George, Dave, and I played “Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar” Wednesday night. I bought the game last week after seeing a lot of great reviews online; this was the first time any of us had played. Consensus was positive, and we all thought that a second play would be more enjoyable as we now have the mechanics/rules/possible strategies down. Initial setup/rules reading took about 30 minutes, and the game itself about 2 hours or so.
The big new mechanic of the game are the rotating gears. After each round (i.e. all players take a turn), the large central gear is rotated one notch counter-clockwise, which in turn moves all of the smaller (connected) gears one notch clockwise. Any workers on the smaller gears will move to the next “action” space. Thus, by the time your next turn comes around your workers will be a few more spaces forward from where they were placed. This mean you have to plan ahead in order to be able to perform your desired actions. I think the theme of the game holds up well (even if the big central gear is actually an Aztec round calendar, not Mayan).
The next game will go much faster. Definitely will play again, and is a keeper!
Final score: Me (49), George (41) and Dave (31).
