JRR Tzolkin Calendar

While the folk over in the US of A were busy choosing sanity over insanity, 12 of us were holed up in the Wherry Room playing games.

See the mighty cogs of Tzolk'in. Oooh!

Both Dean and Jimmy brought hot, hot, hot games from Essen this week. Dean brought Tzolk’in: the Mayan Calendar which has whipped up a lot of interest, probably due to the super gimmick of having giant connected cogs in the centre of the board which rotate throughout the game. Behind this fascinating and rather fantastic looking idea is the now very familiar idea of worker placement. Tim, Sam and Pete made up the required four and all of them came away from the game with big smiles. Pete reckons it plays really well and reminds him of Agricola.  Sam won a closely fought victory, pleasing the Mayan gods more than the other players. Personally, I’ve seen enough worker placement games, but this one has piqued my interest and I’m looking forward to giving it a spin.

I got to play Il Vecchio with Matt, Tom and Jimmy. This is a game all about renaissance Italy with Florence, Tuscany, the Medici, families, nobles, knights, bishops, crests, power, money all in the mix. Families compete to move their chaps around the board doing and buying stuff  - sometimes dealing with middlemen - in order to do more stuff, buy more stuff, get more chaps, buy more stuff in order to place more stuff, move more chaps to do more stuff and then get some stuff in order to get some points and then win. It’s a solid design, but lacking in originality or verve. Meh. Double meh as Matt won.

On the final table, Rich, Phil, Moritz and John larked about - firstly with Nexus Ops and then with Fearsome Floors. They played two games of Fearsome Floors, aborting the first game early as nearly everyone had escaped within a few turns. This was because they were all using the handy teleporters to jump from one side of the board to the other. What should have happened was that as soon as a player moved his hapless person into a teleporter there would have been a blood curdling scream as the person suffered an excruciating death. Everyone knows that only monsters can survive the teleporting process. What do they think this is? Star Trek? In Fearsome Floors if you’re unsure whether something will kill you - it certainly will kill you - so it was surprising that in their second game only three of the 16 explorers died. Even more surprisingly, Phil won. And he won Nexus Ops as well. As I mentioned earlier, clearly larking about was rife.

Beer: Adnams Old Ale. It’s so old that it’s dark and murky. Tastes as if a sack of malt has been stored in a coal cellar and then roasted in treacle, sack and all. 8/10.