Designer: Michael Kiesling

Azul is a gorgeous, zen-like ceramic tile based game with a surprising amount of ‘fuck you’ hidden in there.

Azul is played in a series of rounds. In each round, four random tiles are placed on each of the coaster-looking disks on the table. Players go in order, taking all of the tiles of one color from a disk, and putting the rest in the middle. You can choose to take from the middle as well, which can get you large piles of tiles of the same color, but also loses you a victory point if you’re the first player. Players are ultimately trying to get exact counts of the tiles they need — if they get more than they need to fill the pattern location they’re trying to fill, they lose victory points for the overage.

Interesting Innovation: really, the whole game. The game really shines on paying attention to the overages. Savvy players may find themselves choosing between grabbing a couple points, or making a slightly less-than-optimal choice to leave their opponents with guarunteed overages. I’ve seen a guy get about seven more tiles than he could score before. He lost.

Image result for azul plan b

(Photo Credit: Plan B Games)