Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar rules – how to play and how to score

Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar quick rules

The goal

You lead a Mayan tribe. The game board is a calendar: a central gear turns five smaller gears, five locations where you place your workers. Each tick of the calendar moves them toward better actions. The game lasts one full revolution of the calendar, and whoever has the most victory points wins.

A turn

On your turn, you place workers or pick some up, never both, and you cannot skip your turn. After each round, the central gear turns one day and every placed worker moves one action space ahead. Corn is both food and currency; with 2 corn or fewer, you may beg for corn to get back to 3, at the cost of one temple step.

Placing workers

Each worker goes on the lowest-numbered unoccupied action space of the gear you choose: you don’t pick the space. You pay corn equal to each space’s number, plus extra for the number of workers placed that turn. You begin with 3 workers and can have up to 6.

Picking up workers

A worker you pick up performs the action of its space, or a lower action on the same gear for 1 corn per step back, or nothing. The highest spaces are free choice actions on that gear. A worker pushed off its gear by the calendar comes back without doing anything.

The five locations

Palenque gives corn and wood, Yaxchilan gives resources and crystal skulls. Tikal advances technologies and constructs buildings and monuments. Uxmal lets you climb a temple, trade at the market, gain a worker, construct with corn or use another location’s action. In Chichen Itza, you place a skull for points, a temple step and a resource; each space there can only be used once.

The temples

Three temples track your standing with the gods. Begging for corn or burning the forest in Palenque makes you step down one step. Only one player can occupy the top step of a temple, and reaching it flips your player board to its lighter side.

The Starting Player Space

Placing a worker on the Starting Player Space gives you the corn accumulated on the calendar and the Starting Player Marker. With your board lighter side up, you can also advance the calendar two days, unless that would push a worker off a gear.

Food Days

Four times per game, each player feeds their workers 2 corn apiece; each hungry worker costs 3 points. Then the gods give rewards: resources and skulls on brown-orange Food Days, points and a bonus for the highest player on each temple on blue-green Food Days. At the midpoint, Age 2 buildings arrive.

End of the game and scoring

The game ends after the fourth Food Day. Resources are converted to corn, worth a quarter point each; each skull you still have is worth 3 points, and monuments add their points. On a tie, the most workers left on the gears wins; otherwise the victory is shared.

Beginner pitfalls

Keep corn for every Food Day, pick up your workers before they leave the gears, and beware of crowded gears: you don’t choose where a worker goes. Architecture technologies never apply to monuments.

With Tribes & Prophecies

Each player keeps one of two Tribe Tiles, with a unique special ability. Three prophecies each last one quarter of the game: a calamity makes play harder, then the prophecy makes players gain or lose points at the end of the next Food Day. The expansion adds eight buildings.

With five players

The expansion lets you play with five, using a quick action board. A worker placed on a Quick Action Space, for 1 corn plus the usual extra cost, performs the action right away and comes back on its own at the end of the round; technologies never apply to it.

How to score Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar

Scoring track

Your position on the track at the end: temples on end-of-age Food Days, Chichen Itza, buildings, technologies, minus 3 points per unfed worker; expansion prophecy points are already included. It can be negative.

Leftover corn

A quarter of a victory point per corn, not rounded.

Leftover wood

Converted to 2 corn at the market: half a point per wood.

Leftover stone

Converted to 3 corn: three quarters of a point per stone.

Leftover gold

Converted to 4 corn: 1 point per gold.

Crystal skulls you still have

3 points per skull still in front of you; those placed in Chichen Itza don’t count here.

Monuments

The end-of-game points of each of your monuments, as described on its tile.

Workers on the gears

Scores nothing: on a tie, the most workers left on the gears wins, then the victory is shared.

Worked example

Emma ends at 68 points on the track. She has 9 corn left (2.25 points), 2 wood (1 point), 1 stone (0.75 point), 1 gold (1 point) and 2 crystal skulls (6 points), and her monuments score 14 points: 68 + 2.25 + 1 + 0.75 + 1 + 6 + 14 = 93 points.

Common mistakes

• Rounding corn: the rules score a quarter point per corn, with no rounding.
• Counting skulls placed in Chichen Itza: only the ones you still have are worth 3 points.
• Forgetting the 3 points lost per unfed worker: they come off the track on the Food Day.
• Adding prophecy points separately: with the expansion, they are already on the scoring track.

How to set up Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar

Setup takes about ten minutes. The number of Harvest Tiles and monuments depends on the player count; Tribes & Prophecies steps are marked.