Cascadia Rolling Hills & Rivers.

Cascadia is one of my all-time favorite games, as it’s incredibly elegant: It has a simple rule set that’s easy to learn or teach, but the play is fun and challenging, requiring you to think on your feet and rethink your strategy on many of your turns. It’s also limited in time, as each player will get exactly twenty turns, and those turns are quick. (You can buy it here.)

Cascadia was a huge hit, too, so it was inevitable that we’d get expansions and brand extensions, including last fall’s roll-and-write versions, called Rolling Rivers and Rolling Hills, the two of which are mostly the same game with just some slight differences in the die faces and the maps on which you’ll be writing. I played Rolling Rivers and it is absolutely fine. It’s a solid roll-and-write game that works well and should be very easy for Cascadia fans to pick up. I didn’t love it, though, and I think it’s missing one of the facets of some roll-and-write games that I especially enjoy.

The theme is where it draws the most from the original game, as you’re going to gather the same animal types from the dice rolled on each turn, and then you’ll try to collect enough to match the requirements of the public habitat cards. You start the game with one of each of the six animal types, plus one nature token. On every turn, all players play at once; someone rolls the four common dice, and each player rolls their two personal dice. One of the common dice has special functions on it that I’ll explain in a bit, but the other dice all show various animals or combinations of animals on their faces. An individual player looks at their own two dice plus the common ones and picks a single animal type to collect, marking that number in the appropriate row on their animal sheet – so if you see three elk on the dice, and you choose to collect elk, you’ll write a 3 in the next open space on the elk line (rather than checking off three boxes, which I think is the more common way to go about it). You then see if you have enough animals to satisfy the requirements of any of the four habitat cards currently on the table. If you do, you may choose to cross off the matching animals and then take the reward(s) from the habitat card: You mark off a completed habitat of that type on your habitat sheet, and then take any associated bonus that was below the habitat card, which might include a bonus animal or some free nature tokens.

The fourth die in the common pool grants some extra power for that round, like letting you use one of your personal dice a second time (as in, counting it again), or letting players collect a second animal type on that turn. The nature tokens let you manipulate the dice for yourself: spend one to turn a single die into the next ‘lower’ animal type on your sheet, spend two to turn it into the next higher animal type, and spend three to take a second animal this turn.

Each game comes with four distinct habitat sheets, and they’re slightly different in the two games. The fundamental mechanics are the same – you write the value of the habitat card you’ve completed in a matching space on the sheet, and once you’ve completed a set or a row or a column, you’ll get an interim reward. The points at game-end all come from the habitat sheets as well, mostly from the cards you’ve fulfilled but with more points coming if you completed specific areas or sets, depending on the shapes shown on that sheet.

What I think the Cascadia Rolling games lack is the chaining of bonuses that make most roll and writes incredibly addictive. Setting yourself up to get three or four or more rewards on a single turn is a huge part of the fun of games like That’s Pretty Clever, Three Sisters, and French Quarter; the fact that the Cascadia games don’t have that just cuts into my desire to play them versus playing one of those others, or some of the other roll and writes I have in the collection. That may be my personal taste, though; it’s the one thing I like the most about this type of game.

There’s nothing remotely wrong with these games, though; if I sound a little down on them, it’s because a) I love roll-and-write games and probably have a high standard for them and b) I really love Cascadia. In the end I wouldn’t choose to play the Rolling versions, even solo, when I have Cascadia …

…which reminds me that there’s an app version now! Dire Wolf Digital are on a hell of a roll lately, with Dune Imperium, Clank!, and now Cascadia as digital board game adaptations in the last year or so. Dire Wolf has never missed for me – every one of their games I’ve tried has been awesome, and Cascadia is as good as all of them. It looks great, is very easy to navigate, offers all of the variations in scoring from the original game, and has a campaign mode with challenges to make it a little more interesting. I didn’t think the AI was that strong, but I also tried a beta version and it’s possible it’s improved since then. I still recommend it, even as a solo endeavor, because it’s so seamless and looks so great on any screen.