Tzolk'in and That Jazz

Didn't really think I was all that stressed until I was tossed a (still partly frozen, cherry) fruit pie (being declared, "happy pie day!" of course,) ate it, and felt stress melt away in alarming quantity.

Realized with, not making my business loan official, it's not really official, so here it is in writing, some draft of contract: 100% of all monies received from my business are going to my parents, until such time as my debts are paid off. I think I can handle food for myself and everything in the meantime.

Okay, so. Today I spent a lot of time doing stuff (read: watching movies) for Mesoamerica class (Kings of the Sun is a pretty good movie; I've mentioned before how Yul Brynner is basically God, right?) and so my post I've got for you today is my review of Tzolk'in for Professor Raish. It's still not an official game we can play for points in the class, but I mentioned it to him and he told me to print out some information on it. So I wrote this, and will deliver it to him (along with a helpful diagram of the board) tomorrow morning. And maybe that'll get me points somehow!

The game of Tzolk'in revolves around a revolving gear, symbolizing the advancing of time. This gear is connected to smaller gears around the edge of the board (the board is pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle, each piece having a gear on it which all fit together,) each gear representing a famous site whereat you can on your turn either place workers or pick them up. As you turn the large gear in the center counterclockwise, once per round, the smaller gears advance clockwise, which means that the little workers you place down in slots on the gears at the sites can afford better stuff for that round, or even better things the round after if you leave them on. You can only either put on one or more workers or take them off, so you have to be judicious not only where you place your worker but when.
The locations around the board are Chichen Itza, Yaxchilán, Uxmal, Tikal and Palenque. At Yaxchilan you can gain resources (wood, stone, gold, and even crystal skulls.) Chichen Itza is where you spend your crystal skulls, which allows you to move up along one of three temple tracks and earning you points. You can also harvest wood at Palenque, but it's mostly used to get corn, the currency and point system in the game (the further along the gear you get the more corn or wood you earn, of course- but you also have to use slash-and-burn agriculture to get at the corn, so if you haven't harvested wood first at the higher-up spaces, you displease the gods and must move back a space on one of the temple tracks.) At Uxmal, you can put your corn to work, trading it with resources or paying it to do things such as moving up temple tracks. At Tikal, you can build buildings if you have the resources for it, or you can increase your engineering capabilities, giving you bonuses that can be used elsewhere (for example, better farming capability, giving you more corn per harvest.)
There are quite a few ways to achieve points in the game- you can advance up along temples, which can also get you resources; you can build buildings or monuments, which can earn you points by themselves or give you special powers; you can place crystal skulls at Chichen Itza, which give you points, allow you to move up on a temple track, and can sometimes even give you resources (and remember, the further around the gear you are, the better.)
All told, it's a pretty complicated game, even without getting into the Tribes and Prophecies expansion which allows you to take on the roles of historical figures and/or have prophecies laid out for you at the beginning of the game which you must fulfill (though the expansion doesn't really make it that much more complicated.) If people in this class think that Tikal is a difficult game to learn, they'll be wise to steer far clear of this game; there's a lot that I haven't even mentioned about it, like how you need to feed your workers corn when it's scoring season, or how who the first player in a round is can change with a worker being placed at a certain non-gear space, and I'm certain there's more that I haven't thought of that I'm forgetting. But those are the basics.

Boy it was a picnic boiling down all the rules like that, let me tell you, but I think I did a pretty good job all told. If only I could remember the part I know I'm forgetting...