My, Oh Mayan

There's a certain type of board gamer so enamored of quality pieces that they'll buy a game just for the bits inside, regardless of whether they'll actually ever play the game. I've never been in that category, but nevertheless I do appreciate when a game has particularly unusual or well made components. So I couldn't help but be impressed by Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar.

Tzolk'in is a worker placement game that, from its raw description, is quite similar to past games in the genre. You have to gather food to provide for your people at four specific moments in the game. You have to juggle that need for food against other actions that earn you victory points. And there are a handful of building resources you must accumulate to assist you. But Tzolk'in has a twist, of course, and it makes all the difference.

The different action spaces of the game are laid out around the perimeter of a series of circles. Inside each circle is a gear with a worker-sized space on each cog. Workers are always placed on the least valuable cog of the wheel, and you only actually take their actions when you remove the worker on a subsequent round. In between, each wheel is rotated at the end of each round, moving your workers into positions of ever-increasing value. The longer you can afford to leave a worker in place, the better reward you'll get for it when you ultimately do remove it. Thus, while Tzolk'in is about gathering food and other resources, what it's really about is managing the placement and removal of your workers, and leaving them in place strategically to get the things you need.

The various wheels on the game board are a truly clever bit of engineering. The gears are all interlocked and rotate together; to achieve this, the board disassembles into several pieces that snap together, jigsaw puzzle style, when you play. All this alone is enough of a novelty to make the game an interesting experience. But the fact is, it's also just a lot of fun that demands some interesting strategic planning. More than most games, Tzolk'in asks you to look a few turns ahead and figure out how you're going to gather now what you need to have on hand later.

I don't yet have enough plays under my belt to have strong feelings on strategy. (In fact, I have yet to win the game.) But it's definitely one I look forward to playing again. I give it an A-. It certainly seems to be a new favorite.