Azul: A beautiful tile-laying masterpiece

With the release of Azul: Queen's Garden, there are now 5 tile-laying games under the Azul title by Michael Kriesling. Today, I will share my review on the first Azul.

I confess that I've played over 800 games online and 100 offline. Whilst online is good for a virtual hangout with friends, nothing beats the physical game which accentuates the gameplay. The 5 different types of coloured tiles are close to indestructible and have a smooth and pleasantly weighted feel. There is also a cloth bag used to store the tiles and thick player boards.

The theme is lightly tacked on, and you are a glass blower who is trying to build a cathedral for King Louis XI. Azul is mostly an abstract game except for the starting condition - the last person to have been to Portugal starts the game. Due to the pandemic, it meant that for a long in my group the same couple always ended up arguing about who got off the plane first for their holiday to Portugal.

Azul plays from 2-4 players, and I would say there is no bad player count. At 2, it is extremely chess-like and has a high element of take that. At 3 and 4, I would say it is more relaxed as we do not try to calculate excessively.

To begin, small plates (depending on player count) are filled randomly with 4 tiles each, taken from the bag. Each turn, players take all tiles of a colour, with all remaining tiles placed on the table as the 'other' plate. The first person to take from the 'other' plate, gets a first player token for the next round. Each row (from 1 to 5 squares) must only be filled with 1 colour, and any overflow or tiles that you do not wish to place onto a row are placed in the bottom discard row. These tiles, along with the 1st player token, will be scored negatively at the end of the round, going from negative 1 to 3.

The round ends when all tiles have been placed, then scoring begins. For any completed row, 1 tile is placed in its corresponding spot on the right-hand side in the output ‘cathedral pane’ with the rest discarded. The board is 2-sided, with fixed colours in the normal version (which I prefer) and completely up to the player in the advanced. Tiles are scored by the length of column/row created, e.g., adding the middle tile of a plus sign would score 6 points – 3 for row and 3 for column, but a non-connected tile would score 1 point. Any non-completed rows are kept on the board for the next round. For both normal and advanced, each colour must only be placed in each row and column once. This leads to (hilarious to us) situations where players gang together to leave 8 tiles of the same colour for the last player, alongside a hefty penalty. 

The game ends at the end of a round when a player completes a row. There are some end game scoring bonuses for rows, columns, colour, and the highest scoring player is crowned the master glassblower.

I love Azul as it works well with new gamers and has enough depth for everyone. Given the relative open-information nature of the game and the unpredictably from pulling tiles from the bag, I can see that players prone to AP could take their time. Azul is as chill as the players wish to make it and one that will forever stay in my collection.