First Impressions

I found this game while scrolling through Instagram. The post mentioned only that it was a two-player game about scientists trying to steal raptor babies and raptors trying to escape, and I was intrigued. Wes and I love two player games and while we play and love Duel, I like having some variety. Without doing research on the game, I bought it--and I'm so pleased I did.

Thoughts & Overview

Raptor is basically how I described it above: scientists and raptors battle each other in the jungle or savanna, trying to outwit each other in their individual goal. The raptor mother has five babies, and if three escape the board or she removes (eats) all the scientists, she wins. The scientists start as a group of four and can max out at 10. If they neutralize the mother (five shots) or capture three babies, they win. It's a deceptively simple concept. Each player has a small deck of cards, and always three in their hand to choose from. They're colorful and brightly illustrated, and each is numbered 1-9. Actions range from recruiting to moving to stealth (removing the raptor mom temporarily from the board) to capturing and more, but the trick lies in strategy. You need to think like your opponent and decide the best action for you at the same time. Here's how it works.

Both players lay down a card simultaneously. The card with the lower number plays their action, and the card with the higher number gets the numerical value difference in action points. So, if player one played a "4" card and player two played a "7" card, player one would get the action on their card (ex. adding scientists to the board) and player two would have three action points to spend (ex. moving or attacking a scientist). If it's a tie, the round is over and nobody plays. All cards and available actions for both raptor and scientist are listed on each player's board so it's easier to track, but knowing what to choose or figuring out what your opponent is going to do? Not so easy.

We learned how to play pretty quickly, and like most games, once we got a better understanding of our roles, our strategy strengthened. I immediately wanted to play again which is always awesome, but while it's a quick game and set up is simple, it is not an easy play. It's meant to take about 30 minutes, but it can be hard to make decisions and playing as the raptors can be infuriatingly tough. I'm not going to lie, though. I highly enjoy being able to eat the scientists and disappear from the board. I do feel that the scientists have some pretty distinct advantages, though I can tell the game designers tried to weigh the abilities equally. We really enjoy playing Raptor, and it's been an excellent addition to our mix.