Cascadia Animal Spotlight – Chinook Salmon

February 14, 2025

Cascadia Digital releases on February 19th on Steam, Android, and iOS!

Cascadia reminds us about the interconnectedness of ecosystems and the importance of biodiversity, with wildlife being integral to the game’s essence. As we move closer to Cascadia Digital’s release, we’ll be taking a deeper look at the game’s animals in our Animal Spotlight series!

The Chinook Salmon

Welcome back to the Animal Spotlight! Last time, we spent some time with the mighty Roosevelt Elk, and today, we journey from the land to the rivers to discover the Chinook Salmon, a vital inhabitant of the Pacific Northwest’s freshwater ecosystems.

The Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) is the largest of the Pacific salmon species found in Cascadia. Chinook salmon have an incredibly large range and can be found throughout the Pacific Northwest, all the way down the coast of California and as far west as Asia, across the Pacific Ocean. Many salmon populations are threatened by human settlement, especially by dams and development in and near waterways, as well as overfishing.

Playing Chinook Salmon in Cascadia

In nature, a “salmon run” is an incredible event where large groups of salmon migrate from the ocean back upstream through the freshwater rivers and streams from whence they were born to lay new eggs and begin the salmon life cycle anew. The Chinook Salmon’s Wildlife Scoring Cards are modeled after this phenomenon, each one challenging the player to create runs of Salmon, all with slightly different scoring stipulations.

The one important rule that unites all of the scoring cards is that no Salmon in a run may touch more than two other Salmon. As long as that condition is satisfied, Salmon across all Scoring Cards can be placed in any formation, allowing for quite a bit of adaptability in your strategy in most situations.

Chinook Salmon Tips

SCORING CARD A - LONG RUN

This Scoring Card encourages long runs, so it’s good to remember that you’re better off committing to one single run rather than creating multiple, especially since the points-per-Salmon ratio gets more and more favorable the longer the run gets. If you had six Salmon on your board, two runs of 3 would score 16 points, while one run of 6 would score 20.

SCORING CARD B - SHORT RUN

Of all the Salmon Scoring Cards, this one is the most adaptable; runs of just 1-3 score better here, making Salmon a much more adaptable choice. While completing a run (in this case, 5 Salmon) always yields the highest point gain, this card is more forgiving if you don’t want to make Salmon a strong focus of your game, with a smaller opportunity cost if you have to place stray Salmon elsewhere on your board.

SCORING CARD B - FAMILIES

At a glance, this Scoring Card seems similar to the previous one, but the difference is that runs need to be a minimum of 3 Salmon. For that reason, the thing to remember here is not to place a Salmon unless you’re confident you’ll be able to add at least two more to it! These little fishies like to be in families, and score nothing when they’re alone or in pairs.

SCORING CARD B - SURROUNDED

The card is called “Surrounded,” and that’s the key word here; your runs will be much more valuable if you can truly surround them on all sides. The other big thing to remember here is that animals adjacent to Salmon can count for multiple runs, so you can score more points per animal if you sandwich them in between two groupings of Salmon! This means that multiple small runs are often more effective than a singular long run – but just like Card C, don’t forget they need to have at least 3 Salmon to score!

Fun Salmon Scenarios in Cascadia Digital

Challenge – Hungry Bears: It’s feasting season for bears, and Salmon are on the menu! In this Challenge, placing a Bear will cause it to “eat” all adjacent Salmon, removing them from the board and scoring points. Delicious!
Solo Scenario 12: Solo Scenario 12 requires you to fully score a Long Run of Salmon — that’s 7 out of 20 Wildlife Tokens you’ll play in a single game! You’ll also need to score 95 points, score 12 points for a single habitat type, and you can’t place Elk on forests. This one will put your Cascadia skills to the test!

Discover the Pacific Northwest

The unique shape of the Chinook Salmon run adds a layer of complexity to Cascadia, requiring players to be constantly adaptable, both in the shape of each run, and in the way that other animal groups are placed in relation. Next up in our Animal Spotlight series, we’ll take a look at the Red-Tailed Hawk, the watchful guardian of the skies.

Cascadia Digital releases on February 19th on Android and iOS, and is currently available on Steam. The hiking trail beckons — will you answer the call?

More Animal Spotlights