Review: Cascadia

Introduction & Overview

The Pacific Northwest, also known as Cascadia, is a geographic region in North America bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Rocky Mountains to the east. Although there is no official boundary, the most common conception includes the Canadian province of British Columbia and the Yukon Territory, as well as the US states of Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

This is how Cascadia is presented to us, designed by Randy Flynn, this being his debut design on the market. The game was published in 2021 by Flatout Games following a successful crowdfunding campaign. The illustrations are handled by Beth Sobel (Viticulture, Wingspan, Arboretum).

It is published in Spanish by Delirium Games (the game has a very light language dependency on the scoring cards, which are also explained textually, as well as in the rulebook). It allows games for 1 to 4 players, with a suggested minimum age of 8 years and an approximate duration of between 30 and 45 minutes. The MSRP is €39.95. For this review, a copy of the Spanish edition by Delirium Games was used, kindly provided by the publisher.

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Components

Inside a two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom), measuring 26×26×7 cm (a medium square box similar in size to Gardens or Azul), we find the following elements:

110 Habitat Tiles (cardboard)
5 Starter Habitat Tiles (cardboard)
100 Wildlife Tokens (wooden)
21 Wildlife Scoring Cards (70×120 mm)
25 Nature Tokens (cardboard)
Cloth Bag
Scorepad (paper)
Rulebook

How to Play

Cascadia is a game featuring draft, tile placement, and pattern building as its core mechanics. On each turn, the active player must select a pair consisting of a habitat tile and a wildlife token. The tile must be connected to their existing arrangement of tiles, while the wildlife token must be placed on a habitat tile that can accommodate that type of animal. Each player will play 20 turns trying to maximize their score by expanding habitats (scoring the largest group of each habitat type, along with a majority bonus among players) and fulfilling a series of patterns associated with each animal type shown on objective cards as effectively as possible.

Key Concepts

Let’s start with the Habitat Tiles. They are hexagonal tiles showing one or two habitat types out of five options: desert, mountain, water, forest, and prairie. These tiles will be connected to one another to form the player’s play area. Tiles showing only one habitat type also feature a pinecone symbol and a small triangle representing nature tokens. Additionally, each tile displays one to three types of wildlife tokens that can be placed on top of it. Players start the game with a tile composed of three connected hexagons representing all habitat types. At the end of the game, players will score their largest groups of each habitat type, and there will be small majority bonuses.

The Wildlife Tokens are circular wooden tokens displaying one of five animal types: elk, bears, hawks, salmon, and foxes. These tokens must be placed on spaces matching their type. Each space can only be occupied by a single wildlife token.

These Wildlife Cards award end-of-game points for each wildlife type based on a specific pattern. Although there are several cards for each wildlife type, the general structure of the patterns remains fairly similar. For example, foxes score based on adjacent wildlife tokens, bears by groups of bears, elk by chains of elk, salmon by runs of salmon, and hawks by distant connections.

Finally, we have the Nature Tokens, which are gained by covering spaces with a nature symbol. These tokens allow players to manipulate the display of habitat tiles and wildlife tokens. Unused tokens award victory points at the end of the game.

That is enough to get started.

Preparación de la Partida

Set up the habitat tile supply by shuffling 20 tiles per player plus 3 additional tiles (return the rest to the box). Shuffle them to form a draw pile.
Place all wildlife tokens inside the cloth bag.
Reveal the top 4 habitat tiles and draw 4 wildlife tokens from the bag, forming 4 habitat tile and wildlife token pairs.
Form a general supply with the nature tokens.
Randomly select one wildlife card of each type and place them in a row.
Each player receives a starter habitat tile and places it in their play area.
Finally, randomly choose the starting player.

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of Cascadia takes place over twenty rounds, starting with the first player and continuing clockwise.

On each turn, the active player performs the following actions:

Select a pair composed of a habitat tile and a wildlife token. If there are 4 identical wildlife tokens in the display at this moment, the player returns all 4 of them to the bag and immediately replaces them with new ones drawn from the bag. If there are 3 identical tokens, the active player may choose to reset those three tokens and draw replacements. These situations can occur multiple times in succession. If the player owns nature tokens, they may spend one to select one of these actions:
- Take any habitat tile and any wildlife token (disregarding the established pairs).
- Discard any number of wildlife tokens from the display and replenish them immediately.
The habitat tile must be added to the player’s environment, connecting to at least one previously placed tile.
The wildlife token must be placed on an empty tile that displays that animal symbol. If the player has no eligible empty spaces for that animal type, the token is returned to the bag. If the tile space features a nature symbol, the player gains a nature token and places it in their play area.
Finally, the player replenishes the display by revealing a new habitat tile and drawing a wildlife token from the bag.

