Cascadia

I picked this up mostly because two people in my group already owned Calico and kept comparing the two, and, ok, I get it now, they really are cousins. Same publisher energy, same wildlife-tile-matching bones, and Cascadia feels more open than Calico’s drafting, where at some point you’re taking a tile just to give up on a scoring objective. Cascadia clicked for me because the habitat tiles do something a straight tile-laying game usually doesn’t: they let you course-correct. You try to reserve a spot for a particular animal, and that piece might come very late or never at all, so you build the map you can get instead of the one you wanted.

That adaptability is the whole game, honestly. I went in with a strategy for maximizing bears my first play and got derailed on turn two when nobody offered bear pairs. Held off a couple turns waiting for one, then pivoted and took the foxes and salmon sitting there instead, and still ended up happy with the board. There’s something satisfying about a puzzle that punishes rigid planning without punishing you for having a plan in the first place.

Component-wise it’s gorgeous, the wood tokens have real heft, and I like that the box insert is a single piece of cardboard that does a better job than most plastic inserts at keeping the hex tiles in place while stored. Small thing, but I notice it every time I set up a game, since half my shelf has insert situations I’ve had to redesign myself.

Where it loses me a little is at higher counts. Four-player games, maybe even three, can cause too much dead time depending on how bad the analysis paralysis gets once people learn the scoring cards well enough to calculate outcomes instead of eyeballing them. Two player is the sweet spot for me, maybe three. I haven’t tried the full expansion with six and based on what I’ve read I don’t think I will.

It’s not going to replace my heavier stuff, but I can open the box and get playing with almost no setup, which is why it’s the game I reach for on nights I don’t have the energy for something bigger.