Azul

Azul is a captivating game of decorating Portugal's Royal Palace.
Players will collect magnificent tiles to embellish the walls and please the king.
With beautiful components and art, it is no surprise this is a modern classic.

Azul captures the beautiful aesthetics of Moorish art in a contemporary board game. Players compete as artisans decorating the walls of the Royal Palace of Evora. By carefully drafting the correct quantity and style of tiles, the most clever of artisans plan ahead to maximize the beauty of their work (not to mention their scores!) while ensuring they wasted no supplies in the process.

In the game Azul, players take turns drafting colored tiles from suppliers to their player board. Later in the round, players score points based on how they’ve placed their tiles to decorate the palace. Extra points are scored for specific patterns and completing sets; wasted supplies harm the player’s score. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Age: 8 and up

Players: 2 – 4

Playing Time: 30 – 40 minutes

To begin the game, you build the game board using hexagonal terrain tiles. Catan is born - a beautiful island with mountains, pastures, hills, fields, and forests, surrounded by the sea."> Each of you places two small houses on spaces where three terrain hexes meet. They are your starting settlements. And so it begins. The starting player rolls two dice. An “11!” Each terrain hex is marked with a number. Each player who owns a settlement adjacent to a terrain hex marked with the number rolled receives a resource produced by this hex. Hills produce brick, forests produce lumber, mountains produce ore, fields produce grain, and pastures produce wool. You use these resources to expand across Catan: you build roads and new settlements or upgrade your existing settlements to cities. For example, a road costs 1 brick and 1 lumber. If you do not have the necessary resources, you can acquire them by trading with your opponents. Each settlement is worth 1 victory point and each city is worth 2 victory points. If you expand cleverly, you may be the first player to reach 10 victory points and thus win the game!