Cascadia Tile Placement: Building Landing Spots

The openings lesson read all twenty cards. Each one asks for a shape. This lesson is about the ground those shapes stand on: the tiles. Strong players often place a tile three or four turns before the token that will sit on it, because the rules let a token land on any open tile in your environment.

The rule that makes this work

When you place your token, it may go on the tile you just took or on any other tile in your environment, as long as that tile shows the animal and has no token yet. Each tile holds one token for the whole game.

So a tile is not just a tile. It is a set of future options. A tile showing salmon, bear, and hawk is three possible landing spots until something lands on it, then it is none.

Count your landing spots

A landing spot is an open tile that shows a given animal. For each of your main animals, know roughly how many you have.

• Two or more for each main animal: healthy. Whatever token comes, you have a good place for it.
• One: fragile. If that tile is in the wrong place for your shape, the next token of that animal has nowhere useful to go.
• None: the token goes back in the bag, and your turn produces only a tile.

Counting spots also tells you which tiles you need. If your bears have plenty of spots but your elk have none, the right pick is often an elk tile with a token you do not even want, because it sets up three future turns.

Place for the shape, not just the habitat

Each card’s shape has a geometry. Your tiles should match it before the tokens arrive.

• Lines (Elk A): lay elk tiles along one of the three straight directions on the hex grid. Leave both ends open.
• Runs (Salmon A and B): lay salmon tiles in a winding chain, with no salmon tile touching the chain from the side, unless you will fill that side with something else.
• Separated groups (Bears A and B): leave a gap of one tile between the spots for each group. A bear tile in that gap is a hazard if a stray bear ever lands there.
• Spread out (Hawks A and B): hawk tiles far apart, at different corners of your environment.
• Crowds (Foxes A and Salmon D): a tile for your fox in the middle, with a ring of tiles for other animals around it.

When a tile serves both a corridor and a shape, it is a strong pick. When it serves neither, take it only if its token is worth the turn.

Protect your flexible tiles

Tiles that show two or three animals are your most valuable landing spots, because they can serve whichever token comes. Use them last.

When you have a choice of where to put a token, put it on the tile with the fewest other options you care about. A keystone that shows only elk is the natural home for an elk; it also pays a nature token. A three-animal tile that could also hold your next bear should stay open.

Avoid dead tiles

A dead tile is a tile that can never hold a useful token. It happens when every animal it shows would break a shape you are building, or belongs to an animal you have dropped.

Dead tiles are not wasted if they grow a corridor. But each one costs you the token that could have come with a better tile. A few per game is normal. If a third of your environment is dead by the end, your tiles and tokens were pulling in different directions.

Think about the edges of your environment

Your environment can grow in any direction, and tiles never move. That makes the edges valuable.

• Keep each main shape near an open edge so it can keep growing.
• Do not wall in a shape early. An elk line with tiles on both ends that cannot hold elk is finished, whatever its length.
• Leave a little space between shapes that must not touch, such as two bear groups or two salmon runs.

A three-question habit

Before each pick, ask:

1. Which animal is running low on landing spots?
2. Which tile in the display fixes that and grows a corridor?
3. Where will this turn’s token land, and does it use up a flexible tile I need later?

This habit makes every turn about two turns: the one you are taking and the one you are preparing. Planning a turn ahead is one of the clearest habits that separates steady high scores from lucky ones. The midgame lesson, next, adds the other players to the picture.