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Chris Funk
United States
Springfield
Ohio
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Finally, I was able to find a copy of this in the US that didn't cost me $60USD + shipping. CSI's booth at GenCon had it on fire sale on Sunday afternoon for $40USD. I had a real limited budget for buying at the con, but when I picked up the box and saw the price, I think it had an enchantment on it because I must have blacked out and when I regained consciousness, I had just handed the nice register girl two Andrew Jacksons. Those sneaky bastard at CSI. Employing the Dark Arts isn't fair.
After a week, I finally sat down last night and cracked the manual and popped my chits. If you have a dirty mind, I should probably restate that to say "I extracted all of the tiny cardboard pieces from the manufacturer's die-cut boards." The manual itself is very well written, easy to read, and does a good job of explaining the rules as you progress through the game phases. I had very little issue setting up the board and after re-reading a couple sections after looking at my cards, was off and running on the first turn. You also have to decide which side of the map to use. Summer is easier, winter is harder and each side had a difficulty setting that limits the number of climbers that can be on any given space at one time.
I had set up 5 players, blue for myself, naturally. I chose the summer board and decided normal difficulty would be best. I liked how each player had the exact same decks and they were color and symbol coded on the backs. There are basically three types of cards: climb, rope, and aclimate. Climbs make you go up, ropes make you go up or down, and aclimates hearten up your climbers for the harsh moutain ahead of them.
The system is simple, easy to understand, and throws in a little push-your-luck. You start by drawing 6 cards and then pick three to play. Everyone turns their cards up and you count everyone's climb and rope cards (only the up points, not the down) and see if anyone has the most points. If someone does have more points than anyone else, they're seen as taking more risk and get a handy-dandy risk token. The risk tokens are numbered 0-2 and will cost the player those many points in movement or aclimation. Deciding to go for the horns and throw down more movement and pick up a token will depend on the numbers on three of the tokens that will be face-up. If a 0 is out there, you can press it with the ability to pick up the 0 and take no risk penalty but as those 0's run out, the 1's and 2's will eventually make that choice harder. The more people taking the 1's will make the 2's more prevalent and so forth. I like this idea because you want to try and guess how much others will move so that you can tie them or be under as ties for first don't force a risk token pick.
Once that's all decided, the first player starts to use his hards to advance each individual climber up the mountain or give them aclimation points from their cards. You can pick either, but you can't split up the numbers on a single card between them. That means you can use a 3 to move one climber two spaces, but the last point will be wasted unless that climber can use it. Same with aclimation cards; If you play a 3, that climber gets all three points. The biggest rule that you need to pay attention to that if you have movement cards to play, one of your climbers must move. You can't leave them both where they are and say "He'll use the 1 and move 0". Sometimes, this may mean moving to a space you hadn't intended or was unfavorable so you need to guage the effect of your cards on the climbers when you're choosing them to try and make sure you don't get forced down a path you hadn't planned. Purple-Me did that and one of his climbers spent most of his time stuck at the foot while his other climber made a mad sprint for the summit.
As you climb higher, the spaces get harder and harder to climb and use more and more movement points to get ahead. These spaces have a yellow number on them and to move into that space, you will spend one movement point PLUS the yellow number. For example, if the space had a yellow 2, you'd need to spend three total points to move into it. When you reach the top altitude, it gets even harder. When you consider that every player will have to play through their entire deck of cards before it's reshuffled, those rare 3's being used earlier may mean your climbers move very slowly towards the end of the deck and that is never good to blow them all early on. You want to guage the size of your draw deck and plan ahead to avoid standing a climber on a rather desolate piece of hillside while the weather beats away at them.
Points are awarded for climbing up the mountain. Once you get to the 6000ft. elevation, you will gain 1 VP for each climber and every space you climb upwards will net you one more until you finally reach the summit, which will net you 10 VP. You do not lose any points by going up and then using ropes to go back down. Your VP remains at the highest point level you reached. Unless your climber dies, that is. Climbers perish if their aclimation level drops below 1. That's what makes the summit so valuable. not only do you have to plan your move up, but you need to plan the move back down just as carefully to make sure he doesn't pass out and climb towards the bright light at the end of the tunnel.
If one of your climbers makes it to the top but dies on the way down, they drop to 1 point and are normally out of the game. There is a family version that adds in a rescue card, but I think the suspense is rather limited with this, even though it's a one-time use.
You also have two tents, one for each climber. They're used to escape the effects of the changing weather at various altitudes of the mountain. I'll hold on talking about how the tents are used after I get through the weather effects. The tents cost the number of movement spaces for the space you want to build them in. For instance, if the space cost 1 + a yellow 2, to build a tent on there, it would be 3 movement points. The tents are permanent after being built, so you really want to try and get at least one pretty close to the summit so that you can shelter your climbers before the final ascent to the top or keep them alive on the way down. The tents are shelters and will help increase aclimation while shielding from weather conditions.
At the end of the turn, you'll look at weather track and, unless you have your climber in a tent, your climbers may be affected by harsh conditions. There is a meter one the type of weather that tells you what areas are affected. If your climbers are under 6000ft., they're safe but once they cross that barrier, they can and often will be hit by some negative conditions. You'll see 6 days of forecasts so you will have plenty of time to move your guys higher, build tents, or rappel down below the elevations affected. They range from sunny and a 0 modifier, to slightly snowy/windy and -1, to stormy and -2. When you get to the end of a turn, you look at the spaces for each climber and if the space has a red number, you subtract that number from that climber's aclimation. Then you'll figure if any climbers are in the elevation affected by the weather and subtract that many more.
This is where tents come in. If your climber is in a tent of your color, regardless of which climber built the tent, they ignore the minuses from terrain and weather and gain aclimation. They're integral to keeping your climbers alive before and after the summit climb because your climbers only get points if they survive until the end of the game, which is 18 days marked by the weather track.
After the 18th day, you tally up your points from both climbers and declare a winner.
It's very simple to learn, easy to explain, and while the concepts and game mechanics really tie together wonderfully, they aren't hard to comprehend by new players. The components are nice and I love that each board has a normal and a hard variant and that the board flips to a winter side for even more challenge with the same normal and hard difficulty. I can see this having a lot of replay based on how much you want to torture/challenge yourselves. Also, choosing to mix the summer and winter weather tiles meant for some truly unpredictable weather conditions to add more difficulty to even the easy board.
So, how did all the Me's do?
Purple-Me managed 7 points after one climber tried for the 10 only to get stuck without rope cards and die of exposure. So smooth Purple-Me tumbled to his death and was stuck with a single 1 VP tombstone. Curvy Purple-Me had made it to 6 VP.
Green-Me had 12 and managed to get Curvy Green-Me to the summit back down at the detriment of leaving Smooth Green-Me halfway up the mountain.
Blue-Me managed to plant a tent right below 8000ft. and got both climbers camped in it for 16 points. Just goes to show that even though my guys didn't reach the top, they got more points working as a team.
Red-Me Won handily with 18 while is was a near defeat as one climber had made it to 8 with a tent, his other climber jumpe dto the top and only had 2 points of aclimation left. He had no ropes left, so the next weather cycle could quite easily have taken him out had there been one more turn.
Yellow-Me ended up with 14 in a very lackluster performance that I can only describe as a paltry excuse for Columbia Sportswear commercial. This one apparently had the guy's mother air lift him to 6 points and dumped him out from 6850ft. and the 100ft. fall dug him head first into the sand, which is where he spent most of the second half of the game.
I'm very impressed with this one and glad I finally got my hands on it. If you can get a copy, you'd be well advised to do so. Because we shouldn't ever forget about Poland, especially in board games with this gem.
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