Cascadia

Description

"Cascadia" is a puzzly tile-laying and token-drafting game focused on Pacific Northwest habitats and wildlife, emphasizing terrain optimization and variable animal scoring. Key mechanics include: - *Tile-laying* Players place hexagonal habitat tiles (five types) adjacently to form largest connected areas of each habitat type for endgame scoring, with bonuses for exceeding opponents' sizes. - *Token-drafting* Four habitat tiles are displayed, each randomly paired with a wildlife token (five types); players select a pair, place the tile, and position the token on a matching habitat (at most one token per habitat). - *Flexible selection* Nature tokens allow players to choose any tile and wildlife token independently. - *Wildlife scoring* Randomized goals per wildlife type (via four scoring cards) dictate optimal placements, such as isolated hawks, surrounded foxes, or paired bears. - *Terrain optimization* Ideal layouts minimize fragmentation and create wildlife corridors to maximize combined habitat and animal points. Cascadia is a strategic tile-laying and token-drafting game where players construct personal hexagonal terrain maps using five habitat types and populate them with matching wildlife tokens. Starting with three tiles, players on their turn draft from four available habitat tiles—each randomly paired with one of five wildlife tokens—and adjacently place the tile before positioning the token on a suitable habitat (limited to one per habitat type per tile). Nature tokens enable unrestricted choices. Victory hinges on creating the largest contiguous areas of each habitat for base points plus bonuses if surpassing opponents, while arranging wildlife to fulfill one of four randomly drawn scoring objectives per type, such as separating hawks, surrounding foxes with diverse animals, or clustering bears in pairs, demanding puzzle-like adaptation to available options.