Azul rules refresher

Read the refresher

Azul is a race to score the most points by laying tiles on your wall, and the game ends after the round in which someone completes a full horizontal line of five tiles. You do that by drafting tiles into your pattern lines each round, completing those lines, and moving tiles onto your wall, each one going on the space matching its color in that row.

For setup, everyone uses the colored side of the player board, and everyone must use the same side. Put your scoring marker on zero. The number of Factory displays depends on the count: five for two players, seven for three, nine for four. All one hundred tiles, twenty of each of the five colors, go in the bag. The starting player marker goes to one player, who then fills every Factory display with exactly four tiles drawn at random. Any leftover boards, markers, and displays go back in the box.

Each round has three phases. First the Factory offer, where players take turns drafting tiles. Then Wall-tiling, which everyone can do at the same time. Then preparing the next round by refilling the displays. The drafting phase ends only when every Factory display and the center of the table are completely empty.

In the Factory offer, the starting player puts the starting player marker into the center of the table and takes the first turn, then play goes clockwise. On your turn you must take tiles one of two ways. Either take all tiles of a single color from one Factory display, and slide the leftover tiles from that display into the center of the table. Or take all tiles of one color from the center of the table. If you are the first player this round to take from the center, you also take the starting player marker and put it on the leftmost free space of your floor line.

Then you place the tiles you took into one of your five pattern lines, filling from right to left. The top line holds one tile, the bottom line holds five. A pattern line can only ever hold one color, so if it already has tiles, you can only add more of that same color. And you may not put tiles of a color into a pattern line if the corresponding row of your wall already has that color placed. Any tiles you cannot place, or choose not to place, go into your floor line from left to right. If your floor line is full, extra tiles go to the box lid.

In the Wall-tiling phase, work through your pattern lines from top to bottom. For each line that is completely filled, move its rightmost tile to the matching color space in that row of your wall, and score it immediately. Then discard the rest of the tiles from those completed lines to the box lid. Incomplete pattern lines stay as they are for next round.

Scoring a placed tile works like this. If it has no tile directly adjacent horizontally or vertically, it scores one point. Otherwise, if it is horizontally linked to one or more tiles, count that unbroken horizontal group including the new tile and score that many. Then, separately, if it is vertically linked, count that unbroken vertical group including the new tile and score that too. So a tile connected both ways scores twice.

After tiling, check your floor line. Each occupied space costs you the penalty printed above it, and the penalties get harsher the further right you go. You can never drop below zero. Then clear the floor line into the box lid, except the starting player marker, which counts as a normal tile for penalties but goes in front of you instead, making you the starting player next round.

Finally, refill each Factory display with four tiles. If the bag runs out, refill it from the tiles in the box lid and carry on. If you run out again with nothing in the lid, just start the round with the displays partly filled.

The game ends immediately after the Wall-tiling phase in which at least one player has completed a horizontal line of five consecutive tiles on the wall. Then add bonuses: two points for each complete horizontal line of five, seven points for each complete vertical line of five, and ten points for each color you have placed all five of on your wall. Most points wins. If there is a tie, the tied player with more complete horizontal lines wins, and if that still does not break it, the victory is shared.

A turn, played out

It is your turn in the Factory offer. Your third pattern line holds 1 red tile, so it needs 2 more. Row 3 of your wall has a blue tile but no red, so red is still allowed there. One Factory display shows 2 red, 1 black and 1 yellow. The center holds 4 yellow and the starting player marker. Nobody has taken from the center yet, so taking those yellows would also land the marker on your floor line. You pass on that. You take the 2 reds and slide the black and the yellow into the center. The reds fill your third line from right to left, and it is complete. In Wall-tiling, its rightmost red moves to the red space in row 3 of your wall. That space sits just right of your blue tile, a horizontal group of 2. It also sits below a column of 2 tiles in rows 1 and 2, a vertical group of 3. That scores 5, and your marker climbs from 23 to 28. The other 2 reds go to the box lid.