About two years ago I read a review of a new board game that interested me. I couldn't find it in area stores. While shopping at Meijer before Christmas this year, I browsed the jigsaw puzzles and saw near them some games. There I spied Azul, the game that had received good reviews. I bought it for my husband for a Christmas present.
We have tried playing some rounds. We found the manual sort of vague about some things; I watched a couple playing it on YouTube. That answered some questions.Up to 4 people can play. Each player has his/her own playing card. Each card is identical.
At the top is the scoring grid. Below is the pattern line on the left and the wall to be tiled on the right. A player must cover the painted design on the wall with the matching tile. At the bottom of the playing board is the floor line.The game is played in stages. In the first stage, the pattern line must be filled with tiles. Each row progressively is longer (and thus harder to completely fill). Each row of the wall contains the same 5 designs but in different order. In the second stage of the game, the tiles from only complete pattern lines are moved to the wall line directly across. That is when scoring begins.
To obtain tiles to fill the pattern line, the tiler goes to the factory displays. For 2 players, there are 5 factory displays. For each additional player, there are an additional 2 displays; so for 4 players, the number is 9.
The factory display is represented by a circle.
Before starting play, tiles are randomly drawn from the bag. Each factory display receives 4 tiles. The factory displays sit in a circle in the middle of the table. In my factory display above, I placed 5 tiles so you could see what the tiles look like. However, for playing purposes there will only be 4 tiles per factory display. There is a single white tile with the number 1 in blue that is not in the bag; it goes in the middle of the table surrounded by the factory displays.
Each player at his turn selects tiles from just one factory display. The tiles must match each other. If there are 3 black tiles on a circle, he must take all of them. He puts the matching tiles on one of his pattern lines (his choice). He cannot spread them out on other pattern lines. As the game progresses, if all he has left to fill are the smaller pattern lines, the tiles he draws but cannot use go on the floor line left to right which results in negative points when the final scoring is done.
After the player takes his tiles from a factory display, the remaining display tiles of that factory are put in the center of the table with the specialized number 1 tile. The factory display circle is set to the side.
Once there are tiles in the center, a player can choose to take tiles from the remaining displays or from the center. The rule remains that only matching tiles can be taken and all of them that match must be taken at the same time. The first player to take from the center, puts the specialized number 1 tile on his floor line. He will receive negative points during final scoring, but he also will be the first to play in the subsequent round.
At some point, all of the factory displays (circles) will be used up and set aside and each player during his turn will have to take tiles from the center. To get tiles he needs to complete his pattern lines, he usually will have to take tiles he cannot use and must place on the negative floor line.
Once all of the tiles have been taken, wall tiling begins. Only completed pattern lines can be used. So, if the player has 3 matching tiles in a pattern line, but the pattern line has 4 spaces, he cannot use any of the tiles in that line to tile the wall. The tiles sit until the next round when the player will try to complete the line.
For a completed full pattern line, the player moves the right-most tile to the tile line directly across and covers the painted design. He moves his scoring grid marker 1 point for each tile. The remaining tiles in the pattern line are discarded (put in the lid of the game box). As the wall tile lines fill up, if a tile is placed directly adjacent to another tile the score is not 1 point, but a point for each adjacent tile as well. During the first round, these adjacent tiles will only be above or below, but in subsequent rounds, tiles in the same wall tile line may be next to each other as well.
The game ends when one of the players fills all 5 tiles in a horizontal row. The rule book was rather vague about if the remaining players could finish transferring the qualified tiles in a pattern line to the wall line or if all play ceased. The YouTube people allowed every player to finish the transferring. There is a bonus for filling the wall tile with all 5 tiles. There is a bigger bonus for filling a vertical row, but the vertical row does not cause the game to end. There are 10 bonus points for each style of tile that has all 5 on the board.
Obviously, the game cannot be completed in one round since only one style of tile is transferred each time from the pattern line to the wall line. If you already have a tile of a certain color/design in the wall line, you cannot take factory tiles in later rounds that match that tile and put them in that pattern line. There would be no way to play it since the wall has it. This has consequences for what to do with tiles you had to draw but don't really want. They have to go on a different appropriate pattern line (i.e., one without that design already played on the wall line) or to the floor line. Negative points can really mount.
The other side of the playing board has an alternate style of playing. There are no designs painted on the wall. The objective is still the same, that is to lay 5 different styled tiles on the wall in each row, but the player decides how he wants to place them to maximize points. Too much logic for my poor brain. I will stick with the side with the painted designs. You really have to play several rounds of this game to feel like you know what you are doing anyway.
This morning my amaryllis is finally blooming. I think when I ordered this I thought the red "trim" would be more pronounced. The flowers really are not very colorful.
I got my first Moderna shot yesterday afternoon. I don't see any redness nor swelling, but my arm is sore, especially if I try to lift it above my head. I don't the pulley exercise is going to be done today.
