Cascadero is a clever, spatially-driven tile placement game from Reiner Knizia and Bitewing Games — blending route-building, area control, and cascading bonuses into a tight, interactive puzzle that rewards timing, positioning, and opportunism. Within minutes of our first play, it had immediately reminded me of another Knizia classic that we love — Rebirth.
In Cascadero, players take on the role of envoys working to reunite a fractured kingdom under the rule of El Cascadero. The map is an abstract hex-grid of plain fields and villages, with each colour of village offering different rewards and strategic opportunities. Your goal is to deploy groups of envoys across the board to claim influence from those towns, which in turn advance a cube in your player colour up a specific track. Each track, in turn, delivers bonuses (such as additional actions or additional track bumps), seals (which I’ll cover later) and points.
The core mechanic revolves around placing envoy meeples onto fields in such a way that they connect to new towns. Towns will not “trust” a single envoy, so you’ll never score for a “group” of one envoy, but as soon as you add a second (or third, fourth etc) envoy to a group and it connects to a town for the first time, you will score.
Each town has a colour — blue, pink, orange, yellow and the slightly different white education towns — and when you do score one, you’ll move the cube of your colour on the track matching the village you just connected to. Importantly, if another player has already visited that village, you’ll make two moves with your cube (because the people’s trust has increased).
Each player has a limited supply of envoy meeples which means that placement is key. Unlike a lot of games in the route-building or area influence style, Cascadero allows the players to place their pieces anywhere — starting new groups at will, or even placing single envoys to block key routes for other players. Seals, as I mentioned earlier, can be taken if you land your cube on them exactly when advancing on a track. These seals can then be placed with an envoy to score a village with a group of just one — which is powerful.
This means that interaction is high — even though it is indirect. Villages are more valuable when visited for a second time, so the interplay between players, especially at three and four players, is significant. You will want to be placing groups in and around other players, but because the villages are quite tightly packed together, routes can quickly be cut off – it only takes a couple of interested players around a handful of villages to make the whole area both attractive and challenging for the third and fourth player. Equally, for two players, the need to be close to each other exists, but the lack of pressure for space takes away some of the tension.
The scoring system is layered but fairly obvious. Points come from moving up tracks and completing objectives — like connecting to three towns of the same colour with a single group, or connecting to one town of every colour. Some of these objectives can only be claimed by one player, so there’s another form of interaction as players race for the same regions. An interesting twist demands that each player must reach the top of the influence track for the colour of villages that matches their pieces (blue, for example) and if you don’t do this, you cannot win regardless of your points total.
The components are very clean and functional. Ian O’Toole’s artwork is rich, crisp and evocative as it always is, with clear iconography and an opulent palette that suits the theme. The board is plain in some ways, with villages being the only real feature, but it soon fills up with envoys that bring bright colour and texture. Player pieces are wooden horse-shaped envoys — a charming touch that reinforces the theme and emanates quality.
Playtime is around 45–60 minutes, and Cascadero supports 2–4 players. Whilst it does scale well, I feel strongly that it’s best at 3 or 4, where competition for towns and roads is more intense. At 2 players, the game becomes more tactical and less interactive, but still enjoyable. When playing two players exclusively, we used the rear side of the board which includes a Farms module that adds extra scoring opportunities and tightens up the board a little. Sadly, I haven’t had a chance to try this mode with 3 or 4 players yet.
Cascadero has quite a clean ruleset and more strategic depth than it might appear, but there are a few snags. As an example, if you have an envoy adjacent to village A (on its own) then it won’t score (no problem). If that group then expands, does some other stuff and then for whatever reason you decide to add an envoy that also touches village A (but is now part of a group) then it still doesn’t score. This means that based on that first placement, you’ll never score that village. There are quirks, but none are a major problem.
Ultimately, Cascadero is a refined, interactive tile placement game that delivers satisfying combos, meaningful decisions, and classic Knizia tension. It’s easy to learn, hard to master, and full of moments where a single placement can swing the game. For fans of spatial strategy and elegant design, it’s a worthy addition to the shelf. For us, perhaps alongside family favourite Rebirth, I am not completely sure how often it will hit the table.
Cascadero is available now from Zatu Games
