Kathmandu

• Designer: Stefan Feld
• Publisher: Queen Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 60-75 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/40gWpU7 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Take on the role of an expedition and discover the diverse landscape of Nepal, its temples, cities, and finally Kathmandu. Traversing the lands is often tricky and requires good planning, the right tools, and a little bit of luck. Sketch illustrious animals that you discover, trade in the cities for local goods and visit the many temples to pay your respects.

Kathmandu is played in rounds in which each player uses 3 of their 5 dice to gain resources and move around the landscape boards. The end goal is visiting Kathmandu. Along the way players gain points through different means: Visiting temples, trading for goods in the cities, discovering each landscape, and drawing the many unique animals that call Nepal their home.

The players need to be efficient in their turns, to achieve as much as possible but to also not waste much time, since a storm is coming! Always be in front of the storm and don’t lose sight of Kathmandu, since reaching it before the game ends yields many extra points!

To start, build the board – which is the path to Kathmandu. Place the start board at one end, then add in 4 terrain boards, which do not have to line up exactly nor in the same orientation, and then finish with the destination board.  Place a border strip between each board. It is recommended to make the path be curvy or snakelike.  The difficulty of the game can be modulated by watching the direction of the compass needle on each board; as you have more needles pointing towards Kathmandu, the difficulty of the path increases. Place a temple tile on the appointed spaces on the 3rd and 5th tiles.  Also randomly placed 4 goods on each city.  Finally stack the Kathmandu tiles in ascending order on the spot on the destination board.

The gameboard is placed on the table and weather tiles are placed on the first six spaces of the weather track at the bottom. The Equipment deck is shuffled and N+1 cards are revealed beneath the board. The Animal deck is shuffled and 2 cards are revealed.  Finally, 3 map tiles are revealed.  The supplies for all of these are kept on the board.

Each player takes their own player board, a yak meeple, 10 yak tiles (but in a stack with the 10 tile at the bottom but the rest randomized), and 9 offering cylinders which are placed on the spaces at the bottom of your player board.  Players also take one die of each of the six colors  as well as one of each of the five different resources.  Each player gets two random starting Equipment cards – these give you special rule breaking abilities, and the card tells you when is the appropriate time to play those cards – as well as two different colored map tiles.  A start player is determined and then yaks are placed on the starting spaces of the Starting board in reverse player order.  All players now roll their six dice and place them under their player board.

The game is played over six days, with 3 rounds in each day.  The active player moves through the phases in their turn before the next player starts: 1] choose a die, 2] possibly rest and end your turn, 3] move your tak, 4] take actions on the target space.

1] Choose a die – At the start of this phase, you can decide to reroll your unused dice by discarding one onto the camp in the bottom right of your board and then re-rolling the rest.  Then, choose one die that you have not yet used and gain one resource matching that die. If you choose the black die, you can choose any of the five resources. 

2] Check to see if you need to rest – if you have 3 exhaustion markers on your board, you must rest. Return all the exhaustion markers to the supply and then end your turn.  If you do not need to do this, continue to step 3

3] Move your yak – move your yak in a straight line as many spaces as the number of pips on the die. If the yak crosses a border strip, you must return a yak fodder to the supply or else you gain an exhaustion marker.  If your yak would move onto a mountain space or off the edge of the board, it stops just before that and you gain an exhaustion marker. If you move in the direction of the compass needle on that board, you must discard a compass or take an exhaustion marker.  The space where your yak ends its movement is your target space.

4] Perform actions on the target space – you can perform any or all of the actions that you can:

• Fulfill a yak tile – if your current yak tile shows the same landscape as your target space, it is fulfilled. Move your yak tile to the fulfilled side and then reveal the next tile in the stack
• Paint an animal – if there are one or more animal cards in the display that show the same landscape as your target space, you can collect one of those cards in exchange for a paint box. You can only take a single animal card on your turn
• Collect equipment – if there are one or more equipment cards in the display that show the same landscape as your target space, you can collect one of those cards in exchange for a backpack. You can only take a single equipment card on your turn
• Buy Goods – if you are on a city space, you can buy the good tile for a coin.  You can also take the special goods tile of that type by giving a coin to the current holder (the supply or another player)
• Make Offerings – If you are on a temple space, you can place one offering from your board onto that tile (max 1 offering per player on any particular space). Gain a map tile either from the face up display or from the top of the supply stack.
• Swap maps – if you are on a space with another player, you can choose one of their unsecured map pieces and exchange it for one of your map pieces. The other player cannot refuse this.
• Visit Kathmandu – If you are on one of the 9 spaces of Kathmandu, take the top Kathmandu tile and discard any exhaustion markers on your board. Take your yak off the board. From now on, you no longer move, but simply collect 1 resource from the supply.

