In Cobras in the Cockpit, you are the snakes, slithering through the sections of a plane to bite, hiss, rattle, and squeeze the passengers into a state of chaos. Each player (from 2-4) plays a different species of snake, competing to see who can cause the most chaos.
Components
The quality of the game components are good for an independent game. The game board comes as five separate pieces, similar to how Cheapass Games does most of their games, though the cardstock is thicker, glossier, and in full color. The snakes are represented by generic pawns (five for each player, in a color matching the text at the top of your Snake Species Board), and the Chaos Markers are basically poker chips. The deck of 99 cards is constructed of solid stock -- through many rough shuffles and deals, none have yet bent or worn.
The cards are the meat of the game, comprising Specials and suit cards. The Specials are what you might expect, allowing one to remove an opponent's snake, steal cards, cause Chaos instant in an area, etc. The remaining cards are divided into Bite, Squeeze, Hiss, and Rattle cards, each with a value from 1 to 9.
Gameplay
Gameplay is pretty straightforward; every turn, you play as many cards as you want, and then draw your hand back up to five cards. You can discard any card to move a snake into the Cargo Hold, or to any adjacent area or you can play it for its effect. Every area that can be thrown into Chaos has two ratings, such as "Harm 10, Spook 15". This is the total value of cards required to send it into Chaos. Bite and Squeeze cards cause Harm, while Hiss and Rattle cards cause Spook. When an area is thrown into Chaos, every player in the area at the time gets the points for it. If only one player has snakes in the area (no matter how many), he gets double points.
The strategy and complication comes from the One Card rule and the Species rule. The One Card rule states that you can only play one card into an area per snake you have there. So if you only have one snake in the Galley, you can't possible throw it into Chaos by yourself (at least, not in one turn.) Similarly, the Snake Species cards each tell you how many of each cards you can play in total on your turn. For example, the Python player can play 1 Bite, 2 Squeeze, and 2 Hiss cards on his turn. (This means Rattle cards are useless, except to move snakes.)
The four snake species are Cobras (can only Bite and Hiss, but after a Bite, they can play another Spook card for free), Kingsnakes (can only Bite and Hiss, but can move two snakes instead of one), Pythons (can Bite, Squeeze, and Hiss), and Rattlesnakes (can Bite, Hiss, and Rattle). Each has its own distinct advantages. In play, I've found that the Cobra ability is a bit overpowered, since it's the only one which gets around the One Card rule -- when playing Cobras, it's possible to cause Chaos in a single area in one turn with only one snake. The Pythons have a similar advantage in the Engines (below), but as that requires a sacrifice, it's not quite as bad. It isn't unbalanced enough to upset the game, but I would recommend giving the Cobras to the least experienced player to be fair.
Engines are a special case -- they can only be Squeezed. Before you think that the Pythons win automatically, note that any snake can throw itself into the engine instead. By doing so, you lose the snake (no big deal, since you can always bring out more), but can play any card into the Engine as if it were a Squeeze card. This still gives the Pythons an edge, as they can Squeeze normally, then also throw themselves into the engine to play another card, scoring the points if the cards total enough to wreck the engine.
Gameplay Analysis: The game is very well balanced, overall. I've seen games won by every single species of snake, and while the game is open enough to allow for brilliant tactical moves (I once went from dead last to winning with a single stroke by having passengers kill the other snakes in Coach and then opening the Emergency Exit), it doesn't lend itself to abusive combinations that render normal tactics useless (that combo took me three turns and a lot of luck to set up). It has a lot of reply value - there's no one way to win, so everyone can try a different strategy.
Theme
Funny. Really, it's a lot of fun both in theory and in play. The Specials are the best part of the game -- the "Snakes Don't Plan Good" card lets you steal a card from someone else, and the "I want these Mother@#$%ing Snakes Off My Mother@#$%ing Plane!" card (which depicts an angry black man beating the hell out of some snakes) lets you remove all the snakes from any one area. Meta-humor cards like "Rewind", "Fast Forward", and "Collector's Edition Boxset With Deleted Scenes" intermingle with the half dozen cards which all depict different ways that passengers can destroy snakes ("Splat!", "Chop!", "Woo-pah!", etc.)
Gripes
There are a few rules that could have been clearer. For example, it took many readings of the rules to realize that you could only play Specials on your turn unless the card said otherwise. For several of the cards, that wasn't very intuitive, and an explicit rule would have been nice.
One or two rules could stand changing. For example, there are three cards which let you steal a card from someone. All of them say to then hand the card to that person. Given that you'll typically go through the discard pile a number of times equal to the number of players, that means that after the first time through the deck, you've got three useless cards that float around for the entire game, causing everyone to begin their turn by taking other peoples' cards. This makes tactics fairly pointless in the end game and adds unnecessary play time. Our solution was to simply house-rule the cards to be discarded after use, which fixed that problem. I recommend using it.
The generic snake pawns and chaos markers are a little dull. Of course, I understand that having custom plastic pieces made can be expensive enough (for a two-man operation) to eat up all of the profit on a game, so I can accept this. Still, I'd love to see them come across a good deal on little plastic snakes and/or print some stickers to emblazen the chaos markers, either one of which would add greatly to the game, in my opinion.
The Verdict
I am very glad I bought Cobras in the Cockpit. I enjoy playing it every single time and have only heard the same thing from everyone who's tried it. The game is a rarity -- a silly parody of a stupid movie that both captures the humor of the situation while retaining good, solid gameplay.
The concept is funny enough that it would still be a neat curiousity even with crappy rules. The gameplay is good enough that even if you removed the theme, it would play as a solid, enjoyable board game. So when you put a great concept and solid gameplay together... well, that's just like putting some mother@#$%ing snakes on a mother@#$%ing plane, now isn't it?
