Cobra Paw Board Game Review

COBRA PAW BOARD GAME REVIEW

 Cobra Paw is a tile grabbing skill game from Bananagrams that pits 2 to 6 opponents against each other in a tile grabbing frenzy. Each turn, two dice are rolled, and these dice determine which tile the players try to capture. The player who captured that tile becomes the next player to roll the dice, and so on until one player has collected a certain number of chips.

COMPONENTS AND PREPARATION FOR THE GAME

 Cobra Paw is packaged in an attractive orange box decorated with a ninja cat on the cover. Open the box and you'll find 21 double-sided tiles along with two large black cubes. This is it. Dice and tiles are covered with 6 unique symbols. All of these components are large, polished, and have a nice weight to them.

 Preparation for the game is simple. Just turn the box upside down and dump everything on the table (make sure the tiles are face up and no tiles are on top of another), choose the first player and you're ready to play!

TILES AND GAMEPLAY

 Cobra Paw is a very simple game. Each tile has two symbols that correspond to the symbols printed on the two dice. When rolling the dice, two symbols will be shown and players will try to be the first to place their fingertip on the tile that matches those symbols. The one who succeeds first takes the tile and places it on the table in front of him. Note that it is possible to steal chips from other people, so each player must protect what they have already collected!

 The game continues until one player has collected the agreed number of tiles. The game offers 6 tiles for 3 to 6 player play and 8 tiles for two player play. Obviously, this can be changed if you want the game to last a little longer or last a little less.

IMPRESSION

 As my friends and I walked around Gen Con, we must have passed the Bananagrams booth a hundred times. My eyes were on heavy Euros – deep, brain-burning games that took hours to play. It didn't even occur to me to stop and demonstrate some stupid party game. I thought silly single party games were beneath me. I wanted a game with real meat…something I could sink my teeth into. But, Cobra Paw caught my attention.

 We really liked the game. It plays lightning fast, and it's just a lot of fun. It's great when you're the first to touch the right tile, and it's exciting to watch your collection grow and shrink as everyone competes for victory. The game is designed so that when there are a lot of chips at the beginning of the game, they are fairly evenly distributed and everyone has the same number of chips. However, as this large pool gets smaller and smaller, things start to get really crazy and silly as people try to steal tiles from each other.

 Cobra Paw is an extremely simple, fun game. So it doesn't have a lot of depth, and that's okay. Not every game should burn your brain. It annoys me when a game pretends to be something difficult, but turns out to be pure fluff. Cobra Paw is exactly what it says it is. There is no pretense here.

 I really enjoy playing this game and I can't think of a single negative thing about it. I also seem to have supernatural acting skills. Out of the 9 games I played, I won every game.