Put the kettle on and settle down for some tranquil tile placement
Although I don’t normally review things unrelated to RPGs, my girlfriend and I recently got into board games. We’ve amassed quite a little connection, but we’ve been hammering Cascadia lately and I feel it’s worthy of some words.
Cascadia is a tile placement game for 1-4 players. You don’t really actively compete against other players – you just sort of play side by side. It’s wildlife themed. You have a stack of terrain tiles and a bag of animal counters; certain animals can go on certain tiles. That’s pretty much it. Those are the basics of the game.
What’s in the box
A very slim rulebook, 85 terrain tiles, bag of animal counters, assorted animal scoring cards, scoring sheets, starter tiles, and a handful of nature tokens. Everything is of pretty decent quality, and seems reasonable for £35.
Setup and gameplay
You build a stack of random terrain tiles – 20 for each player, plus 3 (so 43 for a 2-player game). The first four tiles are laid out and four random animal tokens are placed beneath. The animal scoring cards are shuffled and one card for each animal type is selected. These cards describe your goals and tell you how many points you get for certain group sizes, arrangement, or lines of sight. That’s it, you’re good to go.
Players take turns selecting a terrain and animal piece. They must normally be taken as a pair, so in the above picture you would have to take the bear if you wanted the wetland and prairie tile. The terrain tiles have images of the animals that may be placed on it, but terrain can be placed anywhere as long as it’s against another tile.
While terrain pieces do not need to connect to matching terrain, you get points for the largest contiguous group (habitat corridor) of each type. If you’re playing against others, the player with the largest grouping gets a couple of bonus points. This aspect can make you go a little bit mental when a tile with your desired terrain refuses to appear – or your opponent takes it first…
Animal placement is fairly important, and generally where the big points are made. A full run of seven salmon or eight Elk might net you loads of points, but you probably don’t want to get too fixated on a particular animal. You are ultimately at the mercy of whichever tokens are randomly drawn.
That said, you can get crazy points for some combinations.
While most tiles include two types of terrain, there are some that only feature one – these are ‘keystone’ tiles, and they can only take one type of animal. Having only one type of terrain means that you’re missing out on a potential habitat corridor point, but you get a wildlife token if you place the matching animal on the tile. Wildlife tokens are super useful because they allow you to do a couple of things – select any animal and terrain piece from those available, or put all four of the animals back into the bag and redraw replacements.
Random terrain and animal pieces are used to replace those taken on the previous turn. Rinse and repeat until you run out of replacement terrain and only three remain.
Scoring
This is fairly quick. Players take turns adding up points for each animal (based on whatever scoring cards were drawn), and again for the largest grouping of each type of terrain. You get a bonus point for each nature token you might have left over.
Animal scoring is definitely where you make the most points, possibly to a degree that it’s not worth stressing too much about terrain groups. That said, a mess of a board is too much for me to bear.
Overall thoughts
This is a really relaxing game, although with poor luck on the tiles it can also become a frustrating one. It does make it that much more satisfying when everything comes together. The gameplay is simple, but multiple scoring cards keep the gameplay varied, and chasing that perfect setup is the carrot ever dangling before you. The game has visual appeal, too. The colours are vibrant, and the artwork evocative.
Cascadia is as competitive as you want it to be. You could go out of your way to try and deprive other players of pieces you know they want, but I’m not sure it would have that much impact. This isn’t Small World – you’re not on a mission of murder. There is a campaign mode if you fancy a bit more of a challenge. You have specific goals, rather than just aiming for maximum points.
If you want a simple, nonconfrontational game that’s as good solo as it is multiplayer, this might scratch that itch. If you’re looking for something a bit more in-depth, probably not.