Azul is a tile-laying collection and sequencing game where you help the king decorate their palace with Portuguese tiles. You aim to gain tiles on your game card that form patterns to score the most points. What makes it unique is its balance between simplicity and complexity, every tile you take affects the game and so every decision is crucial.

Play involves taking turns to draw tiles from the central tile Factory cards. You either take all matching tiles from one of the Factories and place the others in the centre or take all matching tiles from the centre. These tiles are used to slowly fill up the mosaic on your card.

The strategy you are working on is to fill up a row on your game card with the same tiles. This then grants you one of those tiles to place on your pattern and score points. At the same time, you want to avoid surplus tiles as these score negative points.

As the play progresses in rounds you slowly fill up your mosaic and score points. You get more points by placing tiles that are adjacent to other tiles so that more complex and connected mosaics later in the game can score highly. The game ends when any player completes a horizontal row of their mosaic. At that point, you get bonus points for complete vertical and horizontal rows as well as filling up all of a particular colour in your mosaic.

The result is a highly tactical game where it's all about grabbing the shared tiles at the opportune moment. Seeing your mosaic slowly fill up with beautiful tiles is satisfying, but you also need to think tactically about how to score the most points. Maybe you'll take the tiles you need, or maybe you'll take the tiles an opponent needs. All the while you need to spot the opportunity when the cost to you (from excess tile penalty) is lowest and the cost to your opponent is highest (they need those tiles).