Azul

Category: Drafting

Designer: Michael Kiesling

Publisher: Next Move Games

Year Published: 2017

Players: 2-4

Playing Time: 30-45 minutes

To Play or Not To Play: Play

Wait, don't leave! I know, I know, I stop posting reviews for two years and then when I finally come back, it's for an 8-year old modern classic? I could have chosen something more topical. Or more interesting. Or rarer. But there is a reason I picked this! I don't want to give it away, but I think it'll make a lot more sense in a month or two. For now, join me as I look at this highly successful and popular board game.

A 4-player game of Azul all set up and ready to start playing

Azul is a simple tile-drafting game. Each player has a board that depicts a 5x5 grid of tiles arranged in a pleasing pattern. Your goal is to fill this pattern with tiles that you draft from the center of the table in ways that will score you more points than your opponent. Simple enough, right?

To the left of each row of tiles in the grid, you'll see stair-pattern of squares. These represent how many tiles you need to draft in order to place a tile in that row. There is only one square next to the top row, so you only need to draft one tile. But the bottom row has five squares, which means you need five matching tiles to fill the space on the bottom row. As an added catch, as soon as you draft any tiles, you must immediately place them into one of those rows on the staircase. You cannot mix-and-match patterns or rows: if you have two solid-red tiles on the bottom row, you can only place solid-red tiles there. And if you only need 1 red tile in your bottom row, you can't put the other three you drafted in the middle row.

At the end of the third round, this player has filled the top three rows of the stairway with black and red tiles. The bottom two rows are only partially filled. This player will get to place their respective black and red tiles into the grid in the top three rows, but the bottom two will remain partially filled so the player can try to finish them in Round 4.

After all the tiles have been drafted, you then get to place a tile into the grid if you filled up the entire row in the matching stairway row. That's right, even if you fill the bottom row with five solid-red tiles, you don't get to place a solid-red tile into the bottom row until the end of the drafting phase. Any rows that aren't full stay on your board into the next round so that you can hopefully finish them.

Speaking of drafting, let's talk about that now. Each round begins with the first player randomly drawing tiles out of the bag to fill the circular "factory" tiles in the center of the table. Each factory starts with four tiles. The first player begins by selecting a factory and taking all of the tiles of one pattern from that factory and placing them into one of the rows of the stairway. Any remaining tiles from the factory move to the center of the table with the 1st player tile.

These factories each have four unique tiles, so if you were to draft from one, you would only get one tile while the other three go to the center of the table.

Subsequent players may either repeat the same action (pick a factory, take all the tiles of a single pattern, move the remainder to the center) or they can take a collection of matching tiles from the center, along with the 1st player tile if it's still available. This continues until all of the tiles have been drafted.

So what happens if you draft more tiles than you can fit? Any excess tiles fall to the bottom of your board and smash, resulting in minus points. The 1st player token doesn't fit anywhere in your grid, so the payment for getting first pick next round is -1 point this round. But you can also find yourself in a situation where there are only six red tiles left, and the only place you can fit red tiles only has room for two. Then the other four fall to the ground. The more tiles smash, the more minus points you get, so try to avoid them!

After drafting is complete, the players place tiles from full rows into their grid starting from the top and working down. When you place a tile in your grid, any excess tiles from the row get discarded into the box. If the bag ever runs out of tiles, you just dump the tiles from the box back into the bag. Also, when you place a tile, you score some points. When you place your tile, you score 1 point for each other tile is already on the board in an adjacent row or column. So if your first tile is a red tile on the top row, it'll score 1 point. Then if your next tile is a yellow one in the next row down, it'll score two points (one for itself, and one for the tile directly above it).

In this example, the top black tile gets placed first. It is not adjacent to any tiles horizontally or vertically, so it scores 1 point. Then the red tile is placed directly below it. It is adjacent to two tiles, the black one above and the yellow one below, so it scores three points. Then the black tile in the third row also scores three points for the two tiles it's adjacent to above it.

If a tile is adjacent to tiles both horizontally and vertically, you get to count it twice (once for the horizontal row and once for the vertical column), which means placing tiles in a tight grid will score you more points than placing them willy-nilly.

The game ends once a player has successfully filled all five slots in a single row. That'll usually be the top or second row, but it could one lower down if they're lucky. The game ends as soon as that happens, and each player adds their bonus points to their score. What bonus points, you ask? Well, there are three end-game bonus "objectives." Each full horizontal row scores you 2 bonus points. That's the easy objective, and most players will accomplish that at least once.

The next one is for filling a complete vertical column, which is worth 7 points. That's a lot more challenging! Filling those bottom rows is tricky, and it's rare for a player to complete this objective more than once or twice in a game. And the final objective is for placing five copies of the same patterned tile on the board. Each pattern has one spot it can go in each row, arranged in a wrapping diagonal pattern. This is tricky since you're incentivized to place tiles in a tight grid to maximize placement points. But if you pull it off, you get a bonus 10 points for each complete set of five tiles!

As you can see, this is not a complicated game. I often have to gloss over some rules or simplify some things to keep my reviews from getting too long. But in this case, I went through all the rules in just a few paragraphs. I've taught this game to many people of all manner of ages, experience levels, and game preferences. And literally everyone who has played this game enjoys it. Obviously, the simple rules help a lot, but the true secret is the tiles.

Look at these beautiful, smooth, delicious tiles! Seriously, every time I play this game I want to devour these tokens!

These tiles feel amazing in the bag, they're the perfect weight for picking up, sliding around, and slotting into your grid. They feel amazing, they look amazing, and they are 100% the best part of playing this game. Not that the game is bad! Not by any stretch. But with cardboard tokens, this game would be fine. The plastic tiles catapult it into a magical experience! Just reach your hand into that bag of tokens, and you'll feel what I mean!

But wait! There's more! The boards in Azul are double-sided. If you get bored or tired of placing your tiles in the same old grid game after game, just flip the board over to the gray side:

On the back of the Azul player board is a plain gray grid. Now you can place your tiles wherever you want!

On the backside, the 5x5 grid doesn't force you place a certain tile in a certain place. You can go wherever you want at first! However, you have to follow two important rules: no more than one tile of each pattern in each row, and no more than one tile of each pattern in each column. So no stacking all your plain red tiles into a single column! That would be dull. You have to spread your tiles out and make a more interesting and beautiful pattern!

The grey side is a fun variant for players who are pretty familiar with Azul. It's a little trickier and requires you to plan a little further ahead than the normal version, so it makes for a good option when you're playing with more experienced gamers. And it's completely optional, so if you don't like it, don't use it! It's not like it takes up any extra space in the box!

Azul is a fantastic game. It's simple and accessible for all kinds of players, and it's also got some surprising strategic depth when you play with more experienced folks. This is a game I've played over and over again, and while I wouldn't say it's one of my favorites, it's a game I continue to enjoy eight years later. I'd put rate it up there with Carcassonne and Catan as a great entry point into the boardgaming hobby. You should absolutely play this game.

Thanks for your patience during my extended hiatus! I think I'm back now, so look forward to more regular posts in the future. Next week I'll be at the World Boardgame Championships, so my next post will likely be the following week, and it'll probably be a WBC retrospective. You can follow me on Instagram @toplayornot and on Mastodon @chriskizer@kind.social to stay up-to-date on all my gaming activities and more!