The Ludarium · Teach sheet
Teach Cascadia in ten minutes
1 to 4 players · About 45 minutes · Ages 10 and up
The goal: Score the most points by arranging wildlife in the patterns on the scoring cards and growing big habitat corridors.
On your turn
- Four matching tokens are wiped. Three matching: you may wipe them, once.
- Optional: spend a nature token to take any tile and any token, or wipe tokens.
- Take one tile and the token paired with it.
- Place the tile touching your environment. No stacking, no moving.
- Place the token on an empty tile showing that animal, or return it.
- Matching token on a keystone tile: take a nature token.
- Refill the gaps in the display from the stacks and the bag.
Three tips for your first game
- Build toward two or three animals; twenty turns cannot feed all five.
- Grow one big corridor per habitat instead of scattered patches.
- A kept nature token is 1 point; spend it only for more.
Setup
- Put all the wildlife tokens in the bag and shake it.
- Shuffle 20 habitat tiles per player, plus 3, into face-down stacks.
- Lay out one scoring card per animal. First game: the A cards.
- Give each player a random starter habitat tile, face up.
- Reveal 4 habitat tiles; pair each with a token drawn from the bag.
- Put the nature tokens within reach and choose a first player.
Scoring
- Each animal scores by the pattern on its card.
- Each habitat: 1 point per tile in your largest corridor.
- 3 or 4 players: largest corridor +3, second largest +1.
- Two tied for largest get 2 each; nobody scores second.
- Three or four tied for largest: 1 each. A tie for second scores 0.
- 2 players: largest corridor +2; a tie gives 1 each.
- Each unspent nature token: 1 point.
Game end: The game ends when a taken tile cannot be replaced, so everyone plays exactly 20 turns. Most points wins; ties go to most nature tokens.