
Journey Into the Pacific Northwest – An Overview of Cascadia
October 17, 2024Cascadia Digital is now available on Steam, Android, and iOS!

Welcome to the Pacific Northwest
Building a Harmonious Habitat
The basics are straightforward – every turn, you take an available Habitat Tile and orient and place it adjacent to another tile on the board. Then you take an Animal Token and place it on a tile that has an available space for that animal. Habitat Tiles contain five different types of biomes: Rivers, Wetlands, Forests, Prairies, and Mountains, and your largest connected habitat of each type will score points, so it’s prudent to join them together as best you can!
Your largest habitat of each type earns points, so even though this player has three tiles on the board that contain forests, only the two that are connected will score! On the other hand, this player will score big for their mountains.
Creating an Ecosystem
While Habitat Tiles always score points in the same manner, Animal Tokens score points differently from game to game. Wildlife Scoring Cards determine how each animal in a particular game earns points, and these cards are different every time you play!
Each animal has its own unique rules for scoring, dictated by Wildlife Scoring Cards, shown here.
According to these cards, you would want to place your Animal Tokens in following ways:- Bears: In trios
- Elk: Any shape as long as they’re all connected
- Salmon: Runs of 3-5
- Hawks: Directly across from, but not adjacent to other hawks
- Foxes: Surrounded by a singular type of animal

While it’s still early in the game, this player is off to a good start. The Bears are placed in a trio, and the Foxes gain points by being next to them.
That being said, Wildlife Scoring Cards change with every match! In a different game, you might want to avoid placing Bears in trios, and Foxes might not want to be next to matching animals. With each animal having four unique Wildlife Scoring Cards to choose from, every game of Cascadia feels like a fresh new challenge.
Each animal has four different Wildlife Scoring Cards with unique rules. The game shown above is using the “B” card, which is why the player played bears in trios.
Solving the Puzzle
Variable scoring isn’t the only thing that makes Cascadia a satisfying and replayable spatial puzzle. Placing your Habitat Tiles and Animal Tokens is never as straightforward as it seems, due to a drafting mechanic that turns every round into a tactical decision. We told you that you must choose a Habitat Tile and Animal Token from a selection of four. What we didn’t tell you is that the tiles and tokens are paired together randomly and must be chosen as a pair! This means that you might not always get the animal you want for a specific Habitat Tile, or vice versa.
You might really need that Elk tile for your board, but it comes with a Fox token! While you can place the Fox somewhere else on your board that has a Fox icon, you’ll have to plan on not always being able to get exactly what you want with each pick.
The good news is that you don’t have to play your Animal Token on the Habitat Tile that you drafted – you can place it anywhere on the board as long as it’s on a Habitat Tile that has a corresponding animal icon.Changing the Scenery with Nature Tokens
Although Habitat Tiles and Animal Tokens come in randomized pairs, there is a way for players to get a little change of scenery, and that’s through Nature Tokens! Occasionally, you’ll see single-habitat tiles with only one animal icon – these are Keystone Tiles, and if you place a matching Animal Token onto them, you’ll get a Nature Token. These pinecone-shaped Nature Tokens allow you to do one of two things:- Randomly swap out Animal Tokens on the row with new ones
- Pick ANY Habitat Tile with ANY Wildlife Token
