Animal Placement: Be strategic with the placement of Animal Tokens. Consider how they will help you complete habitats in the future. Placing animals adjacent to incomplete habitats can set you up for big points in later turns. Simple to learn, but hard to master – Cascadia is a dual-layer puzzle. There are a variety of goals that you can mix and match, creating a brand-new experience every time you play. Explore hundreds of unique puzzles and build beautiful terrain maps in competitive, solo, and family modes.

The graphic design on the tiles, cards and discs is very attractive. The animal photos are gorgeous, the terrain tiles are bright, bold and very clear and the animal discs are also very bold and clean looking. Cascadia leaves no option for confusion in the components with very little symbology, clear, precise art and high-quality design. It’s all rather elegant, in a classically simple way. Cascadia is a tile-laying board game where players create their own beautiful wilderness landscapes by matching different terrain types and habitats to score points. Here’s a detailed guide on how to play: Setup Game End: The game continues until all tiles have been placed on players’ wilderness grids. The player with the highest score at the end of the game wins. Ties are broken by the player with the most remaining Scoring Tokens. Additional Rules Despite the fact you need to remain aware of other player’s actions, Cascadia is otherwise a rather lonely affair. You’re focussed on what you’re collecting and there’s no direct interaction with other players. On the positive side that means it plays well solo and minimizes friction during family play. On the negative, especially given that it’s entirely a tactical game, it can make the time between turns drag. It’s fast playing, so this is really only an issue with a full complement of four players.Finally set the Nature Tokens (pine cones) off to one side but within easy reach and give everybody a 3 hex Habitat Starter tile. This is a combo tile showing a random selection of 3 out of 5 terrain types (Mountains, Forests, Prairies, Wetlands, and Rivers). There’s also one or more animals on each hex ready to buddy up or keep its distance from other indigenous species! Take A Turn The setup of the forest grid and twilight and moonlight goals along with concoction cards and special player abilities in each game provide great variability so that no two games of Nocturne will play out the same. Different spatial goals and situations will necessitate different strategies and tactics to outwit your opponents in this highly interactive and unique spatial bidding game! Manage Scoring Tokens: Keep an eye on your Scoring Tokens. They can be a valuable tiebreaker if players have the same score at the end. Try to collect as many as possible without compromising your main scoring strategy. Thistleville is the world’s most bustling little town — it’s a challenge to keep up with everything going on, from who took home first prize for their baked goods at the community fair to who has been digging in Mrs. Brambleberry’s carrot patch. In Cascadia, which is set in the Cascadia region of the Pacific Northwest, players select one of the four available combinations of habitat and wildlife tokens to add to their existing habitat tokens. If three or four wildlife tokens are identical, players may choose to replace the four wildlife tokens with new ones. Habitat tokens must be placed adjacent to an existing habitat token, whereas a wildlife token are placed on a habitat token with the matching terrain. After each turn, habitat and wildlife tokens are replenished; once all habitat tokens are used, the game ends, and players earn points based on contiguous habitat tile corridor groups and varying wildlife scoring cards with different scoring goals for each wildlife depending on their behaviour. For example, victory points are rewarded for bears if their wildlife tokens are grouped together, but foxes gain victory points based on a combination of prey species. The game also has additional scenarios and minor goal alterations. [1] [2] Randy Flynn in 2022 Reception [ edit ]

Nocturne is a puzzly spatial bidding and set collection game set in a whimsical moonlit forest illustrated by Beth Sobel! Balance Expansion and Optimization: While expanding your wilderness grid is important, ensure that you’re optimizing your existing habitats as well. Completing additional habitats often yields more points than simply adding terrain tiles. Cascadia was my #3 new game of 2021 thanks to a combination of easy-to-learn rules and variable scoring methods, making it a solid family game that is meaty enough to satisfy more experienced gamers as well. It’s a game that not only rewards replaying, but makes you want to do so immediately because you realize all the other strategies you didn’t get to try the last time around. Diversify Your Strategy: In games with multiple players, consider diversifying your strategy to avoid direct competition for specific terrain or animal types. This can make it easier to complete habitats without interference.

