Hi, I’m Ulanopo and I collect games. To the Table will (hopefully) be a weekly look at games you should be playing — and some you should probably not be playing.
Azul
BGG Link — How to Play Link
Azul is in my Top 5 games of all time — I’m such a fan that I’ve upgraded it from a $25 game to a $250 game with things I’ve gotten off Etsy (My photos are not the stock version of the game).
It’s a tile drafting and placement game.
How does it play?
The dye is Kona.
The How to Play Link is under four minutes and explains the game really well. Here are the basics, however:
round setup
Everyone has a separate board they will use throughout the game.
At the beginning of the round, you fill the “factories”. I’ve placed and filled all nine here, but you may have fewer when you have fewer players. You place four tiles on each one, drawn from the bag at random.
The center area is the “factory floor”. You place the First Player Tile there, but nothing else (There is no Factory Floor in the stock version).
drafting tiles
Each turn, you pick a color of tiles in one of the factories and take all of them. The other tiles go onto the Factory Floor.
Once there are tiles on the Factory Floor, you may draft from there, as well. The rules are the same: take all of one color. If you are the first person to do so, you take the First Player Tile.
Example: If you were drafting from the lower-right Factory, you could take the two Snowflake tiles or the two Red tiles.
Build area to the left, wall to the right, floor on the bottom, scoring on the top.
placing tiles
Whenever you draft tiles, you have to place them in your build area, which is that triangular set of slots in the middle left of your board.
You have to place all of them in one of the rows. You may not place them in a row that already contains a different color, nor may you place them in a row where that color has been scored on your wall (more on that in a second).
Any excess goes into the floor slots at the bottom of your board, to be counted as negative points later.
end of round and scoring
The round ends when all the Factories AND the Factory Floor are empty. Starting with the first player, they transfer one tile from the Build Area to the Wall in rows where they have a completed row. The other tiles in that row go into the discard pile to be recycled later.
In this example, if the player placed two more Snowflakes in the bottom row, they would put one Snowflake on the wall in the matching slot and the other four would be discarded.
The rows are processed top to bottom, in order.
A tile placed in the wall scores 1 point + 1 point for each tile chained to it orthogonally. That Snowflake in the five row would score one, while an orange tile in the two row would score 3. (Trust me, it will be obvious once you’ve seen it in action.)
Any incomplete rows in your Build Area are left that way until the next round.
Any overflow tiles will score negative points, as shown at the bottom. The negative value is for that tile, which is something that confused me when first reading the rules.
Note that the 1st Player tile will always cost you points, but you get to go first in the next round, which can be exceptionally strong.
end of game
The game ends at the end of a round in which any player completes a row in their wall. As you can imagine, this is most often the first or second row.
Points are scored for placement and overflow, as normal, but you also gain extra points for completing rows and columns, and for placing all five tiles of a color.
Minor Concerns
keeping score
I’ll be honest, I bought the upgraded boards just as much for the slots to hold the scoring cubes as for the amazing appearance. The stock game comes with a single scoring cube for each player to be placed on a piece of cardboard. It’s tiny and can get knocked about really easily. It can also be difficult for people to keep track of their score as they’re going forwards and backwards.
risk of wipeout
It is possible for inexperienced players to not understand the dangers of a full Factory Floor and fail to take steps to mitigate the damage. A full floor is a whopping -14 points, which can leave someone with twenty or so minutes of game remaining when they have zero chance of winning.
Experienced players should watch out for this and make sure it does not happen, at least until the less experienced players get a better feel for the game.
locked player count
Azul is a four player game, max. My game group is usually at least six, so this is sometimes a problem. When playing socially, however, it’s pretty easy to put people on teams and just watch them start plotting together.
Expansions
I own this, but haven’t gotten it to the table yet. It’s a more complicated version of the original game. I would recommend if for people for whom basic Azul has gone stale.
A set of blown plastic overlays designed to solve the “knock about the board” problems I mentioned above. I already had my upgraded boards when this came out, but I never would have bought this product even if I hadn’t. The reviews are poor and I feel Azul is a good enough game to warrant the extra expense of upgrades off Etsy.
I don’t own this game. It’s more of a parallel game than an expansion. I read some of the reviews and, while it seemed vaguely interesting, I already own Sagrada — sort of. I have it on Steam. I have some problems with Sagrada, so I decided to avoid Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra until someone I trust gives me a strong positive review.
Why you should play this game
I have many fond memories of playing dominoes and later, Tri-Ominoes as a child. There’s something about selecting and placing tiles that is really satisfying. Azul is basically 21st-century dominoes or maybe mahjong. It’s a puzzle you can solve.
You’re also going to hear me say “depth without complexity” a lot in these reviews and Azul is a grand exemplar of that ideal. The rules aren’t hard, with the possible minor exception of the round scoring.
Final Ruling
9/10