Pete's Expert Summary
My human seems to have acquired yet another box of colorful cardboard. This one, apparently, is called an "expansion" for their existing "Cascadia" game, a name I find pleasantly wild-sounding. Its primary purpose seems to be to complicate their table-sitting ritual by adding "Landmarks" and, most alarmingly, accommodating two additional humans in my territory. While the promise of more potential laps is intriguing, it's a high-risk, high-reward situation. The true appeal, of course, lies not in their abstract scoring but in the tactile quality of the new pieces. Are they lightweight enough to bat? Do they slide satisfyingly across a wooden surface? Will the new box be as structurally sound for napping as the old one? The human "fun" is merely the noisy backdrop to my own, far more important, quality assurance testing.
Key Features
- MORE CASCADIA: expansion for award-winning board game Cascadia, winner of 2022 Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) and MANY other awards!
- MORE FAMILY-FRIENDLY FUN: adds 5th and 6th player and new Landmarks scoring
- MORE WAYS TO SCORE: new wildlife scoring cards, habitat tiles, and landmarks scoring cards
- ALWAYS EASY TO TEACH AND LEARN: elegantly simple gameplay, teach in 2 minutes, plays in 30-45 minutes, for 1-6 players
- ENDLESSLY REPLAYABLE: With plenty of modular scoring cards and variable setup, no two games of Cascadia: Landmarks will be the same!
- This is an expansion. Base game is required to play
A Tale from Pete the Cat
The familiar scent of fresh-pressed cardboard and ink filled my nostrils, a perfume that always heralds a new disruption. My human, with a level of excitement I usually reserve for the opening of a can of tuna, presented the slim blue box to another human. "It's the Landmarks expansion!" he chirped. I watched from my perch on the armchair, tail twitching in mild irritation. Another box of flat things. I'd already mapped the strategic value of the original game's components; the hexagonal tiles were mediocre for batting, but the little wooden animal tokens were treasures of the highest order, perfect for hiding under the radiator. What could this new box possibly offer? As they laid out the familiar landscape of cardboard rivers and forests, they began to introduce the new elements. My eyes, slits of cold judgment, scanned the additions. More tiles, more cards... and then I saw them. The Landmarks. They weren't flat. They were small, wooden, three-dimensional shapes, each representing a unique geographic feature. One in particular, a stylized mountain peak, caught the light. It was an object of profound and immediate interest. It was, I decided, mine. The mission was clear; the target had been identified. I executed a silent, fluid drop from the armchair to the rug, my paws making no sound. The humans were engrossed in their babble of "adjacency bonuses" and "end-game scoring." Fools. The true game was afoot, and they were oblivious. I slunk under the table, a gray tuxedoed shadow moving through a forest of chair legs. Using the central table support as cover, I scaled the leg closest to my target, my claws finding purchase in the wood grain. Peeking over the precipice of the tabletop, I saw my prize. It sat there, a tiny wooden monarch, waiting to be claimed. With the humans distracted by a particularly complex placement, I made my move. A single, surgical strike from my extended paw sent the mountain token skittering across the board. It collided with a bear token with a delightful *clack*, disrupting their entire ecosystem before sailing gracefully off the edge of the table. A chorus of "Pete!" erupted, but it was too late. I was already on the floor, the wooden peak secured gently in my mouth. I trotted away, my prize in tow, to my lair behind the curtains. This expansion, I concluded, was a resounding success. It had provided a new, superior class of toy. They could have their cardboard landscapes; I had conquered the mountain.
