It’s Azul time. Everyone else has reviewed it, so why shouldn’t I? Azul is a light-weight abstract for 2-4 players with an appetizing presentation. Everybody says the same thing when they see its colorful resin tiles seductively radiating from the gaming table for the first time: “They look like Starburst.” This would be annoying if it wasn’t 100% true. I also really like the material used for the cloth bag you draw them from. It’s pleasantly cool to the touch and doesn’t use any of those awful synthetic fabrics found in other games (*cough* Orléans). I’ve put my hands in lots of bags for lots of games — this is one of the best. Really, everything about the game’s production is top-notch — besides an ever so slight warping issue with the player boards (as cardboard tiles of this size and thickness often have). Typically, I don’t even bother mentioning such details in my reviews, as component quality almost never influences my opinion on a game, but I do mention them here for one very simple reason: Azul is a gaming meal that looks much better to me than it tastes.
Azul is a basic set collection game with rules that make it seem much more complicated than it actually is. Though some of its elements were hard for me to picture when reading through the rulebook, within two seconds of seeing them in action I understood their how and why. This is a rather unintuitive design that is hard to explain with just words (to see what I mean try describing the game to someone without having a copy in front of you for reference), which resulted in a lack of excitement on my part to actually play it after I finished perusing the rules. An experience in stark contrast to another best-at-2 abstract I first played around the same time: Santorini, a game which before playing a single time I already had a firm understanding of the appeal of its system. None of this is of any real consequence, I know, because not every great game is going to sound great on paper. And in any case, Azul’s bright, kaleidoscopic color patterns still enticed me enough to shelve my reservations for it instead of the game. Also, it takes like two seconds to set up.
Pretending to be about decorating a palace wall with colorful tiles, Azul‘s cute attempt at theming gets the point across well enough even if it’s barely reflected in its mechanics. That may sound like a dig, but it’s really not a problem. Over-theming lighter games rarely adds to their experience, anyways. The game is played over a series of rounds that each begin with a set of tiles being randomly drawn from a bag and placed in groups of four. Players then take turns selecting one of the groups and taking all the tiles of a single color from it. The leftovers get moved to a pool of tiles in the center of the table. As long as there are tiles in this pool, players have the option to take from it instead of one of the pre-established groups of four. Being the first in a round to do so additionally nets the player first turn advantage for the following round (and, strangely enough, a point penalty). Either way, once the player has acquired their tiles they must select a row on their player board to add them to. Each row has a set amount of spaces between 1-5 and may only contain tiles of a single color. Any extra tiles that don’t fit into your chosen row cause additional point penalties, so smart selections are key. The dynamics of the available tile groupings are the tactical heart of Azul‘s system, giving the players direct control over each other’s options. Does your opponent desperately need a single red tile to complete a row they’ve been working on for two rounds? Make a selection that causes the final red singleton to pile into the center with another four of them, and laugh heartily as you do. I’ve noticed such occurrences have led certain reviewers to categorize Azul as being a “mean game”. It leads me to categorize Azul as being “actually a game”.
Once all the tiles have been snagged up, players score themselves for the round. Any rows they’ve completed are cleared out and the right-most tile slides over to its new permanent home on the matching color square of the scoring grid. There it scores for contiguous row and column completion and contributes to end game scoring bonuses. Any tiles on incomplete rows stick around for another round. Scoring tracks are located on players’ personal boards, which can make following opponents’ scores a bit difficult. But it also speeds up the process by allowing players to tally their points simultaneously, which helps the game’s pacing. Pacing is key in short, lighter games, so I understand the decision. The game ends after the first scoring round in which any player completes at least one horizontal row on their scoring grid. At that point, additional points are awarded for completed rows and columns and also for scoring all five tiles of any particular color.
The exact reasons for Azul‘s immense popularity elude me; it’s just not a particularly exciting game. It offers a fun puzzle to solve every now and then, but committing much thought to it beyond some very basic tactical considerations is fruitless. There are definitely games out there whose designs mostly prohibit large-scale strategy and focus on in-the-moment turn optimization to great effect, Castles Of Burgundy for example, but Azul is a bit too rudimentary to capitalize on the appeal of those types of games. “I’m going to go for as many vertical columns as possible” is about as deep as it gets, which means your success in the game pretty much solely lies on the efficiency of your tile selections. I also find it odd that Azul is widely considered to be best experienced as a two-player game. Great two-player abstracts invariably impose a constant tension on their players, usually through conflict or the threat of conflict. This is primarily accomplished by making each player’s victory condition the result of some form of domination over the other player — look no further than Chess and Go, or Santorini and Yinsh for more modern examples. What makes those games such exciting battles of wits is that you’re not thinking about rules or points while playing them, only defeating your opponent. Azul, on the other hand, is more like “Nice, I got all the yellow ones, so I’ll score ten points later. Then if I have enough points, I’ll win.”
I don’t mean to be overly critical, because there is still plenty to like here. Giving players a bit of agency over the game end is always a welcome touch, even if it is rendered less impactful here by the guaranteed minimum round count of five. Scoring is simple, organized, and satisfying — saving players a ton of unwelcome effort when internally calculating the point values of their actions. And with some some minor tweaks to fit a proper theme, I could see the dynamics of the tile selection system here working really well as a marketplace in a more robust game. If there is anything to take from the spirit of Azul‘s design, it is somewhere in the interplay of these tile selections — the way each of them feels like solving a little puzzle, the solution to which only ends up creating more little puzzles. Beyond its potential for fruitful iteration, however, there really isn’t much to see here. It’s not an amazing two-player game, and it gains nothing from adding in additional players except an increase to the level of chaos in its decision space. Despite that, Azul is easy to enjoy due to its swift pace, player-defined dynamics, and delectable visual presentation — particularly if you have a bit of a sweet tooth.
Azul gets a rating of THREE out of FIVE, indicating it is WORTHWHILE.