Cascadero

The kingdom lies in ruins, its towns split apart, and its citizens don't trust each other. El Cascadero, the crowned king, wants to bring the country back together, but he can't do it by himself. So, he picks four ministers to go out, meet the people, and bring back peace. The ministers have to make the whole country prosperous, but each one also has a special job: Farming, Crafting, Mining, and Markets. El Cascadero also writes down in his book how well his ministers are doing...

Cascadero is Reiner Knizia's latest tile placement strategy game. Players act as ministers who send envoys to visit towns. These envoys must be placed next to the towns. However, towns don't trust lone envoys. New envoys score points for a town when they're part of a group or have an official seal from El Cascadero. Towns become more valuable when they have Royal Messengers or have been visited by envoys before. In these cases, the towns work together to achieve greater success.

Gamers must choose between two rival tactics: create long chains of their envoys to get synergies and goals, or set up smaller separate envoy groups to spark town scoring at the right time. Both give you victory points, but your victory points won't matter if you don't also reach the end of your set success column.

When you spark town scoring, you'll move along that town's matching success column getting perks as you pass them. Perks include earning victory points moving further on any success column grabbing an official seal, moving an envoy, or even getting an extra turn. With smart timing and clever plans, players can set off a chain reaction of cool perks that shift the game in their favour.

Cascadero offers plenty of replay value through player interactions that arise different board and tile arrangements, and an expert mode with traveling heralds. However, the game always ends in one of two ways: when a player scores fifty victory points or needs to place a tile but has none left. The players who've reached the end of their assigned success column can win, and the one among them with the highest victory point total comes out on top.