This week’s Monday Night Gaming: Raptor!

This past Saturday was International Tabletop Day, so my husband and I spent it hopping from game store to game store while playing games with various friends. We began it at Card Kingdom/Cafe Mox, who was celebrating their five-year anniversary in Ballard with MoxCon. We played with two Magic duel decks (Blessed vs. Cursed) I won at the ECCC Worldbuilders Charity Event and afterwards, played Raptor. (Afterwards, we went to a new gaming store near us called Zulu’s Board Game Cafe.)

Publisher: Bruno Cathala, Bruno Faidutti

# of Players: 2 players

Playing Time:  First time, maybe 25-35 minutes.

# of Expansions: None

General Mechanics: In this game, two players play opposing sides. One takes the side of a “Mamma Raptor” and her babies while the other player is a team of scientists who are trying to tranquilize and capture the “Mamma Raptor” and her babies before they escape from the forest. While some of the game deals in strategy and tactics, the game feels a bit more luck based than expected–so much so that we found it unbalanced in favor of the Raptor more times than not. Players draw a card every turn and play a card, which dictates their movement around the board.

At the beginning of a round, each player plays a card face down, which they then reveal. The player with the lowest ranked card uses the action on the card. The player with the highest ranked card, uses movement/attack points equal to the difference between the two card values.

Scientists can create fires (which limits movement of the baby raptors), can move via jeep (which allows for greater movement), can call for reinforcements, can move, and can tranquilize and/or capture raptors. The “Mamma Raptor” can hide (then reappear to surprise and kill scientists. She can also see what card the scientist player is going to play beforehand, which is part of what makes this game slanted in her favor), call for her babies which moves them closer to her, wake up her babies, heal her injuries, move, and kill scientists.

How to Win/Lose:  If three babies are captured or the “Momma Raptor” takes too much damage, the scientists win. If “Momma Raptor” removes all scientists from the board, she wins.

What I Liked: I played the raptors, which made this infinitely more fun. I enjoyed the dynamics and how easily the game could shift in someone else’s favor.

What I Didn’t Like: The game feels like its balance is off as the game felt heavily slanted in the Raptors’ favor. I would need to play it a few more times to confirm this as we only played it twice.

Overall Rating/Impression: Everything’s better with T-Rex’s or Raptors. 7/10

Monday Night Gaming is a bi-weekly series reviewing tabletop and video games. Articles are posted on the 1st & 3rd Monday.

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