Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar - Tips & Strategies

The game can be overwhelming when first playing, here are a few suggestions:
1) Don’t try to do everything. Find something that makes sense, stick with it, get a feel for how things play out. You can always try a different strategy next time. Focusing on Temples and/or building a Monument and collecting what is needed for it is a good solid first game.
2) Ebb and Flow. The game tends to have a rhythm: placing workers out, taking them back. Develop this rhythm when looking ahead, planning actions. Remember on each turn you can only do one or the other.
3) Food Days. The game is basically divided in 4 seasons by the Food Days, each of these requiring you to feed your workers. Buildings that provide food for them on these days are always good.
4) First Player. If there’s Corn to be had on the calendar and a food day coming up, take first player. Someone will it might as well be you. But don’t do the advancing the Calendar an extra day until you are comfortable with the game.
5) Don’t overthink it. Wing it your first couple of times. Let the game play out. You’ll need to think ahead, but you can’t anticipate everything. Everybody should just experiment a bit, take actions and assume the risks and watch how it plays out – rather than slow the game to a complete halt trying to figure out every action and sucking the fun out of play for everyone, go with your gut and keep things moving your first couple of plays.
6) Enjoy. Its a very visual game, watch how rounds play out, observe other players strategies, and don’t worry about the win. You’ll learn more watching things advance for everyone than tunnel vision on yourself.
7) What does this do? The game is color coded, try to associate different colors and symbols to get how they interact. The green places on the Tech track apply to the green actions on the Palenque gear. Pick a gear, work with it, find the matching color on the Tech track and see how one effects the other.

Never forget that in your turn you must at least place one worker or remove one worker, you are never allowed to pass.

With that in mind, next thinking is obvious: if you have no workers to place you will be forced to remove at least one, if you have all your workers available you will be forced to place at least one.

So now, start to think on a long term strategy for worker placement: try to make two or three rounds placing continuosly, even if that means placing one only worker: you are investing for a better actions. The same is valid also for removing. And when making this always consider the option to put a worker on the first player position just to make a double advance on the wheel if your will be removing workers on your next turn.

Finally, once the game have started, try to not have all your workers in your hand unless you are removing them for a very good combo of actions.

Long term strategy of worker placement, as its actions will be resolved in the future instead of on the turn they are placed like other games, is the key for this game.

In the early game, Yaxchilan is the sole consistent source for crystal skulls, requiring four movements on the gear, or an outlay of corn to buy higher numbered slots. While this may suffice for an early bid on skull dominance, it alone is not an ideal path toward mastery.

A focus on Tikal, with the intent of developing the Theology technology tract will provide greater skullduggery rewards in the long run. Not only will a fully-realized tech tree garner an extra skull from Yaxchilan, but continued use of the Tikal gear’s Action 1 and Action 3 spaces (assuming available resources at the ready) will permit the direct acquisition of additional skulls via Theology’s fourth tier.

A well-coordinated assault on Yaxchilan and Tikal, with a fully-developed Theology tract, can net 5 skulls in one turn, followed up by quick placement onto Chichen Itza to secure the spoils of victory.

In Tzolk’in your main resource is corn. You need it to place your workers as well as to feed them when four times per game. The more workers you have the more corn you’ll need to do this. I immediately saw this as a problem of not having it when I needed it. The tip I would give would be to make you you play on the Palanque gear early and often. Being able to grab that corn is essential. But beware the corn fields can be harvested out quickly because it is such a needed commodity.

To help get over this make sure to upgrade the agricultural technology available. This will not only grant bonuses to the corn you gather, but the second tier allows you to harvest corn when there is wood covering it, without having to first harvest the wood or burn it down thus angering the gods. You can also harvest the corn on spaces where all the tiles have been removed.

In the game you have Crystal Skulls that you first get on one gear and then “carry” to be placed in honor of the gods on another gear. Putting down a skull on the gear will give you points, favor on a temple and maybe a resource. If you manage to grab the skulls and placement gears early on you will have first shot at the 13 point + favor + resource slot and getting more is even better. This is a very simple and clean strategy as it only requires 1 skull and 1 placement. It’s a fragile strategy to go for the skulls as other players will often battle with you for placing the skulls, but going in early can be a surprise move and can net you some really nice early points.

Your gears look like this out of the box.

Paint them! Just think how much better this game can be with fancy painted gears. Even one-color gears add a lot to the aesthetic over the stock tan.

As a strategy, advancing the resource tech and building as much as possible, if played well, can be nearly impossible to overcome. If that’s your experience, try any of these house rules to level the playing field:

• Limit to 9 buildings (including monuments) per player. If a player wants to build a 10th, the player must discard a building first so the total does not exceed 9.
• Limit to 1 monument per player. If monument building were a viable strategy in itself, this might be objectionable. But multiple monuments doesn’t fly for any strategy except resource-tech anyway.
• Double the VP penalty for not feeding people to -6 VP per unfed person. This handicap is more equal-opportunity, but it can discourage a resource-tech player from absorbing the feeding penalties the first food day or two.
• Increase the VP penalty for angering the gods and dropping onto the negative VP steps. Instead of -1/-2/-3, bump to -4/-5/-6. Again, more equal-opportunity. It discourages begging too much to compensate for ignoring corn otherwise, which is common with resource-tech.