Tzol'kin Review - with Tom Vasel
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ค. 2024
- Tom Vasel takes a look at this Mayan Calendar board game
00:00 - Introduction
01:41 - Game overview
09:28 - Final thoughts
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The advantage of having more workers is so you can leave workers on the board longer to get the later actions.
I played this 3 times now, once with the Expansion.
I think this is my favorite worker placement-resource gathering-euro. I absolutely love the planning ahead. I really love the fighting for positions you have,
Yes the wheel couldve been left out as it only moves the workes but man, it really is a help. No more "Did we move those guys?", also no more accidental knocking on the board and everything is gone.
I absolutely LOVE the moments when you planbned 5 turns ago that this turn you would take all 4 workers from the field, working in combotastic-tandem and leave you with two new buildings, a new monument and enough food for the next festival.
Really really awesome game!
I've watched a lot of Tom Vasel's reviews and I often find them helpful, but he definitely has a bias against a certain style of eurogame. If you have a similar preference to him, his reviews of eurogames are probably helpful. For those of us who prefer those eurogames with the deep strategy that reward a lot of replays, reviews like this aren't of much use because he hasn't replayed the game enough, doesn't really get the strategy and isn't able to tell you much about how deep it goes.
Tzolkin is definitely one of the best worker placement games out there. The gears might seem like a gimmick but they're really essential because they save what would be an enormous amount of accounting at the end of each round without them. And anyone who has played it will tell you how visually appealing and kind of fascinating it is to see the whole game board shift in one elegant motion.
In terms of strategy, it is quite deep in this game. BUT you have to be able to adapt and FOCUS your strategy to the number of players, what start tiles you get, where you are in the start order on first turn, what strategies other players go for and the demands of getting the key, randomly selected, monuments available for end game scoring. Tom has said he doesn't like having to do this in numerous reviews of other games (he also gave a mediocre review of Terra Mystica, one of the best strategy board games out there, for the same reason), but a lot of people enjoy exactly this dynamic and it's exactly what makes the game so highly replayable.
Probably the hardest thing to get used to in Tzolkin is the fact that you can only either place or remove workers on any given turn, combined with the fact that you don't have to place or remove all workers (and often shouldn't), unlike most worker placement games where workers are first placed and then removed in the same turn. Planning out the pattern of placements and removals gets pretty tricky and takes a while for newer players to get comfortable with. And opposing players can push the center wheel an extra notch up to two times in a game which can really mess with that rhythm. This is what makes strategy in Tzolkin a great deal more complex than other worker placement games.
Tom kind of gets it right when he says Tzolkin is unique because it's not a straight forward strategy of more workers is better. Generally speaking you can't win without at least 4 workers and experienced players will rush to gain their optimum number of workers. 6 workers is very possible to play with and a very common strategy is for the player going first on the first turn to place all three workers in Uxmal slots 0,1 and 2 so they can expand to six workers asap over the next few turns. But if they do that, other players have to adapt and pursue strategies using fewer workers that are often just as viable. Tom just hasn't played enough to understand how to make this all work.
Thank you for this detailed reply, I am looking forward to play Tzolkin for the first time.
I'm a big fan of Tzol'kin. It's a fantastic euro that requires a lot of strategy and planning. It has a LOT of tension, but it has a fantastic payoff if you do well. The learning curve is immense, but once you learn how to play the game, the decision you have to make and the different avenues for success all revolve around picking your starting tiles, what monuments are out, and the best available choices you can make and prepare for (buildings and actions mostly) make this game a must.
I think the gears are actually really thematic in this game. The center gear is the Mayan Calendar and at the end of every turn it moves, showing that time is passing. When the smaller gears move it shows that your workers who were in the field or the quarrys or wherever are have been working towards more difficult projects (and thus the higher rewards). I agree that the game is very complex and after having played it a couple times I can see the main strategies, but I've no idea which is best.
The mayan calendar had a 260 day year. The years were counted with a system that was modelled with gears. So the gears were 'thematic'. It also is a really great way to keep track of how long the workers have been working on one of their projects. Yes, you could have a series of tracks, and manually move all the workers up one step at a time each turn, but that would be very tedious.
I'm very, very found of this game.
Warm regards, Rick.
Man, this is a great game; it's certainly one of the top worker-placement games out there. It's unfortunate that Tom never really "got" it though; but this is true for a lot of the deeper games that he reviews and can't dedicate that much time to repeated plays.
Thanks so much for the review Tom! You have confirmed my concerns with the game and how it would fit with my gaming group. I am happy I held off until your review. Thanks for the great work and congrats to the whole Dice Tower team of reviewers for putting out so much content this week!
Exactly. "Feeding" is just an a thematic way to make expansion a trade-off, so that expansion is a strategic decision with consequences, not just a no-brainer move. In a sense, it's a catch-up mechanic that helps prevent unstoppable snowball victories.
