‘Take a journey to the Pacific Northwest as you compete to create the most harmonious ecosystem in Cascadia! Turns are simple - select a tile/token set and place each into your expanding ecosystem. Earn points by fulfilling wildlife goals, and creating the largest habitat corridors. With variable scoring goals, each game of Cascadia brings a new spatial puzzle to your table!
Gameplay:
Players take turns drafting habitat and wildlife tokens adding them to their expanding environment. On each turn you can choose one of the pairs of habitat and wildlife tokens. After the player has picked a pair of tiles, they are replaced so that the other player has a full choice of which tiles they want. The only time that you can take a tile and a token which are not a pair is when you use a nature tile. Nature tiles are earned by placing an animal that matches the one shown on a keystone tile. You place your tiles and animals according to the scoring conditions which are variable. The game ends when there are no more tiles to replace the ones taken. The player with the most points wins.
Components:
100 deluxe wooden wildlife tokens - wooden tokens with a picture of one of the 5 animals on it. My only reservation about these is that I would have preferred them to be double sided but that’s a tiny thing.
85 habitat tiles - thick cardboard hexagonal pieces with a range of different terrains on them. They look fab when arranged to form your landscape and are clear to understand. They are language independent
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25 nature tokens - tokens they you receive when you match an animal to a keystone tile
20 wildlife scoring cards - beautiful artwork with a range of scoring conditions for each animal - clear and easy to understand. They have letters in corner. In your first game, they suggest using A’s but in the rule book you can play challenges and it indicates which cards you should use to complete the challenges
1 family variant scoring card - another scoring condition card - again beautiful artwork
5 starter habitat tiles - these are essentially three habitat tiles put together and give you the start of your landscape
1 full colour score-pad - very clear and easy to understand
1 deluxe cloth bag - you pull animal tokens out of this bag. Well made and good quality.
Overall thoughts
We absolutely love this game. It has been played so much since we bought it. We have also introduced this to some of our gaming group and to people who rarely play board games. They have all enjoyed it and said it was easy to pick up. The puzzle element of this game is fantastic and because the scoring elements change as do the tokens being pulled out the bag - it makes for a different game each time. The artwork on the cards are superb. The tiles fit together so nicely and it looks beautiful when completed at the end of the game. It’s such a simple concept and it’s complex in thinking about which habitat tiles to choose and how to choose them to complement your animal tokens. It’s easily accessible for all and great fun. It plays well at 2 players and at higher player counts up to 4. This is one we are recommending to everyone at the moment as we have absolutely fallen in love with it.