Cascadia: How It Plays, Scoring, and Who Should Buy It

Cascadia plays with 1 to 4 players and is recommended for ages 10 and up. Solo mode uses its own setup detailed separately in the rulebook.

Randomly select one Wildlife Scoring Card for each of the five wildlife and place those five cards in the center of the play area where everyone can see them. All the other scoring cards go back in the box for that game.

The player who most recently saw one of the wildlife featured in the game is the first player. If you prefer, you may simply select the first player randomly.

The starting display has 4 Habitat Tiles revealed face-up from the stacks and 4 Wildlife Tokens drawn from the Cloth Bag, paired in order with the tiles. This forms 4 combinations of 1 tile and 1 token that players will draft from on their turns.

Each player is randomly dealt one Starter Habitat Tile, placed face-up in front of them — this is the beginning of their environment. The leftover Starter Habitat Tiles go back in the box and aren't used that game.

The game includes 85 Habitat Tiles (25 of them Keystone Tiles), 5 Starter Habitat Tiles covering Mountains, Forests, Prairies, Wetlands, and Rivers, 100 Wildlife Tokens, Wildlife Scoring Cards for the five species, 25 Nature Tokens, a Cloth Bag for the Wildlife Tokens, and a Scorepad. If anything is missing, the rulebook directs you to the publisher's customer service page.

Yes. Spending a Nature Token lets you take any one tile and any one token, or wipe any number of tokens, and you can keep spending them within the same turn. The rulebook states there is no limit to how many you may spend on your turn.

The active player may choose to wipe those 3 tokens, setting them aside and drawing 3 new tokens one at a time from the Cloth Bag, pairing each in order with a Habitat Tile. This is optional, and you may only do it once per turn.

Each new tile must be placed adjacent to a tile already in your environment, meaning it must touch at least one side of a previously placed tile or your Starter Habitat Tile. Tiles may not be stacked on top of other tiles, and once placed, no tile can be moved.

The game ends immediately when there are no face-down Habitat Tiles left in the stacks to replace one taken by a player. Each player will play exactly 20 turns, and then scores are tallied.

Tiles belong to the same habitat corridor if they share at least one matching edge of the six edges of the tile. So two forest tiles connected only at a corner, or connected through a non-forest edge, do not count as one corridor.

In a 2-player game, the player with the largest corridor in each habitat type earns a 2 point bonus. If the two players tie for largest, each gets 1 bonus point, and there are never any bonus points for the second largest corridor.

No. Bear groups may be in any shape or orientation, but two groups may not be placed next to one another. Each group must also contain exactly the number of bears shown on the scoring card in order to score.

No. The optional wipe when exactly 3 of the available Wildlife Tokens match may only be done once per turn. However, if all 4 tokens match, they are wiped automatically, and that automatic wipe can happen multiple times on a single turn if the newly drawn tokens also match.

No. Once placed, a Habitat Tile cannot be moved, and tiles may never be stacked on top of each other. Every placement is permanent, so plan your corridors before committing a tile.

Each elk may only score once, for a single group or formation, even though elk groups may sit next to one another. When connected elk could be read as different groups, always score them using the interpretation that yields the largest number of points.

If players tie for the most points, the tied player with the most Nature Tokens wins. If they are still tied on Nature Tokens, they share the victory.

Rule Restrictions are an Achievement mode where you set up and play a multi-player game under the normal rules but with one restriction from a list of ten, such as requiring at least one habitat to match when placing tiles or playing with a display of only three pairs. Only the winner of the game fills in their Achievement shape under the rule restriction that was used.