After this, turn order passes to the player on the left.

Game End

The game ends at the conclusion of the twentieth round. Players tally their scores as follows:

For each habitat type, 1 point for each tile that forms the largest contiguous group of that habitat.
For each habitat type, the player with the largest continuous habitat scores 2 points in 2-player games or 3 points in 3- and 4-player games. In 3- and 4-player games, the player with the second-largest group scores 1 point. In case of a tie, the points for those tied positions are added together and divided equally among the tied players.
Points scored from the wildlife patterns formed according to the wildlife cards.
1 point for each leftover nature token.

The player with the most points wins. In the event of a tie, the player with the most remaining nature tokens wins. If still tied, players share the victory.

Variants

Family Mode: Wildlife scoring cards are not used. Instead, the family variant card is used, where each player simply scores each habitat group.
Solo Mode: Set up the game as if playing with 2 players. At the end of each turn, discard the furthest habitat tile and wildlife token from the display. The objective is to achieve as high a score as possible.

Personal Opinion

The team at Flatout made their grand entrance into the board game scene with a massive sales success by blending two themes that internet audiences love: board games and cats. That is how Calico came to be (here is its tocho-review), a game featuring drafting, tile placement, and pattern building that fulfilled its purpose quite well.

Now it is Cascadia‘s turn, following a similar mechanical path. But while Calico was all about constraints and tight spaces, everything in Cascadia feels open and open-ended. Let’s see how it performs on the table, not without first thanking Delirium Games for providing the review copy that makes the following wall of text possible.

In Cascadia, we travel to the Pacific Northwest region of North America, where the touch of civilization is not as pronounced as in large urban centers. A region where various animal species inhabit diverse habitats. We get to play “gods” by reshaping the environment and positioning different animal species in the most optimal way possible for their growth.

Players will develop a natural landscape over twenty rounds during which they simply draft a pair consisting of a habitat tile (which can show one or two habitats) and a wildlife token (the display is made up of four pairs of these two elements). The tile must be attached to the player’s area (touching at least one tile), while the wildlife token must be placed on an available space within this play area, provided that space is valid for that animal species. Finally, the display is replenished, and turn order passes to the next player.

What should players pay attention to when carrying out these seemingly straightforward turns? Well, to more things than one might expect. First off, the habitats. On the tiles, we will find five types of habitats that are scored at the end of the game for each player, awarding points based on the size of the largest contiguous group of each habitat type. So, the first goal for players is to try to make each of the twenty tiles added to their landscape effectively expand these “largest groups.”

Of course, this is not that simple. To begin with, every player starts with a starter tile that features three spaces and represents all five habitats, but in an uneven layout. The ideal strategy is to draft tiles showing two habitats and connect them to our environment to expand the main group for both habitat types. The downside is that the display can be finicky and won’t always offer a tile that fits perfectly into our current setup, so players must keep an eye on their opponents’ areas when making these small compromises to at least expand the habitat group where they can gain the most advantage—especially since there is a majorities bonus for each habitat type at the end of the game for the player with the largest area of that type.

This system is very reminiscent of a microgame that is well loved around here, Sprawlopolis (here is its tocho-review), where you need to properly orient and connect every card to maximize the continuous area of each terrain type, as virtually half of your score depends on it. And in Cascadia, it’s much the same. It’s a puzzle mechanic with engaging decision-making that harbors a touch of player interaction that might go unnoticed in early plays, but proves crucial by the end, given the high amount of victory points at stake, as well as its impact on the other core element of the game.

That second key element is the wildlife tokens, which must be placed onto the spaces forming our landscape, presenting its own set of challenges. For starters, we only have three open spaces at the beginning of the game to place wildlife tokens. Early on, this isn’t an issue because the starter tile includes spaces that collectively accommodate all animal types.

However, as turns progress, players must tread carefully; otherwise, they might end up in the undesirable situation where none of their available open spaces allow them to place any of the wildlife tokens in the display, including the paired habitat tile they’d want to add to their landscape.

This block forces the wildlife token to be discarded, leading to a loss of potential points since each wildlife token scores according to specific spatial patterns. Naturally, to fulfill these patterns, we must have previously positioned our habitat tiles in the appropriate arrangements, which frequently conflicts with that first objective of expanding habitat types efficiently.

As a result, players will often need to forgo expanding a certain habitat in order to clear a spot for a specific animal type, maximizing its scoring potential based on its pattern and the tokens already deployed.

As you can see, balancing these two elements (habitats and wildlife) is far from trivial, and every turn presents an interesting decision-making process to evaluate which of the four tile-and-token pairs suits us best.

