How to Score a Game of Cascadia by Hand

The twentieth turn ends, everyone sits back, and the table looks at four colorful patchworks of hexes. Now what? Cascadia’s scoring has more rows than its turn has steps, and it is where new tables most often slip. The fix is a fixed order and one simple rule: count your own environment, out loud, one row at a time.

This lesson follows the scorepad and the End Game and Scoring section of the current rulebook.

The four parts of the scorepad

The scorepad has a column for each player and rows in this order:

1. Wildlife: one row for each animal, scored by that animal’s card, then a subtotal.
2. Habitats: one row for each of the five habitats. Each box has two corners: your largest corridor goes in the top left, your bonus in the bottom right. Then a subtotal.
3. Nature tokens: 1 point for each you did not spend.
4. Total.

Score in that order. Every player counts their own environment while one person reads the rows and writes.

Step 1: wildlife, one animal at a time

Read the card for the animal, then count. A few habits keep this clean:

• Lift or tap each token as you count it. It is easy to count a bear twice when two groups sit close together.
• Check the card’s conditions before the points. Bear groups must be the exact size the card shows, and two bear groups may never touch. Salmon runs may not have another salmon touching them. On Hawks A, a hawk with another hawk next to it does not count at all.
• Elk score once each. When elk shapes connect, count them the way that gives the most points.

Step 2: write every corridor before any bonus

For each habitat, find your largest connected group and count its tiles. Tiles are in the same corridor when they share at least one matching edge. Only the largest group counts. The rulebook’s own example: a group of 3 forests and a group of 4 forests score 4, not 7.

Two counting slips are common here:

• Two-habitat tiles count in both habitats, once in each corridor they touch.
• Your starter tile counts. Its three hexes are part of your environment like any other tile.

Write each number in the top left corner of its box. Do this for every player and every habitat before anyone works out a bonus. Bonuses compare players, so they only make sense once all the numbers are on the pad.

Step 3: the habitat bonuses

Now go habitat by habitat across the row and compare.

• Three or four players: largest gets 3, second largest gets 1. Two tied for largest get 2 each and nobody scores second. Three or four tied for largest get 1 each. A tie for second scores nothing.
• Two players: largest gets 2. A tie gives 1 each. There is no second place.
• Solo: 2 points for each habitat where your largest corridor is 7 or more.

Write each bonus in the bottom right corner.

Step 4: nature tokens and the total

Count unspent nature tokens, 1 point each. Add the three subtotals. Most points wins. If players tie, the one with the most nature tokens wins. If they are still tied, they share the victory.

A worked example

The rulebook scores a three-player game between Jade, Lee, and Ash. Here is Jade’s line, read the way you would read it aloud:

Lee scored the most wildlife at the table, 67, but lost by a single point at 97. Ash finished on 95. Jade’s habitat bonuses alone were worth 7 points. That one example is the best argument for the next level of this course: the corridors are not packaging.

Slips that change the winner

• Counting every forest instead of the largest one.
• Giving second place after a tie for first. A two-way tie for largest pays 2 each, and nobody gets the 1.
• Using the three-player bonuses in a two-player game. At two, the largest gets 2, never 3.
• Forgetting the nature tokens, or forgetting they break ties.

After two or three games scored this way, the routine takes about five minutes, and players start counting their corridors before the game ends. That habit is where Level 1 begins.