Even though Tom wasn't totally on board, this helped me figure out whether I might like the game - so I bought it! Hope I like it...
Did you end up liking it?
I own a copy and play it quite a bit, you must take this for what it is:
a definitive eurogamer-eurogame. more difficult than others but way more rewarding.
maybe it is not properly "fun", but it is surely challenging.
A must buy for eurogamers, a must avoid for those who are not. as simple as that.
Tom is definitely right in that it is very stressful. You need to plan skillfully and sometimes those plans get demolished. I am not always in the mood for such a deep game but I do think this is an excellent and challenging game. There are many different paths to victory and the mechanic works well. I highly recommend people check out this game.
My gaming group and I just played 3 games of Tzolkin. 4 player game then with the 5 player expansion. The beginning crushes players whose turn is 2nd last or last because there are no spots on the wheels left to put workers down without paying big corn (which is needed constantly). It reminded me of Raiders (being last was a huge disadvantage). Also if you are competing in the same engine (way to generate points, with another player you can forget about winning). Being behind in the game it felt impossible to catch up. Agree with many comments and the review overall. Takes a lot of thought and planning, appealing visually and it is a good game. More players made it just too tough in my opinion. More to say, but so little space. 🍻
I love the new thumbnails. They are clean, provide more than enough information and look nice. People don't like change and love to complain.
Worker placement games typically involve you spending workers, essentially as "actions", during your turns which let you get certain rewards, often precluding other players from taking those same actions in that turn. The mechanics vary, but popular/well known examples include Lords of Waterdeep, Caylus, Dungeon Lords, Agricola
Thanks for all the honest reviews!
Ha! "How's that for a confusing review?" Good review.
New thumbnails are great
The gears in this game make it so that I don't have to move each worker a space that is on the board. Isn't this sort of house keeping the reason why you hated Hawaii so much Tom???
Nice new table Tom! I know you've had it for a little while but it's still pretty recent right?
It's where you draft actions from a board by placing pieces on them. Carcassonne isn't a worker placement game because while you have physical worker pieces you don't use them to draft any actions. Tzol'kin, Agricola, Lords of Waterdeep, Caylus and Dominant Species are all popular examples of worker placement in game and in all of them you use your pieces (sometimes shaped like workers and sometimes shaped like nothing in particular) to select actions and block other players.
I would think the feeding mechanic was put into place to reduce the effectiveness of "get as many workers as you can" strategy. By having it in the game, it forces people to be more efficient with less workers rather than just keep getting more and more and snowballing. It's annoying, but I can see it's reason.
Hey Tom, if you want to make the gears stand out with minimal effort, you should look into washes. If you put a color wash over the gears, they would really pop. You can use different colors for each one, red washes, green washes, etc.
This game is simply great!
This game is one of our favorite worker placement games, but we acknowledge that the game is tough. I love the puzzle aspect of trying to beat the game and get my goals accomplished more-so than trying to beat the other people playing it. What made me laugh is that Tom seems to have the same complaints about this game that I do about Agricola...a game he likes a great deal.
I've watched a lot of these game reviews but this is the first time I find myself thinking that his review is based on the fact that he just hasn't figured out how to beat the game or win, and he's a little butt hurt that it's actually posing a challenge to a master gamer like himself. This is how normal people feel when playing a complex strategy game. Check AND mate.
This falls into the category of a game I would rather study than play. I respect the design and think it is solid where I quite enjoyed planning out and pulling off removing my workers in a specific way in order to get the resources I needed. It just that lacks something that I need to make it fun which might be the theme itself. Not the lack of theme but the theme it has. Once you get past the gears, it is rather standard WP fare as well.
J'apprécie votre sincérité . Personnellement , j'adore tellement ce jeu! Une mécanique fantastique , un univers sublime .
I enjoy this game very much.
I disagree with Tom on this one. I own several worker placement games - Lancaster, Manhattan Project, Trajan, Stone Age - and my group enjoys this the most, with Trajan a very close 2nd. The depth and thought process involved is very rewarding. I enjoy Lancaster and MP but they're not quite as clever, not quite as interesting, and follow a more typical worker placement formula. Also I think the theme in Tzolkin is very strong for a euro.
Holy crap Tom looks young
I played this game a couple of times and liked it, but I didn't want to go back to it, and I couldn't figure out why. I think Tom nailed it with his mention of Le Havre and other worker games. The gear mechanic is cool, but the stuff that you're building and what you do with it feels vanilla.
"Coincidentally came out in 2012..."
RIIIIGGGHHHTT. No way I'm buying that. I bet the Mayan Calendar was just viral marketing to sell this game. :P
UXMAL OP! Love this game!
there is another Tzol'kin review on the channel
Ah okay, thanks for explaining it.