Each player gets three turns in a day – at the end of the day, the three places for a die in the bottom left of the player board will be occupied. The First player marker is then given to the player with the lowest summed total of pips on their three action dice.  Ties going to the nearest tied player clockwise from the current holder.  Now all players reroll their six dice and place them under their board.  Next, reveal the next weather tile – if it is a storm, the storm marker is moved one board closer to Kathmandu. If your yak is behind the storm, you receive one exhaustion marker.  Finally, replenish the markets for equipment cards and animal cards.

Repeat this process six times – and now clear off the game board and flip it over to the other side to show the scoreboard.  Players score points for:

• Offerings – points equal to the highest visible number on your board
• Goods – score the points visible on your goods tile, special goods tile and your Kathmandu tile.  Also score a bonus of 12/7 points for each set of 6/5 different (regular) goods.
• Maps – score 1 point for each unmatched piece, 4 points for a matching set of A+B in the same color, and 8 points for a matching A+B that has a chest  equipment card on it
• Animal cards – determine the max and min number of animal cards by any player. Each card is worth this number of points
• Yak tiles – depending on how many Yak tiles you have fulfilled, score between +10 and -28 points
• Distance from Kathmandu – Take a penalty based on how many boards away from Kathmandu you are at game end
• Cards and resources – 1 point for each left over
• Exhaustion markers – negative 3 points for each exhaustion marker on your board at game end

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the closest player to Kathmandu.

As with all Queen games of recent memory, there are a number of variants and modules included in the box so you can craft the game experience that you want.  The rules include a longer game variant (play 8 days instead of 6) as well as two expansion modules (tents and characters) that can be added together or singly.  I have not yet played any of these so I cannot comment more than saying they exist.

My thoughts on the game

Kathmandu is one of the newer entries in the Feld city lineup, and this one appears to be a fully new game.  There are some interesting decisions to be made with your dice as you try to navigate the board.  One of the things I make sure to tell people is that (like Footsteps from 2023) – the game might look like a point to point race, but it most definitely is not a race.  The first person to get to Kathmandu is not guaranteed to win.  The goal here is to get the most points, and there are plenty of ways to do that as you traverse the different boards.

Depending on your plans, you will always have different options.  Getting through your stack of yak tiles will definitely pay off; though you have to hope that the randomly set up boards have landscapes that are in the right places when you need them.  Even the most determined strategy to do the yak tiles can be thrown off if the next bit of grassland is 10 to 15 spaces away!  (Though, of course, you could always go backwards to find some…)

The goods and offerings seem to pay off well; but you have to make a point of getting to the temples and the cities to score well.  The animal paintings are a bit more capricious in the scoring as the value is dependent on the difference between least and most.  I have had a game where I spent a lot of energy to get a big lead, only to have the last place player pick up two on the final turn, and my huge point payday nearly cut itself in half…

Regardless of how you move in the game, the storm marker keeps you heading towards the endpoint.  While a single exhaustion marker isn’t too big of a deal; losing an entire turn to remove the exhaustion markers can be a painful penalty.   That being said, I’ve also played games of Kathmandu where not a single person was forced to lose a turn at all (thanks in part to some equipment cards that removed exhaustion markers).

I like the addition of the push-your-luck element to the dice placement game.  There are enough dice for you to consider re-rolling on each of your three turns in a round; but of course you have to remove a die from your pool each time you re-roll – thus lowering your options.  It’s nice to know that you will probably always have the chance of doing something useful on your turn; though you might need some favorable dice luck along the way.

The components are plentiful and well done for the most part. The two-level player boards are quite nice and the cutouts are good to hold things in the right places.  The only comment I have is that I’m not normally the biggest fan of the scoreboard being on the back of another component, but at least there is a scoring overview board which allows all the players to at least have some sort of reference of the info which is otherwise face down on the scoreboard side for the bulk of the game.

The player aids are the other thing that I feel are worth mentioning.  The aids are on the tiniest mini cards, and while everything is graphically depicted on those cards – they aren’t the easiest to figure out… and well, that’s what the aid is supposed to do, right?!   The teeny tiny aids were even more frustrating when there were extra regular sized cards in the other deck – which instead had the usual advertisements for other Queen games.  I certainly don’t begrudge Queen for using extra cards in the sheet to promote their own games; but man, I wish the player aids had been on the big cards and the ads on the smaller cards.

I got no quarrel with the Midwest,  The folks out there have given me their best, I lived there all my life, I’ve been their guest, I sure have loved it, too. If they ask me to play a game, I’d be happy to name… Kathmandu.

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/40gWpU7 

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Mark Jackson (1 play): Other than the VERY legitimate frustration with player aid cards (good grief, how small can you make them?!), this was a really enjoyable game with a nice mix of opportunities and trade-offs. Coupled with the release of Marrakesh a couple of years ago, I may actually like multiple Feld games now.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale, Mark Jackson
• Neutral.
• Not for me…