Illustration initially created for the cover of the box.

As chief of a mountain tribe (Dolpo-pa, Sherpa, Bhotia or Tamang), you must lead your caravan of yaks from town to town on the snowy tracks of the Himalayas to collect resources (salt, barley, tea, jade or gold) and deliver them to those in needs while trying to extend the religious, political and economic influence of your tribe in this area.

Collecting and then delivering resources will indeed allow you to make offerings to monasteries, to send delegations of you tribe in the various regions or even to barter and trade resources for new yaks to enlarge your caravan and become the wealthiest and most respected tribe’s chief of the Himalayas.

 

Each player must move his caravan from town to town in order to collect resources needed to fulfil orders (resources and orders being located on some towns and renewed during the game). Fulfilling an order allows a player to perform two of the three following actions :

Making offerings and placing a stupa to improve his religious influence
Sending delegations in the neighbouring regions to improve his political influence
Trading resources for new yaks to improve his economic influence
The first facing of the box designed by Johann Aumaître

These three types of influence can also be improved during inventory phases which occur every four turns.



At the end of turn 12 the final scores of each player in the religious, political and economic influences are determined. The player with the lowest religious influence is eliminated then the player with the lowest political influence follows him.

Last, the player with the highest economic influence (yaks) between the remaining two is declared winner of the game.


nInstead of using the 20 sided dice to renew resources and orders on the board, you can use the 20 cards numbered from 1 to 20 that can be downloaded on this website.

More explanations and all the cards here: downloads

Some “Orders” markers
of the game

• 1 map board
• 4 player screens
• 4 “Caravan” markers in 4 colours
• 20 “Stupa” markers in 4 colours
• 60 “Delegation” markers in 4 colours
• 60 “Resource” markers in 5 colours
• 15 “Inventory” markers
• 40 “Order” markers
• 24 “Action” markers
• 12 “Event” markers
• 1 “Turn counter”
• 1 20 sided dice
• 2 draw string bags
• 1 rulebook





From Merchants of Empire to Himalaya
by Guillaume Blossier

Having two passions, travels and games, I was working on the design of a new board game taking place in the Himalayas (with caravan of yaks, trade of resources, offerings to the monasteries, yeti footprints…) when, at the end of 2002, a friend of mine (Gabriel Robert that I want to thank here) informed me of the existence of a website dedicated to game design (Hexagames) with a game to download for free (Merchants of Empire). After a few visits on this site, I finally decided to print the entire game out, convinced of its quality thanks to various reviews on the net as well as its third place in the “Tric Trac d’or”.

The first test of the game was like a revelation: I really liked its mechanisms and in addition, it seemed to match perfectly the vision I had in mind for my Himalayan project. Transposing the theme, I then took the opportunity to test it again with slight changes (thanks very much to Nathalie, Stéphane and the Amalgame Team) and with a lot of success !!! Therefore, believing strongly in this new version, I decided to contact the designer, Régis Bonnessée, in order to present him this “Himalayan vision” as he likes to call it, vision which (I think I don’t make any mistake saying that) pleased him immediately !

It happened an evening of January 2003… and I thank Régis for accepting to transform his “baby” and for trusting me in order to develop together what would finally become one day of November 2004 the game “Himalaya”.


 

 

Copyright © 2004 Régis Bonnessée. All rights reserved