K2

K2 is the name of the earth’s second-highest mountain after Everest, and it’s this heady atmosphere you’ll be entering as you, the players, try and scale the peaks without succumbing to oxygen depravation and expiring.

Each player has a team of two climbers, who start at a base camp on the mountain’s lower slopes. Over a series of 18 rounds (each representing a day) you use a deck of cards to balance the two things vital to your progress – movement and oxygen. Each player has an identical set of cards and they deal themselves six of them at the start of the game. Then everybody chooses three cards to use for that round, and all are revealed simultaneously. The cards have numbered values that show movement and acclimatisation – the latter necessary if your climber is not to be overcome by the thin atmosphere.

Then the starting player implements the scores on their cards – moving their climbers, or acclimatizing them – and clockwise the other players follow suit… with a couple of caveats. The player who has played the most movement points is forced to take a risk chit – these are valued from 0 to 2, and take point values from your cards (which card is up to the impacted player). Players also have to take into account both the route they take – different routes require different amounts of movement to negotiate different stretches – and the weather, which changes over every turn and can have acclimatisation or even movement effects. Players can choose to spend their movement points pitching a tent, which saves them from the effects of the weather.

As the climbers get closer to the peak it gets tougher and tougher, and it’s quite possible nobody will reach the summit at all! Your first task is to keep your climbers alive of course, and at the end of the game players score points for the heights reached by their climbers – assuming they are still alive…