LogFAQs > #966732628

33. Azul

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/230802/azul

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Tile-laying, abstract, drafting, pattern-matching
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 25-40 minutes
First played: 2018
Experience: 8-12 plays with 2-4 players

In Azul, your goal is to score the most victory points by filling up your personal 5x5 "floor" with square tiles of five different colors. You get these tiles by drafting them from pods shared by the whole table, choosing to take all the tiles of a color off one pod (and then emptying that pod into the center of the table), or by taking all the tiles of a color from the center of the table, where the discards have gone. You then place them in your staging area, before moving them at the the end of the round to your final floor mosaic. You score points for each tile you place on your mosaic and for patterns you form.

Like another game of very comparable weight on this list, Azul's best feature is how accessible it is - both from a gameplay perspective and a tactile perspective. Those tiles feel substantial, and they look like Starbursts, and the patterned mosaic they wind up forming on your board is excellent.

And that's probably the best sell I can give for it. The rest of the game is clever - you have to fill each row with its own stuff; you don't want to overflow in any specific category; there's a teetering balance between taking large piles to fill your rows and taking small piles so you don't overflow. It's easy to understand the tradeoffs - if I fill the five-row with only four tiles, then what are the odds I can get a single-tile grab in that color later? How bad is it if I have four tiles committed to that row next round? Am I willing to take a three-tile grab and overflow to prevent that? - and that's on top of the natural puzzle of optimizing your scoring - you would love to have every tile in your mosaic filed, sure, but even so, filling them in a certain order is preferable to another.

So ultimately, what we have here is a thinky puzzle that looks great and feels great and has nothing really bad about it (other than the individual scoring markers being a black cube that's easily knocked about on your player mat). I love the smooth consistency of it and I love that it can be so easily introduced to new gamers.