A little more than a year ago, one of my friends asked me to play Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra with them and I had a great time. This post is not about that game.

A couple months later, I saw a copy of Azul on sale and I bought it, not realizing that Azul and Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra were not the same game. I realized this once I had the game home and my enthusiasm was quickly tempered. Several more months passed until I was able to wrangle a friend to play this game which I had never tried. We both enjoyed it thoroughly.

The game is deceptively simple, taking place over a minimum of five rounds as you take turns drafting tiles from discs and filling staging rows on your personal board. Rounds end when the tiles run out. For each completed staging row, players move a single tile from that row onto the corresponding row of their personal 5×5 grid. The game ends when any player has completed a row on their grid. However, the winner is decided by the points they have scored. This is where the complexity of the game comes into play. Extra points are scored for completing columns, extra rows, or filling all spots of a particular color. However, there are even deeper strategic lines present for those willing to pay close attention to their opponent’s boards.

A staging row may only hold one color of tile at a time and only one row can have a certain color at a time. These rows do not clear until a round end where all spots of that row are full. There are five staging rows ranging from one to five slots. When you draft tiles, you must take all tiles available to you of the color you choose and place the rest in the center of the table. If you draft more tiles than you can place, any remaining tiles go along the bottom of your board as dropped tiles where you receive increasingly large negative points for each tile at the end of the round.  You may also draft from the center of the table, but the first player to do so automatically receives a first player piece that counts as an additional dropped tile. However, there is some strategy in taking this as you get first dibs on drafting for the next round.

If you pay close attention to what is left to be drafted and what is on your opponent’s boards, you can choose to draft tiles that not only advance your goals but also hinder your opponent’s. For example, if there are four yellow and four blue tiles left and you can draft either but your opponent only can slot blue, it is advantageous to draft the blue tiles and force the opponent to take a massive loss of points as they must still draft the yellow tiles and immediately drop them.

There is also strategy to the order in which you fill your grid, as the unique scoring system for each tile placed is based on how many tiles touch it in the cardinal directions plus itself counted for each line passing through it. This can mean that a single tile placed can vary anywhere between one and ten points. It’s this type of deceptive complexity and layering of the game that I really appreciate.

Also, the tiles go clickity-clack in the shuffle bag, so, automatic 10/10.

I will accept no questions but comments and belligerent remarks are welcomed.