One of the issues Calico had, besides being extremely unforgiving in pattern building, was a heavy reliance on luck: the board was incredibly restrictive, and if certain tokens didn’t show up, your board could be ruined. That doesn’t happen in Cascadia for several reasons. First, there are no fixed boundaries to respect. Every player can place each tile wherever they please as long as basic placement rules are followed. Second, players don’t rely on hyper-specific tokens.

While it is always nice to pick up habitat tiles that expand two terrain types, failing to get one won’t ruin your game, even with a limited turn limit. We could say that in Cascadia, virtually every habitat tile and wildlife token offers some degree of utility. It’s simply a matter of knowing which choice offers the highest value.

Even so, luck can still deal a bad hand, as described earlier. That is why Cascadia includes nature tokens, obtained through a small sacrifice: selecting single-habitat tiles that only expand one terrain type but grant a token when populated by the matching animal. These tokens allow players to manipulate the display by discarding unwanted wildlife tokens or by breaking up the habitat and wildlife pairs, letting you choose any tile and any token. Having a few of these safety nets is fundamental, as they can easily make the difference between victory and defeat.

All of this makes games fly by as we strive to maximize our point total while keeping an eye on our opponents to avoid handing them easy points, keeping in mind that every element can be leveraged in one way or another. That might be Cascadia‘s defining trait: beyond being a great drafting and pattern-building game, it leaves the door open to an interaction that, while not overly punitive, remains present throughout the whole game.

If I had to point out its biggest flaw, it would be the scoring patterns associated with the wildlife tokens. Even though there are five animal species, it feels as though there are really only three distinct pattern archetypes: salmon, bears, and elk generally require building chains or groups, whereas foxes score based on adjacent tokens and hawks rely on spatial line-of-sight connections. It gives off the feeling that the designers had pattern ideas for three animal types and had to stretch their brains to fill out the roster; while subtle differences exist, it doesn’t offer as much variability as it could.

To draw a few comparisons, Cascadia competes directly with titles like the aforementioned Calico, Sagrada (here is its tocho-review), LUNA Capital (here is its tocho-review), Tiny Towns (here is its tocho-review), or Llama Land (here is its tocho-review), coming out on top (by a slight margin) in almost every head-to-head matchup. If you already own several games of this style, Cascadia might overlap with them, and the difference might not be significant enough to justify adding it to your collection. But if you don’t own games like this, Cascadia is one of the most highly recommended.

It isn’t a glaring issue considering the genre, but I think it would have been a nice area for improvement. Regardless, replayability isn’t really hurt by this, as it is one of those games that consistently leaves a good impression. Matches are swift if players take their turns briskly (watch out for analysis paralysis, which can drag out the experience due to the open-ended nature mentioned earlier), allowing it to hit the table with relative ease.

The game scales seamlessly, as tactical flexibility takes center stage over long-term strategic setup. I do feel it offers the most control at two players because you can actively block each other, whereas at three or four players, a classic dynamic emerges where a player “must” deny options to the player acting after them, lacking the reach to influence the third or fourth players as effectively. Still, since optimizing your own area is already challenging without external interference, this doesn’t hinder the overall experience. On the flip side, playing with three or four players introduces higher tension when competing over control of the various terrain majorities.

Turning to component quality and production, we are met with impressive finishes, featuring thick, sturdy punchboard for the habitat tiles. The wooden tokens aren’t overly dense, but they feature screen-printed graphics, which is a nice touch. While the wood feels slightly porous and the printing isn’t quite as crisp as one might hope, it is still far preferable to cardboard tokens. The cards have a solid weight, linen finish, and excellent snap. Sleeving isn’t strictly necessary since they aren’t shuffled often and aren’t held in hand. The rulebook is cleanly organized and leaves no room for ambiguity.

As for Beth Sobel’s artwork, it is wonderful as always. There might not be as many canvas elements here to display her full artistic flair, as terrain tiles offer limited room to show off, but the overall tabletop presence is charming. The standout is easily the cover art, perfectly capturing the peaceful, serene mood associated with nature-themed games.

And let’s wrap this up. Cascadia is a drafting, tile-placement, and pattern-building game competing in a crowded genre. While it might not feature a single revolutionary gimmick to set it apart from the rest, its true strength lies in making every single turn feel impactful to your final score. This keeps players engaged, weighing their best options, and figuring out how to integrate them into their display. Perhaps my main gripe is that the wildlife scoring patterns could have used a bit more variety (both within a single animal type and across different species). All in all, it is fast, charming, and highly enjoyable, fulfilling its purpose with flying colors. For all these reasons, I give it a…