I've taken a few days to think about the event. Here's my final feedback:
1) I HATED how much off an impact randomness had. Sometimes you start with multiple paws on the board, other times with just one. Some times it takes only a couple of moves to get a paw to drop, other times it takes 4-5 (or even more). But the worst part is that once the initial paw is gone there's no way to force the game to give you another paw.
If you are lucky you might get more paws within the first few moves; if you are not you might go for 20+ moves and not get another one. No matter how many extra moves you buy, no matter how many of the tools you use, if the game decides “no more paws for you!” - that's it, there's NOTHING you can do about it but start a new board and hope for better luck there. It's EXTREMELY frustrating to waste 20+ moves and not see another paw.
You can use the tools to force a chest to appear – or even several chests – but there's no way to do that with paws. That's why I hated the randomness so much.
2) Speaking of the tools, there were too few coins in this year's event, making it impossible to buy the larger of the two booster sets without spending diamonds. Not unless you got extremely lucky with the incidents around the city (I sure didn't). This, in turn, limited the usefulness of tools because you had to be very conservative with them, especially if you also wanted to buy some extra moves.
Overall I did not enjoy this event because of how impactful luck was. There should ALWAYS be at least one paw on the board, something to work towards, instead of just wasting turns hoping to get lucky.