Azul Board Game Review | Is It Worth Buying?

Azul is a tile drafting game about decorating a palace wall. You take colored tiles from factory displays, sort them into rows on your board, then move completed rows onto your wall to score. It looks like a puzzle and plays like a knife fight, because taking a color you do not need hands it straight to your opponent.

Michael Kiesling designed Azul, Plan B Games published it in 2017, and it won the Spiel des Jahres in 2018. That award matters here for a practical reason: the jury picked it as the best game of the year for a family audience, not for the convention crowd.

I am Spector, a dad to Alex, 7, and Emma, 10. Azul is one of the first games I hand to a grown guest who says they do not like board games. It teaches in one turn, looks expensive on the table, and finishes before the kids lose interest.

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Azul Review Verdict at a Glance

How to Play Azul: The Real Rules

The base box has 100 tiles, 20 in each of five colors, plus four player boards, a score track, and a cloth bag. Setup takes two minutes.

1. Fill the factories. All players fill four tiles into each factory display from the bag. A two player game uses five displays, three players use seven, and four players use nine. Fewer displays means a longer center pile, which makes stealing easier.
2. Draft tiles. On your turn, take all the tiles of one color from a single factory and slide the rest of that factory into the center of the table, or take all the tiles of one color from the center. If you are the first player to take from the center in a round, you also take the starting player marker and drop it on the leftmost free space of your floor line.
3. Place tiles. Put your tiles into one of your five pattern lines, filling right to left. A pattern line holds one color only, and in later rounds you cannot add a color to a pattern line whose matching wall row already has that color.
4. Tile the wall. After everyone has drafted, move the rightmost tile of each complete pattern line onto your wall and score it immediately. Leftover tiles from your pattern lines go into the box lid and stay there.
5. Pay the floor. Every tile on your floor line costs points, printed in increasing numbers along the row. The starting player marker counts as a floor tile.
6. Start a new round until someone completes a horizontal line of five tiles on their wall.

Each round has a drafting phase and a wall tiling phase, and the whole game is three phases repeated. Our full Azul rules and strategy walkthrough covers the setup and the first two rounds step by step if you want to learn while you play.

How Azul Scoring Actually Works

The official rulebook scoring, verified against the printed manual:

• No adjacent tiles: 1 point.
• Horizontal neighbors: count every tile linked horizontally, including the new tile, and score that many points.
• Vertical neighbors: do the same count vertically and add it.
• End of game bonuses: 2 points for each complete horizontal row of five, 7 points for each complete vertical row of five, and 10 points for each color where you placed all five tiles.
• Ties: more complete horizontal rows wins, otherwise the win is shared.

A common myth is that diagonal lines score the square of the length. The current official rules do not work that way. A four tile row scores 4, not 16.

The floor line is where most of the real strategy lives. Every tile you cannot fit lands there and costs you points, so grabbing a color you do not need is not free. The rulebook example has a player losing 8 points from four floor tiles plus the starting player marker.

Is Azul Good for Two Players?

Two player Azul is a genuine duel rather than a polite multiplayer game. With four players, a bad draft can be absorbed by other players taking the tile you needed. With two, every tile you refuse goes straight to your opponent’s floor.

If you want a dedicated two player tile game with a longer, less abstract arc, our Patchwork quilt review covers a calmer and very different use of the same kind of tile placement.

Who Should Buy Azul

Buy Azul if you want one of these:

• A first modern board game for a grown guest who is not a hobbyist.
• A family game night staple that works with two, three, or four players.
• A beautiful game to leave on a coffee table where guests can see it.
• A 30 to 45 minute game that fits between dinner and a bedtime routine.
• A calm game with a real decision on every turn, and almost no downtime.

Who Should Skip Azul

Skip Azul if any of these describe you:

• You dislike abstract games with no pieces that move and no direct attacks.
• You want lots of player talk, negotiation, or negotiation in the rules.
• You need a game for 6 or more players. There is no official expansion that raises the player count.
• You get frustrated by hidden information and take-backs in the middle of a round.
• You have a very small table. The base box is wider than most coffee tables, and 100 loose tiles find every edge.

Azul vs Other Tile Games

Player counts and times are the current edition values, and regional printings can differ, so check the box.

Azul Expansions: Which One Is Worth It

• Summer Pavilion (2 to 4) adds wild tiles, a floor line draft, and a reserved round. Most fans rank it the best first purchase.
• Stained Glass of Sintra (2 to 4) adds translucent window panes and double sided boards, so the same game plays differently.
• Winter (2 to 4) adds cold tiles, ice floes, and a longer round.
• Crystal Mosaic (2 to 4) adds two boards and plastic overlays that keep tiles from being bumped.
• Glazed Pavilion (2 to 4) requires Summer Pavilion and adds overlays plus new scoring boards.
• Azul Duel (2) is a standalone two player version with simultaneous draft decisions, roughly 20 to 30 minutes.

Our Azul expansion guide ranks all of them so you do not buy the wrong box first.

Azul Strategy Tips That Actually Matter

Our longer seven Azul strategies for beginners covers each one in detail. The short version:

1. Do not take a color you cannot use. Every wasted tile lands on the floor line and costs you points twice, once in penalty and once in lost tempo.
2. Take from the center early. The first player to take from the center also grabs the starting player marker, which usually costs less than taking a good factory display.
3. Count tiles, not colors. Knowing the wall has four yellow left and three blues left tells you what your opponent wants.
4. Finish colors. A color placed five times is worth 10 points, which is the largest single scoring swing in the game.
5. Use the gray side of the board for an easier game. The official variant keeps the same rules with a gentler wall.

If you want other patterns to look at once Azul is in your rotation, our list of games like Azul covers the abstract pattern matching side of the hobby.

Frequently Asked Questions About Azul

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