Paying the cost of a tile (or a garden expansion) – The price of a tile or expansion is linked to the pattern on it as summarized nicely on the player board. On the other side of the display are you could position the tile tower. You will need first to pour all the tiles out from the tower and into the drafting bag as the tower could be used to store all tiles consumed during each game round. You could also choose to not use the tower and store the tiles where you prefer although the tower is a nice cosmetic addition to the table. Players Setup Azul: Queen's Garden ups the complexity compared to previous titles, so beginners beware! It takes the mechanics introduced in previous versions and mixes them up a little in a new and elegant way. There are more decisions to make than ever before. If you are looking for a crunchy abstract game with a large lean toward the puzzle category, Azul: Queen’s Garden could be a good fit for you. So before you can even start to think about getting pieces onto your garden, you have to plan ahead and ensure you can actually place the tiles you need. But wait: before you can even do that you have to ensure there’s room for them in your storage! Choosing which pieces to draft on your turn can thus become a snake pit where you might want a particular item from those on offer, but end up passing because you don’t want other matching colours or symbols clogging up your store.

The chains of rigidity of previous entries have been thrown away for a more free, more personalized approach to your tile placement. I really like this a lot; it broadens the space for you to create what you want and allows you to change your layout and design on the fly. Costly, Costly Tiles In the paper tile tower, you will find 5 identical series of tiles divided into numbered bags. All coloured tiles could be stored in the tile tower itself once you have opened the bag while the grey ones (the wild tiles called “jokers” in-game) have 4 dedicated slots in the tray.

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As for the main components, along with the player’s board, the garden, Queen’s Garden also comes with honeycomb-shaped cardboard tiles – these are the expansion to your garden – on which the tiles will be placed. The tiles score in a combination of three or more, which could be by colour or pattern. The scoring varies depending on groups, types of tiles and other bonuses, and with several scoring rounds before the end of the game, players need to think both short and long term. When placing a tile, a player could choose any empty space as far as there are no other tiles next to the one they are placing or the tile next to the new one share the same colour or pattern. The cost could be covered by any combination of tile/ garden expansion/ Joker as far as there are no duplications and each of them counts as one when used to pay a cost, disregarding the pattern they are showing. The tiles used to pay the cost are discarded into the tile tower and not added to the bag.

Hate drafting could be a thing, especially when you see your opponent one tile away from collecting all six of a type but that will be a group dependent thing. I will definitely take a tile to stop you from getting all 6 of a type and the bonus that comes with it. The jokers will need to be placed in any of the 12 spaces on the storage board. Player markers are placed on the square “15” on the scoring board and the single hexagonal marker (evaluation marker) is positioned on his icon on the left of the scoring board. First Player Actions Player action, Pass – Passing is final and once passed the players could not do any further actions. The first players that pass will receive the first player tile and once all players have passed, the round is over.Even though the big points are up for grabs when the game is complete, your decisions need to take the round end scoring into account, too, as it can be decisive in a close game. You’ll also need to consider surrounding garden features on your board during hex placement, as that earns you invaluable jokers. And finally, you need to watch the garden tiles: you start out with limited space in your garden to place hexes, so you need the tiles to expand.

Tokens and Garden expansions. The first setup requires the players to unpunch all the garden expansions and the tokens first. With a lot to think about, the game of Azul: Queen’s Garden is unlikely to be a chatty affair everyone will be concentrating on their own garden board. However, the difficulty hits just the right spot where you feel the challenge but also want to figure it out. So, although Azul: Queen’s Garden has lost some component elegance of its predecessor, it is a more than a worthy follow-up.For the few people reading who have never played any of the Azul games, they are abstract, tile drafting, puzzle games. Each one has its differences, but the basic premise is to draft a set of tiles from a shared pool and place them on your player board to score points. Though players are given points each round for having certain types of tiles in their garden, they’re scored at the end of the game based on how they’ve placed those tiles, with players only earning points for groups of at least three tiles that have either matching colours or symbols. This means that players are unlikely to win if they aim for the round bonuses only, instead they will need to consider how they’re going to create high scoring groups of tiles within their garden. Winning at Queen’s Garden requires a careful balance of round scoring and end of game scoring, which makes for an incredibly compelling gameplay loop which is further spiced up by the randomness of tile drawing and which tiles your opponents decide to take. Azul: Queen’s Garden proves that the franchise still has plenty of ground to cover and delights to offer players, despite this being the fourth entry in a surprisingly simple series. The original Azul has to be one of the most popular board games of the last five years – having sold over a million copies. Despite this success, the first pair of Azul sequels ( Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra and Azul: Summer Pavillion) haven’t been quite as successful. Undeterred, publisher Plan B Games has still chosen to forge on with a fourth Azul game, this time entitled Azul: Queen’s Garden. Where the original Azul was blessed with a straightforward flow and simple, rewarding decisions that pleased new players, Azul: Queen’s Garden is a much heavier experience – but is it still fun to play? This juggling of both strategic and tactical aspects, alongside spatial play and pattern-building, is rich and engaging. There’s a lot to consider at every stage of the turn yet, as the game progresses, you won’t feel boxed in by your earlier decisions. Even the draft has interesting repercussions as garden tiles aren’t flipped face up until they’re clear of drafted hexes. So taking a hex you want might inadvertently create an opportunity for the following player. Due to the heavier nature and the considerable playtime for an abstract game, this can push Queen’s Garden outside the realm of “welcoming” for those looking for an easy to teach game for new players.