Mountain Goats - Unboxing
Anyone who knows me, knows I’m a huge fan of goats. So, when I first heard of Mountain Goats published by Board Game Tables, I was already sold!. In fact, I love Goats so much it became the first project I ever backed Kickstarter! Little did I know this would be the start of a somewhat unhealthy obsession with supporting new and exciting board games. This Kickstarter came with two other quick tabletop games - Sequoia and GPS - but you’ll have to wait a little longer to hear about. Now back to the goats!
Mountain Goats by Board Game Tables.
The facts:
Number of Players 2-4 (5 Players with the expansion)
Play time: Approximately 20 minutes
Box size: 12cm x 12cm x 5cm
Box weight: 350g
Designer: Stefan Risthaus
Artwork: Daniel Profiri & Anca Gavril
GPS, Mountain, Goats, Sequoia, and the Expansion Pack for the three games.
Along with GPS and Sequoia, Mountain Goats is a short game that can be played at the end of a gaming session, as “one more game,” with a quick play time. Mountain Goats comes in a small, compact box, and is incredibly lightweight, which makes it ideal for travelling, or taking to a friend’s house for a gaming evening. These boxes have subsequently been supplemented with an expansion pack, one box for all three - more goats? Yes please!
The contents of Mountain Goats.
The game has clear, easily identifiable components, with 4 lots of 6 goats, 18 tiles, 61 counters, 4 dice, and an instruction manual. The counters are easy to push out, whilst being sturdy enough to remain in their sheet so that they don’t fall out by accident. Each tile is incredibly aesthetically pleasing, and the art, although simple in appearance, has been beautifully designed, with each tile flowing seamlessly into the next. Space should never be an issue either; when laid out, the 18 tiles take up a rectangle around 40x65cm, which is ideal with those for smaller playing areas. Personally, I loved the colours of the goats, where blue, red, green, and yellow tend to be the more traditional colours of playing pieces for a four-player game, Mountain Goats instead uses black, red, grey, and yellow, which felt more natural to me (I can’t say I’ve seen many blue or green goats in the wild!). The red and yellow goats could easily represent brown and beige goats, and black and grey goats occur naturally.
The pieces laid out ready for a four player game!
Rules wise, Mountain Goats is very straightforward, with simple, concise instructions, but with some interesting strategic options available: do you rush ahead and get the bonus points quickly, and risk being pushed off the mountain, or do you take a slower approach and push your way to the top? Do you go for the low scoring mountains first, and use the length of the mountain to protect your goats, or do you opt for the shorter, higher scoring mountains, and hope you can accumulate big points quickly and hope no one tries to push you off? I’m really excited to try out Mountain Goats, and to see what its expansion holds. Stay tuned to find out my thoughts on the game!
Coming soon will be the unboxing of GPS and Sequoia, the other two games that came with this Kickstarter!
Happy gaming,
Chris.