LogFAQs > #934378136

31. Azul (2017)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Tile-laying, drafting, abstract
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 25-40 minutes
Experience: 8+ plays over 5+ sessions (2018-2019) with 2-4 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - Each player is filling in a 5x5 mosaic using five suits of otherwise identical tiles. Tiles are only moved into the mosaic after a round, during which tiles are drafted and placed in a staging area, which has slots for each row. The drafting process involves taking all the tiles of one color from either the center area or from one of several pods of four tiles (after which you move the untaken tiles into the center area). When you're forced to take tiles that don't fit into your staging area, you lose points. When a round finishes, depending on your staging area, you start moving tiles onto your mosaic into predetermined spots, scoring bonus points for adjacent tiles, completed rows, completed columns.

Design - The tiles in Azul are beautiful - thick, heavy, plastic squares with five vibrant, distinct color patterns. They feel great to pick up and slide off the circles. The arrangement of the circles around the center area is visually appealing. The cloth bag feels good to draw tiles out of.

Like the game about to follow it, Azul excels at the small things and it just feels good to play on a physical level. That's before you get to the design of the game itself, which is very clever (though arguably not as remarkable without components). While you're focused on filling your own mosaic and left-hand-side, Azul's rules on both the staging area and the placement area, plus the hybrid scoring system, provide a lot to consider. Do you try to fill the longer staging area first? How much do you value the sequencing of completed rows in terms of how many points they'll award? Are you going for completed rows (ending the game), getting the oodles of points for a completed column, the in-game placement bonuses, or perhaps the highly valued (but well-spread-out) five-of-a-color?

How about the hate-drafting? Many rounds of Azul end with someone having to take a large set of tiles that will result in negative points; trying to swing it so you don't wind up with that set of tiles is a game within a game, too. Two-player games of anything tend to be highly zero-sum, and you can really math out the right number of moves to strand your opponent. Bigger games feature less hate-drafting but more chaos; the larger number of total tiles means a bigger opportunity for one person to get utterly hosed. It never feels particularly personal in Azul.

Experience - Azul feels like a modern classic to me. My friend and I learned it at a board game cafe in January 2018 from the rulebook and played a game. He got it very shortly afterward. It's since come up a few times at game night (he's been a sparse attendee lately) and at game cafe meetups - it's a fantastic go-to when waiting for a bigger group to finish a game if it's present in a library; quick to set up, easy to teach, and beautiful to touch and look at. I've never had a gameplay moment of WHOAAAAA in Azul, but it's very consistently satisfying.

Future - Knowing the full extent of Azul, it's hard to be like "man I NEED to play Azul," but when I talk about it, it's easy to get a bit of an itch. It's the type of game that makes you look forward to those oddly shaped gaps in game night instead of feeling awkward. It's a game I'd absolutely love in my collection if only Gaming Pal #1 were a fan of it.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness