put the pinecone Nature Tokens nearby. The first player is whoever most recently saw one of the game's animals in real life, or pick at random.

Play goes clockwise, one turn at a time, until the tiles run out. On your turn you first check the display for overpopulation. Then you take one tile and token combination, possibly spending Nature Tokens to bend the rules. You place the tile and the token into your environment and refill the display. Then play passes to the left. Everyone takes exactly twenty turns.

Start each turn by looking at the four tokens in the display. If all four are the same animal, they're wiped automatically. Set them aside, then draw four new tokens one at a time and pair them with the tiles in order. That can happen more than once in a turn. If exactly three are the same animal, you may choose to wipe just those three and replace them the same way, but only once per turn. When all overpopulation is settled, the wiped tokens go back into the bag.

Normally you must take one of the existing combinations, a tile together with the token paired beneath it. Before you choose, you may spend a Nature Token for one of two effects. You can take any one of the four tiles along with any one of the four tokens. Or you can wipe any number of tokens and replace them, just like overpopulation. Spent Nature Tokens go back to the supply, and you can spend as many as you like in one turn.

You may place your tile and token in either order. The tile must touch at least one side of a tile already in your environment. You can't stack tiles or move tiles once placed. Terrain doesn't have to match, though matching edges score at the end. Each tile shows one or two terrains, from mountains, forests, prairies, wetlands, and rivers, and one to three animal symbols.

The token goes on any tile in your environment that has no token yet and shows that animal's symbol. That can be the tile you just took or any other open tile. A tile only ever holds one token. If there's no legal spot, or you simply don't want the token, return it to the bag. Keystone Tiles are the single terrain tiles with one animal symbol and a small marking at the top edge. Placing the matching token on a Keystone Tile earns you a Nature Token.

Finally, refill the display. The empty tile spot gets the top tile of any face down stack, and the empty token spot gets a random token from the bag. Don't slide the remaining pieces around; just fill the gaps.

Each Wildlife Scoring Card is a variation on a theme, so read the five in play carefully. Bears score for groups of an exact size, in any shape, and two bear groups may not touch each other. Elk score for groups, usually in the exact formation pictured. Elk groups may touch, but each elk scores only once, and connected elk are counted in whatever way gives the most points. Salmon score for runs, where each salmon touches no more than two other salmon, and no other salmon may be adjacent to the run. Three salmon in a triangle can count as a run. Hawks score for spreading out. A line of sight runs straight from flat side to flat side across the hexes, and only another hawk blocks it. Foxes score for what surrounds them, based on the animals in the neighboring spaces.

The game ends immediately when, at the end of a turn, there's no face down tile left to refill the display. Then you score. First, score each animal by its Wildlife Scoring Card. Next, for each of the five habitats, score one point per tile in your largest connected group of that habitat. Tiles connect when they share at least one matching edge. So a group of three forests and a separate group of four forests scores four. Then award majority bonuses for the largest group of each habitat. With two players, the largest gets two points, and a tie gives one point each, with nothing for second. With three or four players, the largest gets three and second largest gets one. If two players tie for largest, they get two each and no one gets second. If three or four tie for largest, they get one each and no one gets second. Any tie for second scores nothing. Last, each unused Nature Token is worth one point. Highest total wins. If tied, the tied player with the most Nature Tokens wins, and if still tied, they share the victory.

A turn, played out

It's your turn, mid-game. The display shows 3 hawks and 1 salmon. Three of a kind isn't automatic, but you may wipe them once this turn, and you don't want another hawk. You set the 3 hawks aside and draw 3 fresh tokens, pairing them in order: a bear, a fox and a salmon. Now the wiped hawks go back into the bag. The tile you want is in the second spot, a single-terrain river Keystone Tile with a salmon symbol. It's paired with the bear, while the salmon sits under the fourth tile. So you spend your only Nature Token, back to the supply, to take any tile with any token. You take the river Keystone Tile and the salmon token. You place the tile so its river edge meets your group of 3 river tiles, making 4. You set the salmon on it. It touches just the end of your 2-salmon run, and no other salmon, so the run grows to 3. A matching token on a Keystone Tile earns a Nature Token, so you get yours back. Finally, the second tile spot gets the top tile of a face-down stack. The fourth token spot gets a random token from the bag.