We played Azul at Compulsory Merriment last week. It reminded me a little bit of Sagrada with the general idea of drafting nice, heavy pieces that go clickety-clack and putting them in a pattern.
This is an easy to learn game with devious strategy. Everyone chooses tiles and places them in a pattern to gain points. The devious strategy comes in by trying to force your opponents to pick up more tiles than they can use. There’s no passing on a turn so you lose points if that happens. The game starts pretty easily but everyone is conniving by the end.
You’ll score as you go, earning points for every tile you place that completes a column or row. Chris didn’t catch that part; he just gave himself a point for every tile so we don’t really know how he did. We had to default to the house rule which is: Mandi always wins. Stop by some Thursday between 10 and noon and join us. You’ll see. (Unless it’s trivia, in which case, Chris will give you a sound thrashing.)
We all liked Azul and I can see why it’s such a popular game! It’s simple and there aren’t a lot of moving parts but the game has surprising depth.
30-45 minutes playtime, 2-4 players, Ages 8+