21st August 2025 - Tzolk'in & Tawantinsuyu
by Robin. Fri 22 Aug (Updated at Fri 22 Aug)A working title for Pride & Prejudice? It's going to be a Sesame Street style write-up this week... What starts with the letter 'T'?
The answer to that question is, of course, numerous Eurogames set in and named after bits of Mesoamerica. If like me you feel like your formal education didn't really do justice to pre-colonial Central and South America: well, that's just one more benefit of playing board games. First there were the Mayans, then the mysterious city-state of Teotihuacan, and later the Incas and Aztecs. And for all of them, life revolved around collecting tiles and moving your marker up progress tracks with cameo roles for gods and astronomy.
I'll be suggesting to Paul a round of putting the 'T' games into historical order for the Christmas quiz, so pay attention. The two games I played over the past two weeks were Tzolk'in (a Mayan one) and Tawantinsuyu (an Inca one).
Of the two, surely Tzolk'in is the better known. It's the one with the cog wheels. You probably all know it, but I'd never played it before. It's a worker placement game where you place workers on notches in one of several unequally-sized wheels, which all rotate one notch every go; and as a rule, the longer you leave workers on there, the better the things they can do when they come off. Thematically very good (if slightly abstract), in that bigger jobs take longer, and the underlying inspiration is that The Tzolk'in was one of numerous Mesoamerican calendars with different-length "years".
My daughter and I talk a lot about shapes at the moment and - when these things come up - I will always say I prefer the circle to the pentagon. But in these 'T' games, I got on a lot better with the pentagon that was the basis of the board in Tawantinsuyu than I did with the circle in Tzolk'in. I just couldn't get to grips with it (no corners...). I was constantly one step out-of-sync, ready to put one worker on at the same time as I needed to take a different one off.
In the end I wasn't that far behind the winning score, so possibly the game has the same confusing effect on everyone. But, whether or not it was just an act, Pedro seemed to know what he was doing all along, so no surprise he ended up the winner. A well-rounded strategy, etc.
Meanwhile, having been aware of Tzolk'in and numerous other Mesoamerican 'T' games, I'd never heard of Tawantinsuyu before Claire listed it last week. After Daniele Tascini had largely monopolised the genre, this was David Turczi's attempt to join the party. I really enjoyed this one, though I can sort of understand why it never captured the attention like Tzolk'in: quite apart from the pronunciation challenge, I guess the Mesoamerica-themed medium-heavy Euro format was fairly well-worn by the time this one came along.
Tawantinsuyu is just the Inca word for what we call Peru, but the game seems to be slightly confused about whether it's set in the Inca capital, Cusco, or in the famous hillfort of Machu Picchu. The rules only talk about Cusco and its temple, Coricancha; but the mechanics (and the rondel) revolve around terraces that are more reminiscent of Machu Picchu. I haven't seen anything about pentagons in either of those places.
But so what? The pentagon works well as a board game mechanic. It's another worker placement game, this time placing workers on the terraces, and paying food or building stone steps to get them there. Instead of the synchronisation challenge of Tzolk'in, the challenge here is matching up symbols and colours and geography to maximise the effect of your actions. The Tzolk'in one is more unusual, and for me at least more challenging, and I really liked it - but Tawantinsuyu's otherwise-conventional pentagonal Euro config was something I could naturally get on with. Probably a good explanation there of why I'm always doing write-ups of games that were new 10 years ago - I like familiar ground.
As you would expect, this is a well-balanced game where all the ways to win are as good as each other. So I won it by doing something different from everyone else: while Tim and Stuart were taking points off each other by both chasing the accumulators (tapestries and conquests), I went after the instant rewards of steps and statues. The result was still very close.
So I'd play them both again - Tzolk'in because I've no idea how to play it and would therefore enjoy the challenge, Tawantinsuyu because it feels comfy and familiar. And I can understand why Tzolk'in is the better-known and more enduring - but to those (presumably many) others who missed Tawantinsuyu the first time round - it's definitely worth a go. A bit of research into Mesoamerican city names reveals numerous others beginning with 'T' that haven't been claimed yet, so hopefully there's plenty more to come from Tascini, Turczi et al.
Meanwhile, also at the club... Rocketmen, Everdell, Reef Encounter, the intriguing Luthier... And I tried to explain to Sam that I was playing one of those weird Eurogames with no war stuff in it, but my sales pitch wasn't convincing when pitted against QMG WW2. Hopefully all the circle/pentagon/Inca stuff sells it a bit better.