Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar

As strange as it may sound for someone known to be a Luciani/Tascini fan, I had Tzolk'in sitting on my shelf for years, still in shrink-wrap, alongside its expansion. It finally came down because the expansion lets it play five, and the evening called for a heavy euro. And, honestly, setting it up in full — with quick actions, prophecies, and all the rest — is itself a lovely excuse to gather everyone around the table.

At its core, what I experienced was a euro about managing choices and resources, where every move matters and there is no room for casual decisions. Corn in particular is not an innocent little detail; it is the resource that makes you look again and again at what you can do, and what you have to leave until later.

With the expansion, we played the “full package”: quick actions and prophecies joined the equation, adding more things to track and calculate. The interaction, at least as we experienced it, comes from the pressure on shared choices and timing: the other players’ decisions change the landscape and leave you wondering whether you will get what you need in time — or whether you will once again pay the price in corn.

It is one of the great ones, and I do not even feel it needs much defending. It won us over so thoroughly that we followed it with two more games using only the base game, simply to decide whether we liked the expansion or not. Tzolk'in went straight into the group’s classics. Just be prepared: I have never felt this much bitterness over corn.