Azul

Overview

Draft coloured tiles from shared factory displays, arrange them into rows, and transfer them to a mosaic wall for points. Taking tiles you cannot place is punished.

Designed by Michael Kiesling, published by Plan B Games under its Next Move label. This entry is checked against the Azul rulebook (©2018), downloaded from Next Move's Azul page.

1. Setup

Two to four players. Each takes a player board with five pattern lines of increasing length on the left, a 5×5 wall on the right, and a floor line below.

Place factory displays in a circle: 5, 7 or 9 for two, three or four players. The bag holds 100 tiles, 20 of each colour. The player who most recently visited Portugal takes the starting player marker and fills each factory with exactly four tiles from the bag.

2. A round: the draft

On your turn, take all tiles of one colour from either:

• A factory display — the remaining tiles from that display slide to the centre, or
• The centre — if you are first to take from the centre this round, you also take the starting player marker. It goes on the leftmost free space of your floor line and counts as a tile there, so it costs whatever that space costs. You start the next round.

Place every tile you took into one pattern line.

Continue until all factories and the centre are empty.

3. Pattern line rules

• A pattern line may only ever hold one colour.
• You may not place a colour into a pattern line whose corresponding wall row already has that colour.
• Place tiles right to left in the line.
• Tiles you can't, or don't want to, place go to the floor line, filling it left to right. You're allowed to put tiles on the floor on purpose.
• If the floor line is full, further tiles go back in the box lid, with no extra penalty.

4. Wall tiling

When the draft ends, each complete pattern line moves one tile to the wall, in the fixed position for that colour in that row. Remaining tiles from that line are discarded.

Incomplete pattern lines stay as they are for the next round.

Score for each tile placed:

• 1 point if it has no neighbours.
• Otherwise, 1 point per tile in its horizontal run, plus 1 per tile in its vertical run, counting itself in each.

A tile completing both a horizontal and vertical line scores for both.

5. The floor line

Penalties, applied every round:

Position	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
Penalty	−1	−1	−2	−2	−2	−3	−3

Your score can never fall below zero. The rulebook's own example: four tiles plus the starting player marker on the floor costs 8 points.

6. Ending and bonuses

The game ends after the round in which any player completes a horizontal row on their wall.

Bonus	Points
Each complete horizontal row	2
Each complete vertical column	7
All five tiles of one colour placed	10

Most points wins. Ties go to the player with more complete horizontal lines; if that's tied too, the victory is shared.

7. Strategy

Watch what your opponents need. Taking a colour they are collecting, and forcing surplus onto their floor line, is often worth more than your own placement.

Count what remains. If the colour you need has run out, your pattern line stays incomplete and scores nothing that round.

Vertical columns are worth 7 — far more than horizontal rows. Build downward.

Commonly argued

• You must take every tile of the chosen colour, not a selection.
• A pattern line holds one colour only.
• Excess tiles go to the floor, and you cannot decline them, but you may put tiles on the floor voluntarily.
• Taking from the centre first puts the starting player marker on your floor line, costing whatever that space costs.
• Ties go to more complete horizontal rows.
• Scores cannot go below zero, however bad the floor line gets.