Truffle Shuffle

As long as the turns keep coming fast enough there’s a certain pleasure in wondering what you’ll get to select from during your turn. Maybe it’ll be that last salmon you need for a big score, maybe it won’t. While the tactical focus means you can’t plan ahead, it does keep everyone constantly on their toes. You’ll often be rewarded for keeping your map flexible enough to pivot to different scoring chances if the ones you’re chasing don’t come off. It results in a surprising amount of excitement for such a low interaction game. Plan Ahead: Take a moment to analyze your Habitat Cards at the start of the game. Identify which terrain types and animal combinations will earn you the most points. Focus on these objectives as you play. The goals are spatial and seem in keeping with each of the animals represented. So, for example, salmon score higher the more you have in an adjacent run, and Elks like to be with their buddies so score better in groups. They’re fussy though, and have to be in the precise positions shown on the card. Bears are less particular, but they do like a bit of social distancing between their sleuths! The game ends when the pool of habitat tiles runs out (which is, rather satisfyingly, exactly 20 turns per player). There is a slight variation in the scoring of corridors for solo mode: your corridors have to have at least 7 matching adjacent terrain tiles to get a 2 point bonus. But besides that, it is a standard BYOS affair (unless you are playing the Achievement/Campaign mode – see below) Curious Creatures

Cascadia is a puzzly tile-laying game featuring the habitats and wildlife of the Pacific Northwest! In Cascadia, players take turns building their terrain and populating it with wildlife. Players must create a diverse and harmonious ecosystem - each animal species has a different spatial preference and each habitat must be placed to reduce fragmentation and create wildlife corridors. Complete Unique Habitats: Completing habitats with unique requirements can lead to big point gains. These habitats are less likely to be contested by other players, giving you an advantage. Cascadia is like that for me. The tiles and wildlife tokens are so beautifully and lovingly illustrated, and fit together so perfectly that they form a wonderful tableau expanding out in front of you. During my games I found myself selecting tiles which would complement my landscape in addition to just earning me points. In fact I intentionally arranged my environment in such a way that mountains led to rivers which led into wetlands and prairies…because that’s how nature works, right? Even though I never won a game, I was always proud of the environment that I crafted! Note: Achievements and Rule Restrictions aren’t intended for solo play, but I can’t see why not and I use them for added crunch sometimes! Final Thoughts Over the course of a game of Cascadia, players will build up their own ecosystem by placing habitat tiles and wildlife tokens. On your turn you’ll select one of the habitat tile and animal token pairs and place them in your environment.If that all seems a little overwhelming, fear not. There are family and intermediate variants that narrow down the scoring objectives. Animal Achievements And Rule Restrictions After placing tiles, players score points for completed habitats according to the requirements on their habitat cards. The only rules for habitat tile placement is that your new tile may not be placed on top of another habitat tile and must be placed against the face of an existing tile. Matching the geography of the placed tile isn’t a rule, but while geography doesn’t matter for placement it will have an impact on your scoring, as well as where you’re able to place your wildlife tokens.

If you are playing with children, or you wish to simplify the gameplay for yourself or other players, the game includes variant scoring. There are two extra options, presented as an easy mode and an intermediate mode. The easy mode makes each animal score in a similar way, reducing the number of scoring conditions the player must learn. Intermediate mode increases the challenge of the spatial puzzle, without adding complex scoring conditions.Of course if that’s really all there was to it, Cascadia wouldn’t be much fun at all. But it’s amazing how a few basic frills to this formula make the game explode with possibilities while leaving it very easy to learn. Your goal is to score points, and you get points in two ways. First by keeping terrain types together, making that open placement less flexible than it appears. And second by obeying the animal scoring cards you’re using that game. The accompanying Wildlife Token can be placed on any tile (new or existing) showing that animal. Only one Wildlife Token can be placed on each tile, and once it has settled there, no uprooting it to somewhere else! Fit to Print late pledges are open here HERE: https://gamefound.com/projects/flatout-games/2023-releases