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Dear Zatu,
What another beautiful gift! I think 2 Hawks are much better than 2 cooing turtle doves - I love them, and the wonderful game of Cascadia with all of the various creatures. I can’t wait to start playing this. Yours gratefully, Grace
On the second day of Christmas, Zatu gave to me:
2 Hawks from Cascadia - Pete Bartlam
On the 2nd day of Christmas my true love gave to me 2 Turtle Doves. Well, we’re a bitshort of doves at the moment with a lot more hawkish sentiment in the world today so I give you Hawks. Red-tailed Hawks to be precise in the beautiful, peaceful game Cascadia by Randy Flynn.
Cascadia, which is a real area in the NW of North America spanning the US-Canadian border from the Rockies to the Pacific, is an area of outstanding natural beauty providing habitats for a rich range of wildlife.We have Chinnook Salmon leaping in the sparkling rivers, majestic Roosevelt Elk wandering in the pine forests, fierce Grizzly Bears doing what they do in the woods, the ubiquitous Red Fox getting everywhere and soaring high above the solitary (or two in our case!) Red-tailed Hawk all rendered by the evocative art work of Beth Sobel.
This tile-laying game has each player creating their own wildlife zones of linked habitat tiles. There are 5 habitats: Mountains, Forests, Prairies, Wetlands and Rivers which each carry the icons of the creatures that can live there. Maybe three, two or just one type of wildlife, in the latter case you will be awarded a Douglas Fir cone for housing the right Wildlife Token.
Cascadia proceeds by selecting and laying a tile and adding an associated Wildlife token. When all the tiles are laid you score points for each of your largest areas of the five habitat types plus a bonus if yours is bigger than anyone else’s. You also score points for having your Wildlife arranged in patterns as laid out on the Wildlife Scoring Cards. These will represent natural patterns like a line of Elk in the Forest Salmon winding along a river, Bears in family pairs or our eponymous Hawk soaring solo. And if you get two solo Hawks you get 5 points. Happy Days!
And not forgetting the gifts from day 1:
And a Partridge in an Everdell Tree - Ella Jones
The woodland magic of Everdell, featuring its central tree decorated with colorful wooden critter meeples and mini event cards, will keep you entertained all Christmas! Players each build a woodland city, made up of the following cards:
Blue- governance
Purple- Prosperity
Green- Production
Red- Destination
Brown- Traveller
Seeing as it's nearly Christmas, let's think of these as technicolor gift parcels! Here's some highlights of what you can find inside!
Christmas Eve Midnight Blue:
The Innkeeper is a lovely, generous Badger from the base game who can be discarded (worth it as he only scores 1 victory point) to play a critter for 3 less berries. Bargain!
Mistletoe Green:
Of course, the reliable, all-rounder Farm card is a classic in the base game. EVEN better, the Mistwood expansion features variations of this card (in design and functionality): showing the farm decorated in blankets of snow, as well as in the other 3, warmer seasons.
Not forgetting The Doctor from the base game, the wise hedgehog carefully prescribes berry potions (very lovingly detailed in the rulebook of the base game). Every time production is activated, players can earn an extra 3 victory points with this card (1 point for each berry). This is also a very festive act of goodwill, supplying vital berries to make critters better!
Chocolate Coin Brown:
The beautiful butterfly: The Poet is a lovely example of this card type, from the Newleaf expansion. It allows players to draw all cards of a chosen color from the meadow, scoring a victory point for each drawn.
Santa's Hat Red:
The Lookout enables players to copy any basic or forest location, for a reasonable price of just 1 log, 1 resin and 1 pebble. Not bad at all!
Perfect Purple:
The main event has to be the prosperity cards, offering numerous victory points during gameplay and at the game end. Occupying The Farm, the Harvester and Gatherer mouse couple (previously Husband and Wife) score a whopping 7 points at the end of the game when paired together.
Not forgetting The Baker from the Newleaf expansion, a kind bee proudly carrying fresh bread, who earns 2 victory points at the game end, PLUS up to 6 victory points (2 points for each of 3 berries). That's a grand total of 8 victory points, for a card costing just 3 berries (that could even be played FOR FREE with The Innkeeper, for example). For Everdell lovers, Newleaf is definitely the expansion I recommend gifting them this Christmas the most, featuring numerous new critters and constructions, reserve tokens, player redeployment tickets and even a train!
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