Azul

Azul is what some would call an abstract strategy game! Each copy of the game comes with a stunning bag, 100 tiles, four double-sided player boards, scoring trackers, and a first player marker.

In the game, players take turns selecting tiles from sets of factory displays. On your turn, you pick a factory display and remove one type of like-tiles. Players must take all tiles of that color, and will proceed to place them on their player board. All tiles left in the factory display are then placed in the center of the board where the 1st player token is located. From this point players may also select tiles from the center of the table instead of a factory display, and the first player to do so acquires the first player token and places it on the floor line at the bottom of their player board. They’ll go first in the next round at a cost of minus one victory point during end-round scoring.With their chosen tiles, players must select one of their 5 pattern lines into which the tiles will be placed. You may only ever have one type of tile in a pattern line at any given time, but more than one line may contain tiles of the same type. If you take more tiles than fit in the selected pattern line, leftovers must be placed in your floor line which will cost you points at the end of the round. It’s important to not have too many extras or you could end up in a sticky situation.

Players continue taking tiles in turn order until there are none left on the table. Players then score points by shifting tiles from their completed pattern lines onto their wall of tiles. Each row on the wall has only one space for each type of tile; all remaining tiles from the completed line are removed and set aside to a community discard pile (not back in the bag). Tiles in pattern lines which were not completed remain on the player’s board and can be completed in future rounds.Scoring is where the game gets especially interesting! Any tile when placed is always worth at least one point, however with some planning they have the potential to score many more by connecting them to other tiles.Check to see if there are 1 or more tiles linked either vertically or horizontally to the placed tile. Any tiles linked horizontally would score 1 point for each linked tile, then proceed to do the same for tiles linked vertically. If a tile links to others both vertically and horizontally then you would score both of them! 

But, remember the floor line we talked about earlier? The floor line is a big old mess that each player has to spend time picking up at the end of each round. The more tiles you have on your floor, the more points you lose. You lose points for EACH tile in each spot in the floor line.After scoring, players set up the next round by refilling the factory displays with random tiles drawn from the bag. Whoever collected the first player marker that round returns it to the center of the table, and they beginning the new selection phase.

Rounds continue until any one or more players have completed at least one horizontal line of 5 consecutive tiles on their wall during the scoring phase. At the end of the final round scoring, players collect additional points if they have achieved any of the bonus goals listed on their player board: +2 points for each row completed, +7 points for each column completed, and +10 points for each color of which they have placed all 5 tiles on their wall. 

There is also a variant mode where players can flip over the game board to the grey side. The rules are exactly the same except that when a player moves a tile from a completed pattern line to their wall, they may place it on any space so long as no single tile type appears more than once in each of the 5 vertical lines on their wall. 

And that's how you play Azul. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them below! Don’t forget to like and subscribe!