Azul

Why it's in our library

In Azul, each player is a tile artist building a mosaic on their own board, taking colored tiles from small displays in the middle of the table. It sits on our families-and-adults shelf because every pick is a small puzzle: take the color you need, and think about what slides into the center for everyone else.

How to play

The goal is to finish with the most points from your mosaic.

Each round begins with colored tiles drawn at random onto several small factory displays. On your turn, choose one display, or the leftover pool in the center, and take every tile of one color from it. Anything else on that display slides into the center. The first person to take from the center also takes the start marker. It costs a small penalty, but that player goes first next round.

Put your tiles on one of the five staging rows on your board. The rows hold one to five tiles, and each row takes only one color. Tiles you can't place, or choose not to, drop into your penalty strip and cost you points.

Once every tile has been taken, each full staging row moves one tile across to its matching spot on your wall, and that tile scores. It scores more when it touches tiles already on the wall in a line across or down. The rest of that row's tiles are cleared away, and a wall row never holds the same color twice. Penalties come off, the displays are refilled, and a new round starts.

The game ends after the round in which someone completes a full horizontal line on their wall. Bonuses go to full horizontal lines, full vertical lines and having all five tiles of one color. Highest score wins.

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