Designed by: Stefan Risthaus
Mountain Goats is a fast-moving game of getting your goats to the top of the mountain, and grabbing points.
The game comes with a set of cards that are laid out as six columns numbered 5-10, with 5 the longest and the 9 and 10 columns much shorter. Each player places one of their goats at the bottom of each column and play begins.
On your turn your roll four dice, and choose how to assign them to the matching numbered columns, before moving your goat ‘up’ the mountain: a 5 or 6 will move your goat up the 5 or 6 column, but for any higher numbered column you’ll need to group two or more dice together. Note here that ‘1’s can be used as their face value, or flipped to any side of the die you like. Once you’ve rolled and assigned your dice, you move your goats up the matching columns.
If a goat reaches the top of a column, you take one of the matching numbered points tokens. Your goat stays at the top (and can keep collecting tokens if dice are assigned here!) until another goat arrives, which will kick you back down to the start of the path – goats can share spaces on the way up, but the top of each column only has room for a single goat!
If you manage to collect a ‘set’ of tokens – ie one from the top of each column, you also take the highest unclaimed bonus token. A second set means a second bonus token, and so on. The game ends either when all four bonus tokens are claimed, or when three of the six points token stacks are exhausted – players count up their points, and the goat with most points wins!
A fair bit. There's no stealing of points, but your goats are going to get knocked down off their hard-won peaks with reasonable frequency
Low.
There's the maths of the ways to divvy up the dice, which push Mountain Goats slightly upward of super-young children. Outside of that it's mostly hoping your luck-pushing aligns with some basic tactics.
Set-up is always the same, so how the game plays out is largely down to the luck of the dice, allied to the management of that luck. For a longer game players might want a bit more control, but Mountain Goats doesn't outstay its welcome.
2-4
Players
8+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
Mountain Goats feels like a shorter, simpler Las Vegas, where dice get points. In Vegas, the most dice in a casino grab you the cash there. Mountain goats doesn't work that way, as you're often kicked off of the
casinosmountain peaks here - but the fast-moving dice-chucking vibe is similar, and one I really enjoy. The points system feels slightly skewy in that players collect so many points, the grand reveal of who actually won feels like it could have been engineered to be briefer. But then again there's something drum-rollingly dramatic about every9one counting up which is kinda fun.