Apricot approach
I agree somewhat. I think the Miami Dice ones are fairly well done. Mind you, I'm not saying they're perfect, but the red and black background works well with the dice. It also helps to bring out the video number. I think thumbnails are a little small to put up a picture of the covers unless they're the only thing in the thumbnail. As far as the Reviews, I will agree with you. The thumbnails should be exciting, and don't need the full title on them. It's why there's both a title and thumbnail.
You don’t like tension in games? That’s the excitement
I'm not entirely sure what worker-placement is. Is Carcassonne a worker-placement game? If so, then I get it, but otherwise, someone please explain it to me.
Exactly it is
Tom just needs to play too many games to enjoy a quality brain burner. Tzolk'in is one of my favorites now. I just recently discovered it on boardgamearena.com
Well it is better than mouse trap. I think it is hard to make a mechanical game and I am not talking about rule mechanisms but in making an actual machine a game because most machines do only one thing. We like games that gives us a lot of options and to make a machine that does more than one thing is rather difficult. In mouse trap sure there were a lot of mechanical components but the machine only did one thing, and that was to drop the cage on the cheese wheel when someone turned the crank.
"I like games where I get lots of things....like Agricola" haha.That game is SO constrictive. I'll never play it again.
I'm pretty sure to find it in Ryan's top 100...
They fail to deliver for those who care about it but those people aren't the target audience. For the target audience, strategy, artwork and components are primary factors, not whether moving piece A to space B matches reality.
Correctly correspond
You can dismiss a game entirely based on the theme like Tom has done in the past but it's like dismissing a sports car for not having enough space when what you're really looking for is a mini van. Yes, not enough space is a valid criticism but what's the point when you have a family of 7?
That was wonderfully put.
That really makes no sense to me. Previously, the thumbnails were just stills from the videos that often had no information at all about what was in them.
If you're interesting mechanics that don't correspond accurately to anything in reality, there is nothing wrong with abstracting some of the gameplay as well as having attractive artwork and components. If you’re looking to experience the theme in a visceral way, seek another venue rather than thinky Euro’s.
Tom never seems to know what he's doing in Euro games.
That's not entirely fair... it's perfectly possible to make a Eurogame where the consequences of actions borders chaos-theory (and I could think of a few) - effectively making it not far from just rolling a dice to see who won.
Gladness
Tom, you should check out the expansion bro. Variable powers ;)
i do agree with u i find them very confusing now. too much going on, on them... i prefered it before to be honest.
I understand you trying to pick on something specific about the game. How there is nothing wrong with it other than somewhat "just OK" fun factor.The gut twisting guilty pleasure of being rewarded for being an optimization genius is just non-existent here.
Ya Samuel
I think it's a quite good game. "Tom Vasel"
Spoilers: the 2 best strategies are advancing all the way on the technology track to get more resources and trade in 1 for 2 of any always grant success; number two involves investing in the god-track to get as high as possible to score a shat-ton of points, but you must also either focus on planting crystal skulls when you can to score points and push you up on the tracks or also advancing on the tech track to get more resources to build buildings that also push you up on the god track.
Shut up! The gears are perfect!
I don't know if I love this game, but the gears are great! :-)
Le Havre is pretty boring to me compared to Tzolk'in. This game is so much fun.
I agree.
Le Havre is slow and too punishing played with 3 players (more players impossible)... The feeding mechanism in Le Havre for 3 is really demanding
They are useless if you have a large family but irrelevant if you don't intend to drive it with more than one or two. If theme is a primary factor when playing games, don't play Euro's that are designed for another purpose.
yup, having to feed workers is something completely unexplainable.
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It's okay to just straight up hate the game. ;) For me, it was super frustrating and not really fun... I felt as though the whole gear thing which was the reason I was drawn to the game was just a big gimmick that could been incorporated into some engineering game in a way cooler fashion... Or maybe a clockmaking game, or anything with a steam punk theme... But for me the game is very "meh".
Eh ih
This was a good review and avoided the usual anti-theme rant that you sometimes go overboard with on Euro games. They should be evaluated for the strategic element, not whether the mechanics match up with real life scenarios (role-playing or Ameritrash is more suited for this). These games are designed to engage the calculating part of the mind and it doesn’t make much sense to evaluate them on terms of which they were not designed for, e.g., wind blowing in your hair when you play.
great review but ugh your camera autofocus and lighting are the worst here tom!
Resuming Toms review: "This game is too hard for me to play and to review. Sorry."
Seriously Tom, Im a fan of you and your work, but in your today DT Staff has guys that could had review this game 10x better them you... Take this criticism as a compliment, please.
I agree, not a fan of them at all
This is a perfect example of why I stopped watching Dice Tower Reviews, ESPECIALLY when it involves EuroGames. Too many instances of "I don't like this, cos I don't get it"
Maybe you should stop reviewing games that you are clearly not qualified to review.