Mountain Goats is a small-box game from Allplay that recently got two new editions – a tiny-box version for $9 called, appropriately enough, Tiny Mountain Goats, as well as an upcoming legacy game called Mountain Goats Legacy where you play a campaign but don’t destroy any components. I’ll get to that legacy game in a few weeks, but I’ve never actually reviewed the original game, which is one of Allplay’s best titles in that square-box line. (It’s also on Board Game Arena and Yucata last I checked.)
Mountain Goats is a simple game of dice-rolling that creates some strategy around the inherent randomness of the format. Players roll four dice and divide them into two sets however they wish, using the results to move their goats up six mountains numbered 5 through 10. If your roll contains two or more dice showing just one pip, you keep one of those and re-roll any others.
Once your goat reaches the top of any mountain (they vary a little in height), you take a point card from that pile matching the mountain’s value – so the top of the value-10 mountain is worth 10 points. If a player gets a card from all six mountains, they take a bonus card, starting at 15 points and declining from there. Play continues until all four bonus cards are claimed or three of the six mountains’ point cards are exhausted.
If your goat advances to the top of a mountain, and there’s already another player’s goat there, you knock it off, all the way to the bottom of that mountain’s column of cards. The 5 and 6 mountains’ columns are four cards high, the 7 and 8 are three cards, and the 9 and 10 are two cards. There are also more point cards for the lower-valued mountains. That setup produces some strategic considerations around how to split your dice and move your goats – you might choose a lower-point outcome to knock an opponent’s goat down a mountain, or try to target a specific mountain to get its last card or maybe get that sixth one for the bonus.
On most turns, you’re going to try to split your dice in a way that moves two goats one space each or one goat two spaces. However, as the game progresses, you might choose a split that only lets you move one goat one space, forfeiting the chance for a second move, because it does more damage to an opponent or because it gets you a card you need more.
Games move very quickly at any player count because turns are so fast – roll dice, split, move. You can’t plan in advance per se, but you’ll probably have some idea of what you’d like to do in certain scenarios, and which values you need for those bonus cards. And it’s easy for younger players to play along because the math is so simple; I think it’s a great game for working on basic math facts, at least for adding numbers up to 6.
For some reason, I didn’t own Mountain Goats in any form until Gen Con of this year, despite owning at least a half-dozen other Allplay square-box titles, including Sequoia (another dice-roller), Big Top, and Waddle. I got a review copy of Mountain Goats Legacy, while I picked up a copy of Tiny Mountain Goats, which is exactly the same game as the original but in their smallest format. It’s one of those games I’ll always throw in the bag when we’re traveling and might meet up with other families – I brought it on our recent beach trip and it was a hit with the other family’s kids. (Plus I could argue I was helping them retain their math skills on summer vacation.) It’s a solid grade B game for me, but also one I’ll recommend more than a lot of higher-ranked games because it is so accessible to even non-gamers.