Cascadero

Cascadero feels like Knizia stepping away from the crowded euro and clearing a small space on the table. I picked it up with its little sibling, Cascadito, which turns much the same idea into a roll-and-write, and after several plays of both, the larger game has stayed with me more — especially with the farmers variant.

At heart, it is cube-based route building with the compressed feel of a cube-rail game: you build routes and try to make those routes count as well as possible. It does not bury you in options. There is just enough room to study the network for a moment and decide where your next extension ought to go.

That shared network is where the players meet, and where another player's route can make your own plan rather less convenient. It has a little of old Kingdom Builder about it, not because the games are doing the same thing, but because it produces that mild, satisfying feeling of saying, “I was going to use that,” without turning the table into a battlefield.

It is not exceptional, nor is it a game I would carry about as a revelation. But it is a pleasant, brisk companion for one game or two in succession, and the farmers variant supplies the small extra touch that makes it the preferable sibling to Cascadito. Quietly good, and flexible enough to earn a place on the table now and then.