NEXT MOVE Azul - The Queen's Garden

Product Information

All visible patterns and colours are scored disregarding whether they are on tiles or on the garden expansions and each hexagon could be scored twice (once for the pattern and one for the colour). Each of Queens Gardens tiles is one of six designs and one of six colours. When drafting you can take any combination of tile and expansion pieces as long as they share the same pattern or colour. Each round a new color tile is wild which gives you something to plan for and work towards to help complete valuable sections on your board.

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. The original is perfectly simple. With straightforward and easily understood rules, this is the least overwhelming in the series. It doesn’t try to get too cute with mechanics and that’s the beauty of it. Now, here’s where Azul: Queen’s Garden takes a hard left away from Azul as we know it… Rather than placing hexagons directly into your garden, you have to pay for them. The cost for any hexagon (including any garden expansion, based on the printed space) is the same as the value of pips on the hexagon – to be paid in either identical-value or colour hexes, or jokers. As with drafting no hexagon that is identical to the one being played can be used, and players can’t mix the colour/pattern currency. So for example, to play a six value blue hexagon, you’ll need to play either five other blue hexagons or five other six-value hexagons. Oddly, the cost includes the chip you wish to place (which is then placed in the garden) whilst any other chips are discarded into the tower to be re-used later. Is that part of the game? Sure. But it can also feel quite mean and we suggest not playing that way if you want to keep things friendly.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.

In the Azul game series, players will take turns drafting colored tiles from the center circles to their player board. When certain sets of tiles are collected and satisfy placement requirements on their board players are able to score points. If players draft more tiles than they need they must discard the leftovers — this causes them to lose points. 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. Identical tiles could not be placed next to each other. If a player fully surrounds a garden feature (pavilion, bench, statue, or fountain) by placing a tile, the player immediately receives as many jokers as depicted on the bottom left side of the player board. If the player could not store all the jokers, those in excess are lost. Players Actions

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Drafting also comes with its own challenges. Players can draft tiles for free to their storage area, however, to place them in the garden, they will need to pay the price of the tile: pay the value displayed on that tile by discarding other tiles of the same colour or type from their storage. That means that even though you may draft four or five tiles in the same round, only a fraction of them, if any, will end up in your garden. 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 one side of the display area, you could place the scoring board with the rotatory wheel. The rotatory wheel dents should be aligned with the two markers on the top quadrant (first round). You could either keep the game box close to easily access the game tokens and the jokers or prepare a pile of each close to the scoring board. The other tokens could be retrieved from the fox as needed. I originally bought this for someone who loves Azul games but little did I know this would be, not only the most unique title in the series but by far my favourite. It offers more choice, has more malleability and is a little bit more thinky than the other games in the series.