Azul Review
There is no Dana
Only Azul.
Players: 2-4
Time: 30-45 mins
Ages: 8+
Designer: Michael Kiesling
Artist: Philippe Guérin, Chris Quilliams
Publisher: Next Move Games
Freshly fired and ready to be cemented to your tabletop, Azul has not only been one of 2018’s Twitter darlings, it has also been nominated for the Spiel des Jahres, literally, ‘game of the day’ in Germany. Which means it must be good, right? RIGHT…?
Yeah, it’s pretty damn good.
If I say to you the words ‘bathroom tiling’ do you get a thrill of excitement? Would you like to do some tilling, and score points while you’re at it!? If you’re Portuguese or, apparently, a Spiel des Jahres judge, I know the answer is already yes. But what about you? Yes, you! While you contemplate your answer, please stare at this complementary starburst Azul tile with longing. I’ll just be preparing your review.
OK, now that the idea of having gorgeous, shiny, chunky tiles in your hands has you drooling, I need only tell you about how we arrange them. Well, they start scattered about on the half a dozen or so market tables and you’ll be dropping by like a bull in a china shop to grab said tiles. You pick a table, grab all the tiles of a given colour, and then dump all the rest on the floor/in the centre of this ring. This new spot becomes a whole new area from which you can grab tiles which can, and will, build up some pretty big sets as the round goes by.
Big sets are, sure enough, good… or at least efficient in terms of actions, but not necessarily any better than small sets. There is also a fine degree of calculated timing involved in this stage as you hope to manipulate the centre towards your preferred tile sets/not a terrible set. But this won’t be apparent until you’ve been introduced to what you’re doing with all these tiles, until you’ve seen… your bathroom player board.
On the right is the design you’ve carefully chosen for your wall, a pattern fine enough for any Prince of Portugal atop his throne. You’ll want to get your tiles there. But during the shopping phase, the sets of tiles need to be slotted into the holding rows on the left. Grabbing a set of 5 tiles all at once will fill the entire bottom row! But likewise just two will fill the second row. At the end of the shopping phase, any filled row on the left finishes the corresponding tile space on the right. Any others wait on your board till next round.
Now, it might sound arbitrary that the top row only requires a single tile to fill a space while the bottom row takes many, but you have to remember that the bottom is where all the pipes are so of course you’re going to need five times as many tiles as the top to get a neat, finished job. Come on. Azul is quite thematic when you embrace the bathroom analogy.
When you fill a spot in the pattern you’ll immediately score some (husband/wife?) points. 1 for a tile on its own (“really? One tile? Why did you bother calling me in?”) or one point for each tile in that row and column that are connected (“ooo. It looks quite good now that you’ve filled in that gap”) At game end you’ll also score some big bonus points for completely filled columns (“lovely!”) and having all the spaces of one colour filled (“you’ve done such a good job!”). It all sounds so lovely and constructive and positive! Just trying to fill as much of your design as possible before the game ends, which happens as soon as some selfish so and so finishes a full row.
Hold on a moment though… is that… did you smash a tile? (“How could you!?”) I’m afraid we’ll have to dock you some points for that.
The thing with Azul, that you’ll very quickly realise, is that as spaces in your design fill up you can no longer collect tiles of those colours in those rows. Likewise when you start filling a holding row with tiles you need to stick with that colour until it’s finished. Yet no matter what, you must continue to take sets of tiles when your turn comes around. Ever take a tile (or several…) you can’t fit in the holding spaces and you have to add them to the row of shame at the bottom of your board, each space costing you ever more points! If you’re not careful in Azul, you’ll end up trying to balance an ever-taller teetering tower of fragile tiles that will all but inevitably slip and smash. And you can guarantee your friends will be happy to give you a shove where they can!
This is the surprising vicious streak hiding in Azul: never have the shelves of Homebase seemed so intimidating. The game starts off wonderfully straight forward and you should be fine in the first round. But as that design fills up you restrict your options ever more and you must carefully play the selection of tiles available, trying to shove the worst results on your opponents.
The result is a game that fits as satisfyingly into a Spiel des Jahres nomination as the last bathroom tile into a perfectly judged gap. A turn is simply grabbing a set of tiles and placing them on your board. So easy. But with far more implications than it has any right to. It becomes a genuinely deep puzzle if you are that way inclined, but holds up to more casual play and leaves you with the satisfaction of seeing the pattern you’ve built up over the game. Even if you’re never actually going to finish that bathroom wall…
Rating: Only Azul
Our copy of Azul was provided for review by Asmodee UK. You can get hold of a copy from your local hobby store for £39.99 RRP.
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