Tikal

There's only two ways of scoring in Tikal, whereas I'm used to games where there are at least three or more methods of raking in points (seriously, Terra Mystica, with its "only" three scores to tally up at the end, I find a bit simplistic), so I wasn't really prepared for how intense a game it actually turned out to be. There's more photos than the one below, but 2.0's SD chip reader is butts, spontaneously ejecting SD cards at random intervals but especially when one is about to access the file one wants from off of the SD card, so I'm lucky I managed to drag this one off of it... but on the other photos, you can just tell, the expression on everyone's faces just grows more and more and more intense. This photo was the best of all of them, taken after final scoring at the end (Ryan won, but you can pretend I won if it makes you think higher of me (I did come in second,)) so I can't really complain.

You get points for treasures owned (with bonus points for having multiples/a complete set) and you get points for having the majority of workers at a temple site. And those are the two. But majority is a slippery thing, and treasures can also swap hands, and you need to consider carefully what you'll be doing with your 10 action points allowed, especially on scoring rounds. So yeah, pretty intense.

I'm not sure I learned anything about Mesoamerican art or culture, but the game sure didn't make me lose any brain cells on the subject like some of the activities on the Mesoamerican art class "approved" list would do to you (one of the films we can watch, Aztec Mummy vs the Robot, is on the IMDb top 100 worst films of all time list.) So I'll just have to give it a good think, and maybe come up with something for my report about it.