Corvids

^{review by Taylor}

“A Card Game about Trash and Treasure”

Just in time for fall, Corvids hits that collecting sweet spot as you each embody a different corvid bird and try to collect the best treasures for your nest. A dexterity and set collection game for 2-5 players, this game is fast, easy to pick up, and compact for travel.  

To set up the board, you “shuffle” and spread all the cards randomly across the playmat, making sure that all of the nests are covered at the beginning of the first round. Each player takes a bird card, which determines the bird they will be playing as. Their bird will give them different goals or bonus points for specific trinkets to try to collect. This card also indicates which nest you will attempt to protect. 

There are three parts to your turn: Peck, Pick, and Resolve. During your Peck stage, you use the provided tweezers, aka your beak, to choose a card on the board and flip it over. This may or may not impact other cards on the board, depending on the stack. For the Pick phase of the game, you can pick any card that is completely uncovered by any other card on the board. There may be feather tokens on the card that you pick. If so, those feather tokens are now yours to keep and use for a stealing action later on. In the Resolve phase of your turn, you can use any abilities of the board you just picked up, such as to peck another time or pick one more card. If any player has a nest that is no longer covered with cards you may now choose to use two tokens to steal a card from that player. And finally, if there are any cards that are floating alone and no longer touching other cards, they are removed from play. 

The game ends when there are no more cards on the playmat. Players then tally up points from their trash and treasures. Collecting multiples of different cards can give players more points depending on what the card says and whether it was collected face up or face down. 

I love the fabric playmat that keeps the unorganized chaos of the card pile contained, so even if gameplay itself is a little more all over the place. The cards feature beautiful scientific illustrations to look at, including birds and little treasures. The tweezers are sturdy and long enough to help you reach across the board with ease. The game is easy to pick up and fun to goof around with; the rules encourage players to caw in approval or displeasure based on other players' moves. Mischievous peck moves can leave your or other players' nests open to robbery. Live your best crow life and give Corvids a try.

Corvids is available now from our webstore.