NEXT MOVE Azul - The Queen's Garden

Product Information

For the few people reading who have never played any of the Azul games, they are abstract, tile drafting, puzzle games. Each one has its differences, but the basic premise is to draft a set of tiles from a shared pool and place them on your player board to score points. 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 If you’re interested in trying out the original before you buy, we explain how we did so on this post. Azul Stained Glass of Sintra The game ends suddenly, so if you aren’t paying attention, you can get caught completely unaware. You must always be watching to know just how much longer the game is likely to go on.

In addition, most advertising networks offer you a way to opt out of targeted advertising. If you would like to find out more information, please visit http://www.aboutads.info/choices/or http://www.youronlinechoices.com.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 do appreciate that it may sound like I am very down on Azul: Queen’s Garden and I guess personally, I am. I am unlikely to play this game again because it is just so heavy and often frustrating, without ever feeling as rewarding as other heavy games I enjoy. That said, I tend to like very abstract puzzle games (like this) to be light because I enjoy immersing myself in theme when I play heavy games. So, if you’re a player who enjoys a fairly heavy,, deeply thoughtful puzzle, and especially if you like two-player games, Azul: Queen’s Garden might have a space in your collection. Sadly, it’s not for me. *** 3/5 One thing to note here is that if a garden expansion tile is ever empty, then it is immediately flipped – which will reveal one “filled” hexagon among the empty spaces on it. Garden expansions can then be taken in the same way as hexagon tiles – by the player declaring that they will take the matching colour or pattern (at which point they will take all tiles of that colour or pattern including garden expansions.) Now, you might ask, what do I do with these tiles and expansions once I draft them? Do I place them in my garden? Actually no – you place them on your storage board (which as mentioned earlier can hold a total of 12 hexagon tiles including any jokers, and two garden expansions.)

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. The scoring systems of Queens Garden are also different to what I am used to in Azul titles. Where the original and Summer Pavilion score as you place pieces and again at the end of the game, Queens Garden scores at the end of each round and then at the end of the game but both scoring phases are very unique to the series. Queen’s Garden is the heaviest challenge of the four Azul games. There are strict rules for both drafting and placement. Players who enjoy the chance to create big scoring combinations will enjoy how Queen’s Garden has both round scoring where specific tiles score at the conclusion of each round and end of game scoring where all tiles score again based on their groupings of color and symbol. This creates for the largest puzzle feel among the Azul series. Throughout each round you’ll think and rethink where you can maximize each tile’s scoring potential to the fullest. So, unlike the other Azul’s I have played your board is yours to design and yours to fill as you please. There are rules in place, obviously but in all the games I have played of this so far, all players gardens have been massively different at the end of the game.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: 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.

To achieve the magnificent goal of pleasing the king, players are tasked to draft and arrange beautiful plants, trees, and ornamental features represented by colorful tiles that are a signature of the Azul series. Unboxing And Storage: If you are looking for a crunchy abstract game with a large lean toward the puzzle category, Azul: Queen’s Garden could be a good fit for you. 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.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

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. Firstly, there’s a wheel in the middle of the shared board that dictates which three tiles score at the end of each round and their respective point values. It will give you a mix of three colours or symbols and it is definitely worthwhile shooting for them in each round to maximise your score. All visible patterns and colours are scored disregarding whether they are on tiles or on the garden expansions and each hexagon could be scored twice (once for the pattern and one for the colour). 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: 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.

The modular boards make the game fiddly in a way the other two are not as you will flip and remove window panels throughout the game. This often results in bumping and disrupting your placed tiles if you aren’t careful. 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. It is important to remind that the price of a tile should be always reduced by one as the one you are placing counts to cover the placing price. Understanding the cost is quite important as, for example, you do not need to pay any additional tiles to place those with a tree pattern as their cost is one. Each game begins with the players taking a player board to represent their garden and another to be their store. Three grey “joker” hex pieces are placed in the store, and there are nine more empty spaces for more pieces to come later. There are also two spaces for garden expansion tiles, but aside from these outlined areas, the store board is empty. The garden board has six spaces for hex-tile placement, and there are a few ornaments to surround (similarly to Azul: Summer Pavillion) later on when garden expansions are added – spaces for this are clearly visible, and overall there’s little issue with looking down at your board(s) and knowing how you will use them, Though players are given points each round for having certain types of tiles in their garden, they’re scored at the end of the game based on how they’ve placed those tiles, with players only earning points for groups of at least three tiles that have either matching colours or symbols. This means that players are unlikely to win if they aim for the round bonuses only, instead they will need to consider how they’re going to create high scoring groups of tiles within their garden. Winning at Queen’s Garden requires a careful balance of round scoring and end of game scoring, which makes for an incredibly compelling gameplay loop which is further spiced up by the randomness of tile drawing and which tiles your opponents decide to take. Azul: Queen’s Garden proves that the franchise still has plenty of ground to cover and delights to offer players, despite this being the fourth entry in a surprisingly simple series.

While going through the material in the box you may have found a clear piece of adhesive: as per the printed instruction, you should add it to the base of the tile tower to make it a bit sturdier. It is not a drama if you missed or discarded it as it does not prevent the game to be played. Assembly The Rotary Wheel 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. Due to the heavier nature and the considerable playtime for an abstract game, this can push Queen’s Garden outside the realm of “welcoming” for those looking for an easy to teach game for new players. 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. 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.