Mountain Goats Review

The setup is simple. There are six columns representing the peaks of the mountain all made out of small stacks of cards, numbered ‘5’ to ‘10’ . Each peak also has a number of point tokens to be collected when a player reaches the top with their goat. Each player chooses a colour and places their six goats at the bottom of each mountain peak. You then place the four dice to the side along with four bonus scoring tokens.

Turns are quick and easy and you’re never really kept waiting too long. On your turn you roll the four dice. If there are more than one ‘1’ rolled you can change all but one of them to any number you like. This is a great little boost if you, like me, have the dice curse! Then you divide your dice however you want in order to climb the mountain. Numbers can be used on their own or added together but you can only move up a mountain if you have the exact number needed. Of course you can move up multiple spaces at a time on the lower side or add them all together to reach the number ‘10’. As you can imagine, the lower numbers have a lot more spaces before you reach the top whereas the ‘9’ and ‘10’ peaks only have two stops. Reaching the top is important because as soon as you do you take one of the point tokens and if you stay at the top you can keep playing that number to take as many tokens as you can. However, if someone else reaches the top when you are there, you come tumbling down to the bottom and have to start the climb again. This is where the fun comes. Racing to bump your opponents off is where the game comes live. Can you cling on long enough to grab a handful of tokens or are you falling back after only one? It is also here if you want to play tactically, racing to the penultimate space and then holding off until someone beats you to the top then bumping them off straight after. Ha! Or should I say ‘Baah!’.

There are also four bonus tiles offering points for sets (one of each of the numbers) and they are first come first serve so rushing towards this may be a good tactic or you can just focus on getting as many points tiles as you can whilst you cling to the top of the peak.

Lay-ee-odl-lay-ee-odl-lay-hee-hoo

The game ends when either the four bonus tiles have been taken or three of the six point stacks have been emptied. The game moves pretty quickly and you can’t take it too seriously but there is a lot of fun to be had. The comments are great quality and nice and colourful but for such a small box game it does take up a lot more table space than it really needs to. I’d have loved this in a smaller version that could be played on the train or in the pub but as it stands it feels a little too sprawling. It also lacks the replayability factor. Once played, it is fun but it doesn’t come with a desire to jump back in.

For a light family game, you can’t really go wrong for the price point and the size of the box but don’t expect to be climbing those mountains late into night.

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