Mount Everest is a new game by the designer of K2 which is a great game and you can read my review of K2 for more details.

The rules of Mount Everest are very similar to K2 with some additions.  Rather than moving your 2 mountaineers up and down the mountain, you move 2 guides who are taking mountaineers and tourists up and down the mountain.

Your guides can carry equipment with them like a camp and/or oxygen, but this comes at the cost of taking more mountaineers and tourists with them (and it’s those that can earn you points).  Players score points for the clients (mountaineers and tourists) they manage to get to the top (but lose points if they die anywhere on the way up or down).  The tourists are worth more points, if they make it to the summit, but are less acclimatised so are more difficult to get there.  The player with most points after 18 days wins.

As in K2, players have a hand of 6 cards and they get to select 3 cards to use each round.  Players simultaneously reveal their cards and the player who is moving furthest must take one of the 3 face-up risk tokens (which can reduce what you can do in a round).

Cards are used to move and/or acclimatise.  Some routes are easier and require fewer movement points but are longer.  As players’ guides get higher, the tourists and mountaineers with them lose acclimatisation points for each turn spent there (and die if their acclimatisation reaches zero), so it is important to acclimatise as much as possible before setting out – well, to do so for as long as you’re willing to risk, or can bear, whilst other players set-off with clients to earn points ahead of you.  Using oxygen lets you replace one of the cards in your deck with an acclimatisation card so you have better and/or more acclimatisation cards to use (but maybe a the cost of a rope card).

There is a limit on the number of guides that can share some spaces so you need to keep in mind you may be blocked from moving where you want to (that’s part of the game play) so your clients may be on the mountain longer than you planned.

Weather often makes things harder so that you lose more acclimatisation points at some altitudes.  You can see the weather conditions a few days ahead but you’ll still finding yourself taking risks, especially as you try to make the best of the cards you have and get ahead of your opponents before they block your path.

K2 is a great and tense game and I think Mount Everest will be too.  There are a lot of similarities but there are a lot of new elements too – in addition to the movement of tourists/mountaineers, players have oxygen to use, must balance equipment with clients, and there are some icefall regions too which are hidden until someone tries to enter them.

You can play K2 using the Mount Everest board, so it’s an expansion for K2 too.

You can see some details of the game on Rebel.pl’s Mount Everest page and the English rules are on BGG.

James.