18. Azul
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/230802/azul
1 play with 4 players in 2023
Was waiting for people to show up at a meetup and decided to teach this one. Azul is a relatively abstract game played over the course of around five rounds, during which everyone drafts all the Starburst-like tiles from the common area in the table and places it on the "staging areas" of their personal mats. Depending on how well you fill out your staging area, you can then score them once all the tiles are drafted each round, but bad planning can lead to negative points and decreased future flexibility.
The pros to Azul - it's fast, it's beautiful, it's tactile, and it's easy-to-teach. The cons are that I suck at it, it's abstract to the point of pointlessness at times, and there's just not as much happening as you might want. I've played Azul probably double-digit counts in person and it's always decent, but never mind-blowing, and at this point it truly is a filler for me that just fills a slot. It ranks above most of these games that I just learned this year for the first time, but below most of the other repeat games. And to be fair, repeated games inherently will be higher, since I'm less likely to replay bad games!
yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness