Azul review

Azul has you playing as tile layers in in the Kingdom of Evora, attempting to create the best work of art to present before your King. The tile pieces you get in Azul are beautiful, and for a resource management game, the competition can sometimes be fierce, with various players eyeing up the tiles in the main pool.

Our Couple’s Review on Azul

Anjali (8/10)

Before we get into gameplay, can we talk about the box?? Azul packs away nice and neat into its box, with all the tiles going into their bag, the factory floor tiles going into inserts in the box and the player boards and rulebooks neatly sealing the rest before you’ve got the lid on top. It makes setup an absolute breeze - player boards out, factory tiles in between, then place the tiles from the bag onto the factory floor. Ten minutes and you’re ready to play!

The gameplay is nice and easy as well. Players pick up the same coloured tiles either from the factory floor tiles or the center of the factory floor and place it on their board, based on placement rules. It’s relatively easy to explain the motions of the game by playing them through it rather than explaining it as some of the nuances of the game can be lost otherwise.

While I can’t say I’m very good at strategizing the tiles and what colours are likely going to be left by the end, I very much enjoy the zen nature of the game in placing the tiles on the wall and building a gorgeous piece by the end of it.

Joshua (8/10)

Joshua enjoys Azul as a nice, chill, relaxing low level strategy game for those long days when you have company over and want to play something fun, but not use too many braincells. As you can expect, with a game like Azul, Joshua enjoys the chance at being able to mess with other players and their boards, often grabbing pieces that are beneficial to him, but might not be at the end for the other players, to see how many negative points he can give them.

As you might expect, with a game like Azul, the nature of the game is very different based on the players attitude towards each other. It allows for fierce competition, but so also for a nice relaxing game of building a wall, and Joshua really enjoys the flexible spirit of the game.

While there is some strategy in balancing the tiles and where you’re putting them on the player mat, the strategic element is not too complex for a family board game night, and is a great choice for players who enjoy simpler board games!

Recommended Table Size

We’ve played Azul comfortably on a 90 x 150 cm table or larger and have enough space to keep snacks by our side while playing. You can also play Azul relatively comfortably on a 64 x 114 cm table minus snacks on the table.

Rulebook vs Video Tutorial

The rulebook is quite straightforward, but we ended up needing to watch a video tutorial as we were slightly confused by what we were pulling out from the tile bag, including when and how many. We still recommend going by the rulebook and following the motions as you read the rules, though we did find we were thrown off initially, as the way the tile placing and acquiring mechanic works on the factory floor was unfamiliar.

Admittedly, we played a round with some amount of confusion around the working before deciding to give in and watch a quick tutorial which cleared our questions and doubts.

How it actually played out

The first time we played, was with friends. We were pretty excited as Azul was making the rounds online and everyone was talking about it. As we sat down to play and read the rules, our first struggle was with the factory floor. After having read several times what this was with no immediate explanation, one of our friends took over and revisited set-up.

We then successfully set up the factory floor… incorrectly. We set up 4 different tiles and alternated them round the factory floor, till we read that we had to pull it out of the tile bag blind. And so we reset the factory floor. Then we started the game! This was the straightforward part that was quite enjoyable. We picked up the tiles and then placed them across various rows. As you can imagine, we finished the game relatively quickly and felt like there should’ve been more to the game. None of us ever lost points and we all managed to score really well.

If you’ve played Azul before, as you can imagine, we under stood the rules quite wrong. To confirm our bias, we turned to a video tutorial that explained that you could only ever place tiles one row at a time. As you can imagine, with this new information, we had to play a fresh game and correctly, and it was tough. All of us lost tons of points, but the game was simple and yet really satisfying!

That’s the story of the first time we played Azul.

Set-up and playtime

Set-up once you know what you’re doing can be pretty quick, usually taking us around 15-20 minutes, with the factory floor being the most time consuming aspect. Its certainly fun not knowing what to expect as you dig through the tile bag before putting down the respective tile pieces.

Our preferred strategies

Anjali tends to focus on the smaller number of tiles at the start in the hopes of preventing herself from picking up too many excess tiles and ending up with large negative scores. This has unfortunately happened a little more often than she liked in the first few games, and so she now employs a mix of picking up the right number of tiles or fewer tiles than needed so she can place them in bigger tile areas.

Joshua tends to enjoy some risk reward and plays to try and prevent other player from getting what they’re looking for more often than not.

How many tiles laid till you’re an expert?

For both veterans and newer members to the more complex board game community, we’d say a game or two will have you settled in and feel like true master of your craft. The game is simple enough to explain and pick up, with some minor nuance to keep track of when you start each round and lay out the tiles available.

Publisher and other games they’ve made

Azul was originally published under Plan B Games, who were later acquired by Asmodee Games, who now own the right to publish and distribute their games.

Plan B Games made quite a few different versions of Azul, and apart from the original, you can look forward to these other versions, that are quite fun in their own way -

Azul Duel Azul: Crystal Mosaic Azul: Stained Glass of Sinatra Azul Queen’s Garden Azul Summer Pavilion

While we were having a look at the other games Plan B made, we were pleasantly surprised to find Junk Art, which we’ve played once at a board game cafe and highly recommend! There’s a few different game modes and we enjoyed building the tallest work of art. It was quite a balancing act all things considered.

Keep an eye out for some of Plan B’s other games, like Camel Up, Century: Golem Edition, Challengers and Challengers 2.

Final thoughts

We highly recommend Azul for a relaxed game night with friends or for family board game nights as its super easy to grasp, quick and really satisfying to play!

If you enjoy relaxed tile placement games, we’ve written an article about tile placement mechanics, where we explain the mechanic, why we enjoy it, and give some suggestions on other great tile placement board games. Read it right here!