Azul is a dynamic strategy game, where players compete in the Moorish art of laying azulejo tiles.
Azulejo is a painted tin-glazed ceramic tilework, traditionally white and blue. When Manual I the King of Portugal saw the ceramic tiles, he fell in love with it and has ordered to have his Royal Palace interior embellished with them.
Although the setting is historical, it does not affect gameplay as Azul is an abstract game.
The game begins and each player gets a personal tablet. On the tablet, there are tables for a warehouse of Azulejo, for waste, score and the most important - the wall that you have to fill with beautiful azulejo tiles.
In the center of the table will be a market where different factories will offer players their unique Azulejo, but before the first round, all 100 colored tiles are hidden in a bag.
The game lasts for several rounds, each of which is divided into two phases:
Offer factories
In this phase, the first player accidentally pulls out of the bag colored tiles and puts 4 on each market. After that, players choose Azulejo and put them in the warehouse of their tablets. There are two ways to pick up Azulejo tiles:
- Take from one market all the tiles of the same color, and the remaining discard in the center of the table.
- Or take all the tiles of the same color from the center of the table. The player who picks up the tiles from the center of the table first in the round will be the first player in the next round.
Taking the tiles, the player must place them in his warehouse, which consists of 5 rows of different lengths (from 1 to 5). The rules for placing tiles in the warehouse are quite simple: the rows are filled from right to left, and in one row there can be tiles of only one color.
The remaining tiles that the player cannot or does not want to place in the warehouse are placed in the waste area, which is filled from left to right. The tile placement phase lasts until all the tiles from the market are distributed to the players' tablets.
Wall lining
In this phase, players move Azulejo from the warehouse to the square wall. From each completed warehouse row, the player takes the rightmost tile, which is placed in the corresponding color cell.
It is important to remember that the tile is moved from the warehouse to the wall only on the corresponding, adjacent row. Therefore, in the next round in this warehouse row, you need to collect tiles of a different color.
The remaining tiles from the completed rows are sent to the discard pile.
In the same phase there is a current scoring, which is marked with a marker on the players' tablets:
For each tile placed on the wall, the player receives 1 point, and another 1 point for each adjacent tile horizontally and vertically.
For each tile placed in the waste area, the player loses points.
The game lasts until one of the players will not collect on the wall a complete horizontal row of tiles. In this case, the final scoring takes place. Bonuses are added to current player points:
- 2 points for each completed horizontal row of the wall
- 7 points for each completed vertical row
- 10 points for each color represented on the wall in the full set (5 tiles).
The winner is the player with the highest total number of points.