Valley Games usually has one or two games that intrigue me each Spiel (Container, Municpium, Master Builder) and this year it’s Crows.  Crows is a tile placement game where you try to entice as many crows to the tile which has has your shiny object on it.  Players know how the Crows will move at the end of each round, as they follow a set of rules, so placing the tiles and your shiny object strategically is they key to scoring points.  It seems like attracting crows away from opponents’ shiny objects will be half the battle (and fun).  Plus, there are a few special actions that can be earned and used too.  The games sounds cute and a little bit different plus, for some reason, I like the idea of the crow meeple pieces.  I’m not expecting too much from it and hope it will be one of the lighter games I enjoy from Spiel this year.

With so many new games coming out each year at Spiel, we often give them nicknames to make it easier to remember which one is which.  The game Powerboats is like Formula De but with boats, so got nicknamed as ‘Formula Boat’.  Battlestar Galactica is co-operative with a potential traitor like Shadows Over Camelot so gets called ‘Cylons Over Camelot’.  And Claustrophobia got called Dungeon Hulk (as it’s Space Hulk in a Dungeon).  As there is tile-placement in Crows I’m already calling it ‘Crowcassonne’.