REVIEW

Azul Board Game Review

by Daniel Clarke, June 7th, 2018

Welcome board game fans. Are you itching for a new and exciting point scoring activity to compete with your friends and family? Then look no further. Join us as we delve into the marvellous, mosaic matching Azul Board Game, by Plan B Games. Claim your colourful tiles, match them up, and impress the King, Manuel I.

Azul gathers players as tile laying artists under the employ of Portuguese King Manuel I. During a visit to Alhambra palace in Southern Spain, the King was so in awe of the beauty of the tiles that he decided to do the same to his palace. You are tasked to efficiently and wonderfully craft these walls using several tiles and impress King Manuel.

How to Play

Game Setup

The game is aimed at 2-4 players and can take roughly 30-35 minutes per game. It comes with 100 Tiles (20 of each style), 4 Player Boards, 9 Factory Displays, 4 Score Markers, 1 Starting Player Marker, and 1 Linen Tile Bag. You will require around 3-foot square to play.

Firstly, each player starts with their Player Board in front of them. This is where they can build up their lovely mosaics and keep track of their scores. There are two sides to this game board. One for standard play, and one variant play. More on that later. Once everyone has their board, each player places a Score Marker on the Score Track at the top.

Depending on how many players there are, place the Factory Displays in a circle around the centre of playing area. These are to hold the tiles that come from the factory and to be claimed by each player in turn for their creation. In a 2 player game place 5 displays, for 3 players place 7 displays, and for 4 players place 9 displays. Once that is done, fill the Linen Bag with all 100 Tiles.

The player who most recently visited Portugal, or the winner of Rock-Paper-Scissors if no one has visited Portugal takes the Starting Player Marker. They then randomly fill each Factory Display with 4 tiles from the bag. These will provide the choices for the players to take for their boards.

Overall, the setup is very simple. The game guide is very good at directing you at laying out the components and it is very quick to do so. It also looks beautiful once it is done. Setup takes around 5 mins maximum. This is great for spur of the moment games or just games in general. The less time and effort spent on getting the game ready the more time you can spend enjoying the game itself. This is always a great feature to look for in board games. As for space, it can take a fair amount of to play but, no too much. A medium size table can easily handle Azul.

Playing the Game

To win you must have the most points at the end of the game. The game ends when at least one player has a completed horizontal line of tiles on their wall. Each game is played over several rounds. Each round has three phases: Factory Offer, Wall Tiling, and Preparing the Next Round.

In the Factory Offer phase, the starting player places the Starting Player Marker in the center of table. The player can then pick all tiles of the same colour from a Factory Display or from the center. If chosen from a display, move the remaining tiles to the center. If you are the first player to pick from the center, then take the Starting Player Marker and place it on the leftmost space on the Floor Line of your game board, which is at the bottom.

Once you have claimed some tiles, add them to one of your pattern lines from right to left, which scaling from 1-5 spaces. If the pattern line already has tiles, you may only add tiles of the same type to it. If all spaces in that line are filled then that line is considered complete. Any excess tiles are placed on the Floor Line. The goal is to complete as many pattern lines as possible with the Factory Offer phase. The more you complete, the more you points you can score when making your mosaic later.

In later rounds you must adhere to the following rule: you may not place tiles of the same type in pattern line if the corresponding pattern wall line already has that type. This means careful and tactical acquisition of tiles throughout the game to makes sure you down throw away tiles to the Floor Line and losing points in the process.

Any tiles that you cannot or don’t want to place are placed in your Floor Line from left to right. These give minus points as they are considered to be dropping onto the floor. The total amount lost will be resolved at the end of the Wall Tiling phase. As for the Factory Offer phase, it will end when there are no more tiles in any of the displays or in the centre. You then move onto the Wall Tiling phase.

In the Wall Tiling phase all players complete their Patterns Lines and gain points simultaneously. Start by going down each Pattern Line and moving the rightmost tile of each complete line to the corresponding tile on your wall. You score points immediately when you do this. Then, remove all tiles from pattern lines that don’t have a rightmost tile and place them out of the game.

The scoring system for this phase goes as follows. Each tile placed gives 1 point. If there are 1 or more tiles linked horizontally or vertically, you can gain a point for each that are linked. For instance, if you place a tile that now creates a horizontal or vertical line of 3, you gain 3 points. If you link both horizontally and vertically, you gain points for both lines.

Once all points have been tallied, check your Floor Line and total the number of points, stated at the tile of the space, you will lose from dropping tiles. Deduct this from your point total and place all tiles out of the game. The starting tile is placed in front of you. Then, everyone checks to see if they have a complete horizontal line on their wall. Until anyone does, fill the Factory Displays from the bag and Prepare the Next Round. If the bag runs dry, add the tiles from of the game to the bag and continue.

When 1 or more players has a complete line on their Wall, the game ends. At this point, additional points are gained. For each complete horizontal line on your wall, you gain 2 points. For a completely vertical line, you gain 7 points. And for a wall that has all 5 tiles of a certain type, you gain a big 10 points. The player with the most points on their score track winds.

All in all, Azul is very easy to understand and fun game. Not too much concentration is needed and it can provide a lot of enjoyment for you and your friends and family. The more you play and become familiar with the game the more you will start to think ahead. It becomes increasingly exciting the more you play as each player formulates their plans for success and to gain the most points as possible. The game board itselfs has all that you need too. No pen or paper needed to record scores or any outside material for that matter. It is the complete package ready to go. And it is highly addictive whereby 30 minutes can easily turn into 3 hours of gameplay.

The Flavour

One of the main ways Azul shines is the creative and beautiful way it is presented and displayed. The collection of colourful tiles are very pleasing to the eyes. Who knew collecting and placing different types of squares to make a wall would be so much fun, especially with others. But, this board game does is in a remarkable fashion, pun intended.

Not only are the tiles lovely to look at but, the game boards and displays are just as charming. The entire design of the set has been carefully crafted to reflect the time period and story surrounding it. It is very cultural, very flavoursome, and just outright encaptivating. Personally, it will be interesting to see if different versions of this game would be on the books in the future. Maybe from different eras, cultures, and civilizations. Who wouldn’t want a spectrum of board games that double up as a decoration for your shelves?

Overall, Azul is an ingenious board game that grabs you from the get-go. A wonderful piece of eye candy that is set apart from your usual tabletop activity. It is creative, fun, and can easily be a go-to, regular past time for you and your companions. Not only that but, the variant play mode adds even more replayability and excitement to the game. Many hours of enjoyment can be had with Azul the board game.