How to Play Cascadia: Drafting, Nature Tokens & Scoring
Cascadia is a tile-and-token drafting game in which each player builds a personal ecosystem. On your turn, normally choose one visible habitat tile and its paired wildlife token, place the tile into your landscape, then place the wildlife on an eligible empty habitat. After 20 turns per player, score wildlife patterns, habitat corridors, corridor majorities and unused Nature Tokens.
Researched rules guide. Checked September 15, 2026 against AEG’s current English base-game rulebook and product page. This guide covers the original 1–4 player base game. Landmarks, Cascadia: Rolling, Cascadia Junior and other later products use separate rules. No hands-on testing is claimed. Editorial standards.
On this page: Set up the market and scoring cards · Take a tile-and-token pair · Use Nature Tokens · Place habitat tiles · Place wildlife · Score habitat corridors · Score wildlife patterns · Finish final scoring
Set up four tile-and-token pairs
Give each player one starter habitat tile. Shuffle the habitat tiles into face-down stacks and place four face-up habitat tiles in the shared market.
Draw four wildlife tokens from the bag and place one below each habitat tile. Those tile-and-token columns form the four available pairs.
Select one scoring card for each of the five wildlife species: bear, elk, salmon, hawk and fox. The exact pattern required for a species depends on the card chosen for that game, so read all five before the first turn.
Normally take one visible pair
On your turn, choose one of the four visible habitat-tile and wildlife-token pairs. Unless you spend a Nature Token for a permitted exception, take the tile and token from the same column.
Then place the habitat tile into your environment and place the wildlife token if possible. The tile and token do not have to be used together spatially: the wildlife may be placed on any eligible empty tile in your environment, including a tile placed on an earlier turn.
After the turn, refill the empty habitat space from the tile supply and draw a replacement wildlife token for the market.
Nature Tokens change the market
When you place wildlife on a keystone habitat tile, gain one Nature Token.
On a later turn, you may spend a Nature Token to use one of the rulebook’s permitted market adjustments. The most important is breaking a displayed pair so you can choose one visible habitat tile and a different visible wildlife token.
Nature Tokens can also be used with the wildlife refresh procedure described in the rules. Keep that procedure separate from the automatic overpopulation rule: identical wildlife tokens in the market can trigger a required refresh under specific conditions.
Each unused Nature Token is worth 1 point at final scoring, so spending one trades a small guaranteed point for greater drafting flexibility.
Habitat edges do not have to match to place a tile
Place the chosen habitat tile so at least one edge touches your existing environment. Unlike some tile-placement games, adjacent terrain types do not need to match for placement to be legal.
Matching habitat edges matter for scoring. Connected matching habitat hexes form corridors, and only connected terrain counts toward a corridor’s size.
Because many tiles contain two habitat types, one placement can connect or separate multiple corridors at once.
Wildlife must match an eligible habitat icon
Place the wildlife token on any empty habitat tile in your environment that displays that species among its wildlife icons.
A habitat tile can hold at most one wildlife token. The wildlife does not need to go on the tile you just drafted.
If you cannot or choose not to place the wildlife legally, return the token to the bag. You still keep the habitat tile you drafted.
Check the market for overpopulation
If too many identical wildlife tokens are visible in the four-token market, follow the rulebook’s overpopulation procedure before a player drafts.
The procedure refreshes wildlife tokens rather than habitat tiles. Do not redraw the entire market simply because the available pairs are inconvenient.
Nature Tokens provide additional controlled refresh options, so distinguish a mandatory overpopulation refresh from a player choosing to spend a token.
Score only your largest corridor of each habitat
At game end, identify your largest connected corridor for each of the five habitat types. A corridor is a group of matching habitat hexes connected across shared edges.
The size of that largest corridor is worth that many points. Smaller disconnected groups of the same terrain do not add to the corridor score.
In multiplayer games, compare each player’s largest corridor for that habitat and award the rulebook’s majority bonuses. Ties use the tie procedure shown in the scoring rules.
Each wildlife species uses its active scoring card
Bear, elk, salmon, hawk and fox do not have one permanent scoring rule. Each species has multiple scoring cards, and the card selected during setup defines the pattern for that game.
Score every species according to its active card. A formation that is excellent under one salmon card can score poorly under another, so do not rely on a pattern memorized from a previous session.
Wildlife and habitat scoring overlap spatially. One tile can strengthen a corridor while also providing the exact location needed for an animal pattern.
Final scoring combines four categories
- Wildlife: score all five species using the active wildlife scoring cards.
- Habitat corridors: score the size of your largest corridor in each habitat type.
- Habitat majority bonuses: add the multiplayer bonuses for corridor comparisons.
- Nature Tokens: add 1 point for each unspent token.
The player with the highest total wins. Solo play follows the solo scoring and scenario rules rather than multiplayer corridor-majority comparisons.
Common Cascadia rules mistakes
- Requiring matching terrain to place a tile: habitat edges may mismatch; matching matters for corridor scoring.
- Forcing wildlife onto the newly drafted tile: it may go on any eligible empty habitat in your environment.
- Counting all habitat groups together: only the largest connected corridor of each habitat scores its corridor-size points.
- Using the same animal pattern every game: score according to the wildlife card selected at setup.
- Applying Landmarks rules to the base box: Landmarks is an expansion with additional components and player-count support.
Continue learning Cascadia
- Cascadia game guide and edition scope
- Cascadia strategy: flexibility, corridors and dual-purpose placements
- Carcassonne for a shared-landscape tile-placement game.
- Azul for a shared tile draft with sharper denial.
Sources and scope
Checked September 15, 2026. This page covers the original base game. Cascadia: Landmarks expands the original game; Cascadia: Rolling, Cascadia Junior and Cascadia: Alpine Lakes are separate products with their own rules.