NEXT MOVE Azul - The Queen's Garden

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With a lot to think about, the game of Azul: Queen’s Garden is unlikely to be a chatty affair everyone will be concentrating on their own garden board. However, the difficulty hits just the right spot where you feel the challenge but also want to figure it out. So, although Azul: Queen’s Garden has lost some component elegance of its predecessor, it is a more than a worthy follow-up. Azul: Queen’s Garden is the most recent standalone game in the Azul range that arrived on retailers’ shelves in April 2022. This time, King Manuel I has commissioned the best garden designers of Portugal to realize the most extraordinary garden for his wife, Queen Maria of Aragon. At the end of the fourth round, players score as usual and then a final scoring takes place. During the final scoring, each group of at least 3 patterns or colours scores 3 points. The same tile could be scored multiple times if part of multiple groups. Because you remove panels throughout the game as you complete them, the finished game is not nearly as aesthetically pleasing to behold. You don’t end the game seeing what you’ve built because you’ll have removed a fair portion of it. This leaves your board looking like it’s a smile missing some teeth. Players compete to complete their stained glass windows. The window panels making up the player boards are double sided and modular. Players determine where they can place drafted tiles by moving their “glazier” (player marker) left to right down their window, using a turn to reset when necessary. What Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra does best:

I originally bought this for someone who loves Azul games but little did I know this would be, not only the most unique title in the series but by far my favourite. It offers more choice, has more malleability and is a little bit more thinky than the other games in the series. How you place them, when you place them and what tiles you draft is paramount skills required to win. Each version of Azul has different scoring systems and other systems thinly laid over this simple template and Queens Garden is by far the ‘gamiest’ of them all. Player action, place a tile or a garden expansion – As an alternative to acquiring tiles, players could either place a tile or an expansion. In both cases, you could only place one or the other in your garden and you should pay the corresponding price. Player and evaluation wooden markers could be stored in the small slot with “AZUL” printed onto it and all other tokens including the first player marker have a nice space behind the fountain boards. Tiles And Tile Tower Drafting also comes with its own challenges. Players can draft tiles for free to their storage area, however, to place them in the garden, they will need to pay the price of the tile: pay the value displayed on that tile by discarding other tiles of the same colour or type from their storage. That means that even though you may draft four or five tiles in the same round, only a fraction of them, if any, will end up in your garden.When placing a tile, it can only touch a tile of the same colour or symbol so when it comes to end-game scoring, planning and how you build your board is vital. It is far easier to tell what is in each players’ best interest based on where their glaziers are on their board – there’s less fear in losing out on tiles you may need when you know that no one else can get them lest they lose points. Because of this, there is far less opportunities for players to be mean. However, it can still happen and can be quite punishing when it does. On one side of the display area, you could place the scoring board with the rotatory wheel. The rotatory wheel dents should be aligned with the two markers on the top quadrant (first round). You could either keep the game box close to easily access the game tokens and the jokers or prepare a pile of each close to the scoring board. The other tokens could be retrieved from the fox as needed.

This juggling of both strategic and tactical aspects, alongside spatial play and pattern-building, is rich and engaging. There’s a lot to consider at every stage of the turn yet, as the game progresses, you won’t feel boxed in by your earlier decisions. Even the draft has interesting repercussions as garden tiles aren’t flipped face up until they’re clear of drafted hexes. So taking a hex you want might inadvertently create an opportunity for the following player. Once all players have passed it is time to score the round. Each player will score 1 point for each pavilion visible on their board and many points for each of the visible patterns/colours matching those identified by the scoring wheel. Each of Queens Gardens tiles is one of six designs and one of six colours. When drafting you can take any combination of tile and expansion pieces as long as they share the same pattern or colour. Considering the simplicity of the original Azul, it’s surprising that designer, Michael Kiesling, continues to produce more and more follow-ups. The fourth entry in the series, Azul: Queen’s Garden, was revealed just last month and will be seeing a wider release later this year. Of course, if you happened to be at Essen Spiel 2021 - the biggest board game event in the world - this weekend, then you’d be able to get your hands on the game right there and then. While some will definitely like keeping tiles from round to round, others may not find it restrictive or punishing enough.The game plays out in six rounds. Unlike the original, no one can end the game suddenly. You’ll always know how much time is left in the game. Why You may Not Like Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra: Queen’s Garden is also quite a bit heavier than the previous four games due to all of the drafting and placement restrictions. This leads to a much longer play time and Queen’s Garden outstaying its welcome. (All our games lasted 70+ minutes.) Over the course of six rounds players will draft tiles to create a summer pavilion, carefully avoiding wasting any supplies. Each of the six tile colors takes a turn being wild during a round, helping players complete sections on their player board. Players earn progressively more points as they place tiles and begin to fill in each section on their board. Bonuses are earned for surrounding sections of the board and for completely filling in stars at the end of the six rounds. What Azul: Summer Pavilion does best: Hate drafting could be a thing, especially when you see your opponent one tile away from collecting all six of a type but that will be a group dependent thing. I will definitely take a tile to stop you from getting all 6 of a type and the bonus that comes with it. The fourth Azul instalment, Queen’s Garden is probably the furthest departure from the series. Sure, you still have deliciously chunky tiles that you draft onto your player board to make patterns and score points, but that’s where the similarities end.

The jokers will need to be placed in any of the 12 spaces on the storage board. Player markers are placed on the square “15” on the scoring board and the single hexagonal marker (evaluation marker) is positioned on his icon on the left of the scoring board. First Player Actions Once scoring is completed, the wheel is turned to the next quadrant. Two important observations: each pattern and colour are scored only once per game; the points that could be gained increase progressively from round one to four. Players’ markers are moved on the scoring board in as many spaces as the score for the round. Preparing For The Next Round The chains of rigidity of previous entries have been thrown away for a more free, more personalized approach to your tile placement. I really like this a lot; it broadens the space for you to create what you want and allows you to change your layout and design on the fly. Costly, Costly Tiles Queen’s Garden plays out in four rounds. However players can choose to pass and end their participation in the round when either they can’t or do not wish to continue. Rounds continue until all players have passed. Why You May Not Like Azul Queen’s Garden:In the paper tile tower, you will find 5 identical series of tiles divided into numbered bags. All coloured tiles could be stored in the tile tower itself once you have opened the bag while the grey ones (the wild tiles called “jokers” in-game) have 4 dedicated slots in the tray. The original is perfectly simple. With straightforward and easily understood rules, this is the least overwhelming in the series. It doesn’t try to get too cute with mechanics and that’s the beauty of it. Azul: Queen's Garden ups the complexity compared to previous titles, so beginners beware! It takes the mechanics introduced in previous versions and mixes them up a little in a new and elegant way. There are more decisions to make than ever before. Every one of the symbols shown on the tiles is worth a different point value that players could earn at the end of the game, but they also represent how much it costs to play that tile into a garden. Should a player ever want to place a tile in their garden they need to spend an amount of tiles - of either the same colour or symbol - equal to the point value of the one they want to place. For instance, a player could pay for a turquoise butterfly tile with two other turquoise or butterfly tiles. However, just as players cannot draft identical tiles, they also cannot pay using identical tiles. Having to consider how you’re going to pay for tiles, as well as which tiles you want to put into your garden, serves as an even greater test of your ability to think ahead and significantly rewards players who make clever decisions. The player boards feature an area for players to store their tiles before placing them in their gardens.