Czech Games Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar, Multi-Colored (CGE00019)

“It must be done, it's for the greater good.”“You will run afoul with the gods.”“But you can see this, can't you? We'll come out ahead.”“You never come out ahead, offending the gods.”“But the other way leads to starvation and subsequent defeat. Or we can just slow everything down and lose...”“I confess, I don't want to starve, but maybe there is another way.”“Wait! I see it, but is there enough time?”Before game playThis boardgame is a puzzle, literally, in two layers. The board is six puzzle pieces that you have to assemble each time, but take heart, there is a scoring track around the edge, so if you can count, you can do this. The second layer is the gears. Oh yes, gears. You've got to line up the gears so that each of the subsidiary gear teeth line up with the parent gear, the great Mayan calendar.Perhaps I need to invest in some jade paint to spice up the gears, they are a plain pale beige color, and though they are slightly textured with some design, they definitely dull down the otherwise beautiful board.This game takes some serious set up, you've got to lay out sturdy building and monument cards that can be built There's a deep supply that you can choose from to vary each game from another. They you pass out income cards that people pick their favorites from to keep. There are colored tokens from each team to put on tech tracks and the temples. The board feels pretty busy before you even begin. I don't mean to bag, just don't be surprised by how intimidating it may feel.Game playOn your turn you can either place workers, or pick up workers you have sent to various cities. As a general rule, the longer they were left there the better the reward. Well, that sounds easy enough. What sort of rewards?First, lets point out that there is a cost in invest a worker, and the more workers you set embarking on a single turn, the more it costs. Workers don't have to begin at the starting place of each track. But the further ahead from that start position, the premium increases.The cost that you pay is corn, corn is one of the rewards your workers can bring home. Corn is also used to feed your workers four times during the game, so it's a multi-purposed currency. Loss of points is the penalty for starving workers. Workers can also bring home various resources that can be used to build buildings that provide various benefits. They can also bring home crystal skulls. Yes, skulls made of opaque blue plastic. Pretty sweet. These can be kept for points at the end or deposited for even more points at one of the cities by one of your workers. These resources can also be used for advancing you along tech trees, these are pretty simple, you just get additional bonus when you do normal things in the game. Like, get an extra corn when you get corn, or get to build two buildings instead of one.I mentioned offending the gods. If you run out of corn, you can get a interest free loan you don't have to pay back by begging for corn, but you only get three corn and you can only beg when you are desperate, so it's not likely to help much, but I guess every person fed are points not lost. But you get knocked down a rung on your temple track, reducing the bonus you could get from them after you feed your workers. There are other ways to offend the gods.I hate to tell you what to do but...The times that you have to feed your workers don't come at random, in fact, you know exactly how many turns you have to prepare for each day of reckoning. Kind of like Christmas, pretty easy to plan for. Not getting distracted though... that's problem in this game too.I still feel like I have not explored this game enough to give killer advise. That speaks to it's depth. Naturally the best way to go is to have amazing turns where you get just what you need when you need it. Like your worker brings home the gold and wood that you need the same time your worker is on the build a building spot, so you build the building, and the next turn a worker picks up a crystal skull and sneakily gives it to a worker two cities away to place it before the Gods and get some killer points. It takes some planning to pull these things off.ThemeHmm... worker placement, tech trees, buildings, feeding workers, but is there a theme? You are trying to build some monuments, it is true, but those are just point earning buildings. But I'm not sucked in by it I don't feel like a Mayan Despot. Unless they feel like they are worker placers burdened with feeding them quarterly. The skulls are very visually stimulating, but you don't have to go through any more difficult hoops to get it than to get 7 bushels of corn. You just had to be savvy enough to keep the worker there long enough. And I confess, I'm not afraid to anger the gods in this game.BalanceDon't get me wrong, it's a very deep game, full of choices, ways to stick it to people, I really enjoy it. The most careful planner will often be rewarded with victory because there is so little luck. The initial starting resources are determined by the draw, but after that, it's all up to you. You can choose to be first, like in Agricola, nothing is meant to be hidden like in Puerto Rico, so predicting what your opponents will do is possible. All the trappings of a balanced game.InteractionAverage in this game. Moves you take before someone else take options away from them since you are playing on a shared board. So there is bound to be some lamentations. And other conversation that naturally occurs during game time.Learning CurveYou can either pick up workers or put them down. That's easy but the multiple paths to victory can be daunting for those new to boardgames. Again there is a lot going on in this game. The rule book is good though, so I'll give it a medium score.DowntimeWhile turns are short, you might spend a bit of time looking at the which of the two buildings your resources all you to build, but you likely can't build all of them since the material requirements vary so much, not like Dominion where any of the cards can be purchased within a range of a single currency. So down time is less than in some other heavy games.What’s not to Like?Hmmm... I can't think of anything I didn't like about this game. Except the theme is a little weak.Collateral EndorsementsMy kids repeatedly ask to play the game and they have many choices. My 6 year old doesn't get it, but hey, she's six.

This is a fun, well-balanced game that's quick to learn and offers surprising depth in strategy and tactics. Although the gears come off as a bit 'gimmicky' at first, they provide an elegant twist to the worker placement genre. Rather than simply claiming a space, your meeples become a kind of variable investment, in which you're weighing how long to leave them on a wheel vs. the rewards offered, all the while trying to maximize your efficiency by placing and removing them from the wheels in coordinated groups.The wheels also alleviate the 'bunch ball' problems that crop up in worker placement games like Agricola or Stone Age, where one or two spaces are clearly more valuable than others. Since placing a worker on a particular wheel allows the next player to jump ahead a position (at a cost, of course) and you can always select a lower-tiered reward (for another cost), the last player isn't blocked from access to the best resources/advancements. Additionally, this mechanic means that the efficiencies on the board are highly dynamic and contingent upon each previous player's placements, allowing for wonderful, adaptive tactical play rather than blindly pursuing a particular strategy.The copy originally sent to me had some tears in the folding board pieces, which appears to be, from various reports around the Web, a common occurrence in the first print run of the game. But Rio Grande replaced these quickly, at no cost, and without complaint after I filled out a simple form on their website. Additionally, the company has indicated that they have a new printing process which should alleviate this problem. Apart from that hiccup, the rest of the materials are of excellent quality, including the very eye-catching "crystal skulls." I would have preferred colored gears (since I have no intention of painting them myself), but that's a rather minor concern for me.All in all, I would strongly recommend this game to any Euro game fans. It even works fairly well as an introduction to the genre -- I taught someone who had never played a worker placement game before, and she picked it up quite quickly. Between the worker placement, resource management, technology trees, religious tracks, and different ways to score, there are quite a few moving parts (ha ha - pun intended) to explain to new players, but the mechanics fit together elegantly and the iconography is simple and intuitive, so once you get rolling it's not the kind of game where you have to stop and consult the rule book every other turn.