Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar

On your turn you must do exactly one of two things: place workers onto the lowest visible action space of one of five themed gears (Palenque, Yaxchilan, Tikal, Uxmal, Chichen Itza), paying corn equal to the space number plus an escalating placement fee, OR pick up one or more workers from the gears and trigger the action under each. You cannot do both, you cannot pass — if all your workers are out, you must retrieve at least one. After everyone acts, the central calendar gear ratchets one notch and every worker on every gear physically advances one space toward more valuable actions.

Phase 1: in turn order, each player either places workers (paying corn) or picks up workers (triggering actions). Phase 2: when all have acted, the central Tzolk'in gear rotates one tooth counter-clockwise and the five peripheral gears rotate with it; workers visibly migrate one space along the ripening curve, and any worker pushed past the top space returns home with no action. Phase 3: at four pre-marked Food Days during the game, players pay 2 corn per worker on the table or lose 3 VP per starved worker; two Food Days also trigger middle-of-age temple rewards and two trigger end-of-age VP scoring with bonuses to temple leaders. Phase 4: technology tracks, monuments, buildings, and crystal skulls deposited at Chichen Itza all accumulate VP. Game ends after one full revolution of the central calendar gear (~26-28 rounds).

Every placement is a wager on *when* to come back, not just *where* — leave a worker on Yaxchilan tier 1 for 1 corn and ride the gear free to tier 4 over four rounds (free escalation, but four rounds of opportunity cost and Food Day liability), or pay 4 corn to place directly at tier 4 and harvest next turn. You thread three timing layers simultaneously: per-worker tier ripening, the visible Food Day countdown on the central gear's teeth, and the end-of-game Chichen Itza scoring window in the final quarter. The option space per turn is moderate — 5 gears × current lowest spaces × number of workers in supply — but the decision depth is several rotations ahead.

The dominant skill is *temporal optimization* — reading the ripening curves on each gear and committing workers to specific future payoffs, with the visible calendar serving as a literal countdown clock. A close second is corn budget management: corn is placement currency, Food Day food, and a starvation hedge all at once, and tightening corn cycles is what lets you stretch workers across multi-round bets. Pattern recognition on the synergy between gears (Yaxchilan harvests skulls that score at Chichen Itza; Tikal advances tech tracks that compound on temple steps) is the third major skill. In multiplayer, blocking and lowest-space racing add an opponent-reading dimension; in solo this collapses into pure optimization.

Lead a Mayan tribe through one full turn of the sacred calendar — place workers on giant rotating gears, harvest crops, build monuments, and offer crystal skulls to the gods at Chichen Itza before the calendar completes its revolution.

Saturated jungle-Maya stylization: vivid greens, terracotta reds, jade and gold leaf, glyph-decorated gear rims and temple iconography. The physical gears are the visual hook — bronze-mechanical-mythic rather than steampunk. Original art by Milan Vavroň; CGE house style favors bright, illustrated, slightly stylized historical fantasy.