Mountain Goats arrived in a box together with Sequoia and GPS from Board Game Tables.com. From the moment I saw the mini boxes and the art, I was already sold for those three small games. But when we opened them up, we saw that all three of those games were also completely different with also a different theme. Sequoia and GPS only last ten minutes while Mountain Goats lasts twenty minutes of gameplay. This is what we think of Mountain Goats!
How to Play.
Before you can play the game, we need to create the mountains. Place the mountain tiles as shown in the rulebook from numbers five to ten. Place the points tokens at the top of the matching number tiles and lay out the bonus point tokens. Each player also choose a color and places a goat on the bottom of each mountain.
On your turn, roll the dices. If you have more then one ‘1’, you can choose to place the other dices however you want, except for the dices with ‘1’. In order to let your goat climb to the top to score points, make pairs with the dices to match the numbers on the mountains. To climb up mountain with number ten for example, you could place two dices with five in order to create ten. You could also choose to let your goat climb up two spaces on the number five mountain, since you have two dices with five. If your dice does noet match a mountains number, that goat won’t climb any further that turn.
Goats can share the tiles on the mountain while climbing, but only one goat can stand on the top. Therefore, if you reach the top of a mountain. Knock the goat standing there to the bottom and take a point token from the corresponding mountain. If your dice match the number of the mountain while standing at the top, you can take another point token. You can remain standing at the top until another goat will knock you down.
If you have collected a point token from all of the mountains, you may take the highest bonus point token available. If you collect an additional set, you may claim another bonus token. The game will end if all the bonus tokens are claimed, or when three mountains are out of point tokens. The player with the most points win the game.
Playthrough of the game.
This game is just pure fun and chaos with the mini goat meeples. I actually lost this game because I just had way to much fun knocking the goats of Tomasz down from the mountains. I forgot to keep track of how many points he had and to try and focus on points myself.
If you do manage to actually focus on the goal, this game is pretty strategic. The dices give you many options even if you always have bad luck with dices (like myself) because you can combine all four of them. The rule when you throw more then two ‘1’s’ is pretty brilliant since you will always be able to play something. But if you would just like to block people as much as you can by knocking them off the top, this game is perfect to.
Final thoughts.
Mountain Goats is a pure fun light game with a lot of happy chaos. Every player will be trying to get his own adorable mini goats to the top to score points, while the other players will do everything in their power knock your goat to the bottom. This game is easy to learn, takes about twenty minutes to play and is easy to set up, it’s a great gateway game. You can take Mountain Goats with you everywhere you go since the box is very small and you can play this game up to four players. We absolutely love this game!
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