How to Teach Cascadia

Cascadia’s turn takes about thirty seconds to explain. The teach goes long somewhere else: at the five scoring cards, where hosts read every card in full, then the habitat bonuses, then the tie rules, while new players stare at a pile of hexes and wonder what any of it looks like.

The fix is to teach the turn fast, then spend most of your ten minutes on the cards, with tiles and tokens in your hands. Here is a script in the order you would say it. Print the Cascadia teach sheet and set it where everyone can see it.

Before anyone sits down

Set up first, so the teach starts with the game ready. Tokens in the bag. The right number of tiles in face-down stacks. Four pairs in the display. A starter habitat tile in front of each seat. Nature tokens in a pile.

Pick the cards. For a first game, use the five A cards, as the rulebook recommends. With young kids or players who are new to modern games, the Family variant card is gentler: every animal scores the same way, by the size of its group. The variants lesson covers it.

Minute 1: the goal

Say: “Each of us builds our own patch of the Pacific Northwest. You score for arranging animals the way these five cards ask, and for growing big connected habitats. We each get twenty turns, then we count.”

Hold up a tile and a token. “Every turn you take one of these and one of these, together.”

Minutes 2 to 3: one turn, out loud

Take a real turn while you narrate.

1. “I take one pair from the middle: a tile and the animal next to it.”
2. “The tile goes next to my starter tile, touching at least one side. Colors don’t have to match, but matching makes bigger habitats.”
3. “The animal goes on any of my tiles that shows that animal and doesn’t have one yet. Not just the new tile. Any of them.”
4. “Then we refill the gap from the stacks and the bag.”

Stop here. Ask: “Questions on the turn?”

Minutes 4 to 7: the five cards

Point at each card as you go. One or two sentences each, with the A cards:

• Bears: “Bears like pairs. Two bears together, with no other bears touching them. More pairs, more points.”
• Elk: “Elk like straight lines. A longer line scores more.”
• Salmon: “Salmon like runs: a chain where no salmon touches more than two others. Longer runs score more, up to seven.”
• Hawks: “Hawks like to be alone. Every hawk with no other hawk next to it counts, and the more lonely hawks you have, the more you score.”
• Foxes: “Foxes like variety. Each fox scores for every different kind of animal next to it, other foxes included.”

Then the one tip that helps new players most: “You can’t do all five well in twenty turns. Pick two or three animals to build around.”

Minutes 8 to 9: habitats and nature tokens

“Your biggest connected forest scores a point per tile. Same for your biggest mountain, prairie, wetland, and river. Whoever has the biggest of each at the table gets a bonus.”

Hold up a keystone tile. “This kind shows just one animal. Put that animal on it, and you get a nature token, one of these cones. Spend one to take any tile with any animal, or to swap out animals you don’t want. Or keep it, and it’s worth a point at the end.”

Minute 10: start, and teach the rest live

Say: “That’s it. Whoever most recently saw one of these animals goes first.” Then play.

Teach the rest when it happens:

• Overpopulation. The first time three tokens in the display match, explain that the active player may wipe them. If all four match, they are wiped automatically.
• Declining a token. The first time someone has nowhere good to put an animal, tell them it can go back in the bag.
• The exact bonus numbers. Explain them at scoring time, with the teach sheet in hand.

What to leave out

• Tie rules for the habitat bonuses until the final count. They are on the teach sheet.
• The B, C, and D cards. They are for game two and beyond.
• Solo mode, scenarios, and achievements. Good later, noise now.
• Strategy. Let people find their own first, beyond “pick two or three animals.”

Coaching during the first game

Help with legality, not decisions. “That bear can go on any of these three tiles” is helpful. “Put it there to make a pair” is playing for them.

One gentle question does a lot: “Which card are you building toward?” Players who can answer it usually play faster and score better.

At the end, let one person read the scorepad row by row while everyone counts their own environment. Counting your own habitats is where the scoring finally clicks.

For a teaching method that works for any game, our guide on how to teach a board game in five minutes has the five steps behind this script.