Last night I got my butt kicked and I liked it! 

Wow! Now hold on I know what you are thinking, it’s not like that. I’m not into that Tory MP stuff.

No we were playing T’zolk’in the Mayan Calandar board game.

Jonathan had got this worker placement game from one of the UK boardgame trading pages on Facebook. And it was time to get it to the table and learn how to play it.

Visually the board looks great, especially with the cogs on it painted black. The previous owner had painted them. Otherwise I wouldn’t say that the rest of the art for the game looks amazing, but I would say it’s ok.

It’s the cogs that make this game unique. You place a worker on the cogs, possibly paying a cost doing so, and ride it round until you hit an action you want to perform. And then perform that action.

Each cog has a different range of abilities based around a theme. Such as getting corn or wood, while another allows you to  place crystal skulls (oh crap I’ve just remembered that awful Indie movie, why oh why couldn’t Spielberg and Lucas leave Indie alone?) to score points and move up a temple.

You have various tiles you can build that give you an instant one off boost, or there are ones that are permanent power ups.

With four scoring opportunities through out the game, you need to make sure you are prepared. Which basically means you need to have enough corn in to feed your workers.

Going first is definitely an advantage. Being able to grab those zero cost spots on the cogs, pushing up placement for the other players.

My first mistake of our learning game was chiding the wrong starting bonuses. Which put me on the back foot right off.

As worker placement games go, this is an above average game. It’s not the best, but definitely not the worst either. I like it, and would gladly play again. Would I go out of my way to ask to play it? Now that’s the question.