Tzolk'in The Mayan Calendar: The Spinning Wheels of Doom

Tzolk'in the Mayan Calendar is a game about Mayans, and their workers who eat corn, and offering skulls to the gods so that they give you points, and spinning wheels.

Not "spinning wheel" like Sleeping Beauty being clumsy around a thread making machine.  "Spinning wheel" as in plastic gears that spin on the gameboard, moving all your dudes around and around with each turn to different spaces on the board.  More on that later...

I'm not sure how to pronounce the game title, exactly.  But the way I pronounce it (which is, then, the correct way) is "Zol-kin."  Kind of like "Zoltar," the magic fortune-telling machine from the Tom Hanks classic "Big."  (You know you've seen it.  Giant piano scene?  Yeah, you love that.)
I made the "T" silent.  I bet it is.  It should be.  More "T"s should be silent.

...Here's the box:

Halloween costume idea.

Yeah, he's holding a skull.  A crystal skull.  It's very important to the game.

"To game or not to game?  That is the question."

You know what? While we're at it, let's throw in the expansion to this game: Tribes and Prophecies.  You see, this is one of my favorite games.  And it's like buying a Barbie where you can't just have the doll but also have to accessorize and buy the dream home and the pink convertible and a Ken when she gets lonely and....wait what was I talking about?
Oh, yeah, I like the game and so I bought the expansion to add even more mechanics to the game and hopefully make it better.

Here's the box for the expansion, too.  Because you LOVE pictures of boxes.

Moe, Larry, and Curly.

Check out the game board, pre-game.  There's a lot going on already.  And you get a sneak peak at the spinny wheels.

The basic idea of the game is that on a turn you either place workers on the game board or pull them off (only one or the other, no a combination of both).  Placing workers gets them on the board spaces, and pulling them off allows you to take the action corresponding to the space they are on.  But...
Each turn the wheels spin, pushing your workers to a new space.  Typically, the longer you let your guys ride on their Mayan Merry-Go-Round the better the actions become.  So you want to find a balance between doing stuff and having patience to let your guys chill so they can do better stuff later.

One of the spinny wheels, connected to the bigger central spinny wheel.

Ok, this is going to be the greatest thing to have ever been on this blog.  It's a video.  Of a board game.  I usually don't do this, because most board games don't having spinny wheels strapped onto the board.

Ready?  Here you go:

You. Are. Welcome.

Here's a bunch of workers on a wheel.  It's pretty.

It's like a rainbow, but not in order.  And missing colors.

The players each start out with a couple of randomly drawn starting tiles, which give them stuff to start the game with.

Starting with some corn, a rock, some more corn, some logs, and some street cred with the green god.

Corn is the currency of the game.  It lets you place workers and perform certain actions.  Also, 4 times throughout the game, there is a feeding day where you must give up 2 corn for every worker in your possession.  Because they've been working and they are hungry.  If you don't feed them, the gods get angry and take away some of your points.

Nice stack of tasty corn.

Building materials like stone, wood, and gold let you build buildings, which give you more stuff.

The bottom buildings are simple buildings, and do things like help feed your workers or give you technologies.  The top buildings are monuments, which are SUPER expensive and hard to build, but give you extra points at the end of the game for doing specific stuff.

Speaking of technolgies, you have them, I guess.  And you can upgrade them throughout the game.  They do things like get you extra corn every time you get corn. Or points when you build buildings.  Just some examples.  There are lots of things.

Technology tracks.

Then there's the mighty god tracks.  There are 3 gods, and as you gain favor with them they give you stuff or points at the end of each quarter of the game.  They are one of the main ways of scoring points in the game.

Sun god gets the tallest temple.  The Mayans are clearly playing favorites.

The other main way of scoring points involves the CRYSTAL SKULLS!!!!

Cute.

Not to be confused with this crystal skull, which used to contain vodka.

Vodka skull.  Not relevant to the game.  Very relevant to my mixed drinks.

 Just having crystal skulls in your possession is worth points at the end of the game, but a more efficient use of them is placing them on spaces of the blue spinny wheel.  As an offering to the gods, or something,  not only does it get you points but also gains you favor with the gods.  Up up up we go on the god track!

Tomb of sacrificed skulls.  Still cute.

The god track, then, plays a pretty central role in the game.  There are actions on the board that move you up the track directly, or you can take actions to get skulls to later place on the blue wheel which will move you up the god track, or you can build certain buildings which will reward you with moving up on the god track.  You get the idea.  It's important.
But there are so many different things to do, it's not like everyone is doing exactly the same thing.   The god track just seems to be a central point where many different strategies converge.

Oh, we're playing the expansion!  I forgot.  New things...
The expansion is called "Tribes and Prophecies"  because it adds 2 game mechanics:  Different tribes for players and...wait for it...something called prophecies.

A different tribe is given to each player at the start of the game.  Each tribes grants a player a special ability during the game that other players do not have access to.  They are pretty special.

Each tribe has their own unpronounceable name.

The prophecies are tiles that are laid out at the start of the game, letting players know that at certain periods during the game, taking certain actions will cost more than normal.  But accomplishing these actions will get you points.

For example, above, during a certain quarter of the game, getting wood from the green wheel requires the player PAY one wood first.  That's just mean.  But for every forest tile (the tiles with the wood picture on them that cover up the corn tiles, because beneath the lush forests are corn fields...) a player has at the end of the quarter, you get so many points.  And not having any makes you lose points.
But no fear!  The first quarter of the game has no catastrophes like above, so you can get ahead, and collect things that you know will be hard to get later.  So, for the bad no-good prophecy above, you could collect forest tiles before this prophecy comes to pass when there is no penalty to get the tiles.  That way you are prepared for later when the bad no-good prophecy hits.
 
The prophets tell you stuff for a reason.  Listen, and plan ahead, dummy.

Here's the board at the end of the game.  It looks empty, because if you time stuff right,  you pull all your workers on the last turn to take some last minute actions.  Leaving a worker on the board that can't do anything means you didn't plan well.  It makes you feel bad.

When I first bought this game, it was my favorite ever.  I won every game.  That doesn't happen anymore.  Jake wins every game.  He knows what he is doing.  I just like to spin the wheel.  Still love the game though.

Noooooo!!!! That's so sad!!!!