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It's a race to the finish when some super-smart, yet somehow clueless, engineering students invent rocket-powered skis and decide to test them out at Yeti Mountain!
In Avalanche at Yeti Mountain, players play multipurpose cards — the same cards used to make up the ski slopes of Yeti Mountain — to determine their speed in a race down the mountain. If the skiers collectively exceed the speed limit, which is determined by the number of players, the fastest skiers crash, only moving one space forward down the mountain.
Players may also activate rocket jumps to overshoot the competition, but at the expense of causing an avalanche to begin chasing them down the mountain. If that's not enough tension, rocket jumps are possible only if the Yeti, awoken from his slumber by all of the rocket-powered racket, doesn't attack and deactivate players' rocket-powered skis! The last skier standing, or the skier who makes it to the bottom of Yeti Mountain, wins the game.
- High production value with detailed small components
- Thematic and family-friendly
- Fast play (about 10 minutes)
- Beautiful art and color palette
- Accessible rules and quick setup
- Limited depth for experienced players
- Mechanics rely on chaos in some situations
- Potential for rapid eliminations in longer sessions
- Yeti chase, avalanche danger, fast push-your-luck racing
- Alpine mountain race involving a Yeti
- light-hearted, family-friendly, fast-paced
- Gym Bag Guards
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- card-based movement — Players hold four cards and play one per turn to determine movement speed.
- Chasing/attack interaction — Last-place players can influence others based on speeds to hit or hinder them.
- Knockout mechanism — When the avalanche track reaches the back, players are eliminated.
- Player Elimination — When the avalanche track reaches the back, players are eliminated.
- Rocket boosts and avalanche track — Boosts raise an Avalanche track; pushing pace increases the risk of knocking out.
- Simultaneous Reveal — The sum of players' chosen speeds determines how far each moves; highest can stall others via knockdown.
- Simultaneous speed reveal — The sum of players' chosen speeds determines how far each moves; highest can stall others via knockdown.
- Symbol-based terrain interaction — Playing certain symbols allows jumping ahead or over parts of the board.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- production value in execution here is fantastic
- this game is highly thematic
- it's fast
- the art is fantastic
- the pieces are nice and fun
- this is well in line with the great stuff that Green Couch Games does