Cascadia: Rolling Hills Guide
Collect wildlife, time habitat purchases and develop one of four Pacific Northwest environments.
Cascadia: Rolling Hills turns the Pacific Northwest theme into a simultaneous dice-and-sheet puzzle. You collect wildlife, spend those animals to complete habitat cards, and convert the cards into progress on your own environment. The same shared dice can lead to different choices because each player also rolls two personal dice and has a different resource balance.
Looking for the instructions? Open the official Rolling Hills rulebook PDF, or use our setup and turn walkthrough. The game is designed by Randy Flynn, illustrated by Beth Sobel, and co-published by Flatout Games and AEG. It is a complete game; original Cascadia is not required.
What you actually decide each round
Your first question is which wildlife supply to build. The shared and personal dice may give you several salmon, a scarce bear, or a route to collecting two animal types by spending Nature Tokens. Your second question is whether to pay for a visible habitat card now. Waiting may produce a better discount or bonus as that card moves along the display, but eventually it leaves play.
The third question depends on your sheet: where will that habitat progress do the most work? A modest card can unlock a useful bonus and prepare a later scoring opportunity. That combination of resource planning, timing and sheet progress gives the game a different rhythm from original Cascadia’s tile-and-token selection.
Four environments in one box
| Sheet | What changes | Useful starting focus |
|---|---|---|
| A: Zumwalt Prairie | Write habitat-card values into five columns. | Balance row completion with the limited four spaces per habitat. |
| B: Okanagan | Advance habitat tracks and an overflow track. | Look for nearby milestones and bonuses between tracks. |
| C: Palouse | Expand through adjacent habitat hexagons. | Keep access to useful sun, rain and landmark spaces. |
| D: Craters of the Moon | Place wildlife letters based on a card’s printed animal cost. | Compare region completion, identical wildlife and diversity. |
Everyone normally uses the same environment for a session. The maps share the central turn system, but you must read the selected map’s marking and scoring rules. The four-map reference explains the differences and gives original arithmetic examples.
What is in the standard box?
The rulebook lists three Central Dice, one Hills-specific Central Special Die, eight Personal Dice, 30 Habitat Cards, four Beginner Completion Cards, eight Advanced Completion Cards, four player aids, and 64 double-sided sheets of each kind: Tally and Environment. The Environment Sheets cover four maps. Bring pencils or pens; writing tools are not included.
Completion Cards are modifiers assigned to display positions. They are not the Habitat Cards you pay animals to complete. A habitat card moves through those positions while the modifiers stay still. That distinction matters when planning a discount or bonus.
Solo and family play
Solo uses the same turn system, without an opponent or a separate automated deck. You can aim for a personal best or use the rulebook’s scenarios and achievement track. A scenario can specify a map, four Completion Cards, a score target and another goal, so read all its conditions before starting. Later crossover scenarios require Rolling Rivers.
Family mode removes the Central Special Die and replaces the usual three Nature Token actions with a simpler way to collect additional animals. The rules guide contains the exact changes and a spending example; a separate short solo page would repeat that material.
Who is this version for?
It is a sensible option if you want everyone to make decisions simultaneously, enjoy turning resource shortages into short-term plans, and like replaying different printed maps. It asks players to update an animal tally and resolve bonuses carefully, so the 10+ recommendation should not be treated as a promise that younger children will manage the bookkeeping independently.
For physical hex-tile placement and animal patterns, start with original Cascadia. For a second compatible dice-and-sheet box, consider Rolling Rivers. Its four river maps include Fraser River wildlife-pattern scoring. Our box comparison explains what combines, what remains separate, and how a second Rolling box supports more players.
Choose the guide for your next question
Sources and editorial scope
- AEG English Rolling Hills rulebook (PDF) — shared rules, sheets A–D, Completion Cards, family mode and combining boxes.
- AEG product page — player count, age and duration.
- Flatout Games product page — the two Rolling boxes and their distinct content.
Checked October 4, 2026. This is a researched guide. Decision examples and tactical recommendations are editorial analysis of the rules, not firsthand playtest results. The cards and sheet in your copy remain the reference for individual effects. Editorial policy and corrections.