Azul: Summer Pavilion rules refresher

Read the refresher

You are building tiles into star shapes on your player board to score the most points after six rounds. You do that by drafting tiles from Factory displays, then spending them to place single tiles on numbered spaces, chasing connections and completion bonuses.

For setup, each player takes a board with the colored star side face up and a scoring marker on the fifth space of the scoring track, not the zero. Put out five Factory displays for two players, seven for three, nine for four, each filled with exactly four tiles from the bag. Draw ten more tiles and lay them on the supply spaces in the middle of the scoring board. The round counter goes on round one, and that track also tells you the wild color each round: purple, then green, orange, yellow, blue, and red. Start player token in the center of the table, tower between the Factory displays and the scoring board, point tokens nearby for when someone passes eighty.

Each round has three phases. First everyone drafts tiles, taking turns clockwise until all displays and the center are empty. Then everyone takes turns placing tiles on their board and scoring, until each player has passed. Then the start player preps the next round. After six rounds, final scoring.

In the drafting phase you must pick on your turn. Either take all tiles of one color from a single Factory display, or all tiles of one color from the center of the table. The color you name can never be the wild color. But if there are wild tiles in that display or in the center, you must additionally take exactly one wild tile. If the only tiles available there are wild, you take just one wild tile. When you draft from a display, the leftover tiles slide into the center. The first player each round to take from the center also takes the start player token and moves their scoring marker backwards one space per tile taken that turn, never below the first space. Wild tiles you take are only wild for this round.

In the placing phase, the holder of the start player token goes first, then clockwise. On your turn you place exactly one tile onto one empty diamond space on your board. The number printed on that space is how many tiles of that star's color you must have next to your board. One of them goes on the space, the rest go into the tower. Wild tiles can stand in for missing tiles, but you must still have at least one tile of the actual color you are placing, and a tile of the wild color may only be placed on a space matching its own color. The center star accepts any colors, but all six tiles there must be different colors. Tiles you don't spend stay beside your board for later turns.

Scoring is immediate. One point for the tile you placed, plus one more for each tile connected to it in a chain on that same star. Surrounding all four spaces around a pillar earns you one tile of your choice from the supply; all four around a statue earns two; both spaces beside a window earns three. Refill the supply from the bag before the next player's turn, and if the bag empties, refill it from the tower.

When you don't want to or can't place any more, you pass. You may keep up to four leftover tiles on the corner spaces of your board for next round. Every other leftover tile goes into the tower and costs you one point each. Once you pass, you're done for the round.

Then the start player advances the round counter, refills every display with four fresh tiles, returns the start player token to the center, and everyone moves their corner tiles back beside their board.

The game ends after the sixth round. Then score completed stars: twelve for the multicolored center star, fourteen red, fifteen blue, sixteen yellow, seventeen orange, eighteen green, and twenty for purple. Also score for covering every space of a given number across your board: four points for all the ones, eight for all the twos, twelve for all the threes, and sixteen for all the fours. Finally, discard any tiles still sitting in your corner spaces and lose a point for each. Most points wins, and a tie is a shared victory.

A turn, played out

It is round 3, so orange is wild. One Factory display holds 2 red, 1 orange and 1 blue. You name red, take both reds, and because an orange sits there, you must also take the orange. The blue slides into the center. When placing, you have those 2 reds and the orange beside your board. On your red star, an empty space numbered 3 sits between 2 reds from last round. You need 3 red tiles, so the orange stands in for the third, allowed because you still hold real red. One red goes on the space, the other red and the orange go into the tower. You score 1 for the tile plus 2 for the connected reds: 3 points. It fills the second space beside a window, so you take 3 supply tiles, 2 blue and 1 yellow, then the bag refills it.