Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar First Impressions

In Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar you put your workers in, your workers out, in, out, in, out…

…and spin the wheel about!

Tzolkin: The Mayan Calendar presents a new game mechanism: dynamic worker placement. Players representing different Mayan tribes place their workers on giant connected gears, and as the gears rotate they take the workers to different action spots.

So you place workers onto the board or pull them off the board, that is all. Here are 3 things I like about the game.

Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar Wheel

The main part of Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar, it’s the hook that makes it different.

You place workers on points on one of 5 wheels. The 5 wheels are connected to one larger wheel which, when moved, moves the other 5 connected wheels. This moves your workers around a track from the spaces at the front of the wheel that gives you a little reward, further around to the icons where the big rewards live.

But, You only gain the reward when the workers are removed from the board.

One wheel focuses on food, one on resources, one on buildings, one on bonus effects and one on gaining favour with the Gods. Plenty to do. Speaking of which…

There’s Plenty to do

You need food to feed your people and to place your people on wheels. Resources let you build buildings for effects. There are two tracks that give you favour with the gods that are worth resources and points plus bonuses as the game goes on. The last wheel lets you get big points in exchange for crystal skulls.

You need to do all of them. You need the bonuses, the points, and the buildings but without food, you’re stuck so you need that too! All this with just the act of putting workers out or removing them.

Components

The wheel is an awesome idea. The board is pretty, the tokens are nice, and the iconography isn’t too intuitive but it works. The workers are crappy, that’s the only downside.

I do want to play this again. I did pretty well and want to see if I can do better.

Brilliant game.

Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar – Tribes & Prophecies Update 26/05/2018

I have since played with the Tribes & Prophecies expansion and it adds a few cool things.

Firstly it adds the Tribes which give each player an ability. These are great for an asynchronous start and replayability.

The Prophecies give a chance to gain bonus points at certain points of the game. But, if you don’t meet certain criteria you may also lose points. Again, added replayability.

A must-have expansion I think.

Jesta ThaRogue