Your first three games of Azul are where habits form. Some of those habits are rules mistakes, quietly played wrong because nobody checked the book. Others are legal moves that cost a lot of points. This lesson covers both, checked against the current Next Move Games rulebook.
Rules slips to catch early
Taking only some of a color. When you pick a color from a factory display, you take every tile of that color on it. No taking two of the three reds.
Leaving the leftovers behind. The tiles you did not take do not stay on the display. They all slide into the center of the table.
Splitting one pick between two lines. All the tiles from one pick go into a single pattern line. Whatever does not fit goes to the floor line.
Mixing colors in a line. A pattern line holds one color at a time. If your third line has one yellow in it, only yellow can join it.
Repeating a color in a wall row. Once a color is on a row of your wall, the matching pattern line can never take that color again. New players sometimes start a line in a color that row already has, which is not allowed. Check the wall row before you place.
Clearing unfinished lines. At the end of the round, only complete lines move a tile and empty out. Lines that are not full stay exactly as they are and carry into the next round.
Scoring a tile wrong. A tile with no neighbors scores 1. A tile with neighbors scores the length of its connected row plus the length of its connected column, and it counts itself in both. A tile with only a row of neighbors scores just the row. Only unbroken lines count, so a gap ends the chain.
Scoring out of order. Move tiles from your pattern lines top to bottom, and score each one as it lands. Order matters: a tile from your second line can touch the tile you placed from your first line a moment ago, and score for it.
Thinking the marker always costs 1. The starting player marker goes on the leftmost free space of your floor line. If you already have two tiles there, it lands on a space that costs 2.
Ending the game too soon. The game does not stop the moment someone fills a pattern line. It ends after the wall-tiling phase in which someone completes a horizontal row on their wall. Everyone finishes that round’s scoring, floor penalties included, then adds bonuses.
Going below zero. Your score cannot drop under 0, however bad the floor gets.
Leaving tiles in a line by choice. The rulebook lets you send tiles you do not want to place to the floor. The tournament rules at the World Boardgaming Championships settle it one way: place as many as fit in your chosen line, or put them all on the floor. That is a good table rule at home too, so agree on it before the game.
The big strategic mistake: feeding the floor
New players see a display with four tiles of one color and grab them all. Then they notice their only open line holds two. The other two drop to the floor, and the “great” pick cost 2 points before scoring a single one.
The fix is a habit, not a rule. Before you take tiles, count them, then point at the line they will go into. If more than one would fall, look for another pick.
A floor tile or two is fine when it buys something. The openings lesson, next, covers when. But in early games, most floor points are lost by accident.
The scattered wall
Your first game, tiles go wherever the pattern lines happen to send them. By the end, your wall looks like confetti: lots of single tiles worth 1 point each.
Remember that each color has exactly one space in each row. When you choose a pattern line for a color, you are choosing where on the wall that tile will land. Choose lines that put your tiles next to tiles you already have. Connected tiles score more every round.
Racing for the top row
The top row fills fastest, because its pattern line needs only one tile per round. Some beginners race to finish it and end the game in round five or six, then wonder why they lost. A full row is worth only 2 bonus points, and ending the game early only helps if you are ahead.
Ignoring the center
Every pick from a display pushes tiles into the center. By the end of a round, the center can hold a big pile of one color, and someone has to take it. New players do not notice until it is them.
Before each pick, glance at the center and ask who will be stuck with it.
A quick checklist for game three
Before each pick, ask:
- How many tiles am I taking, and which one line do they go in?
- Does that wall row already have this color?
- Where will this tile land on my wall, and will it touch anything?
- What am I pushing into the center?
That habit fixes most of what goes wrong in the first three games. For more on reading other players’ boards, our Azul strategy guide picks up where this lesson stops.
Next lesson
Azul Openings: Your First Two Rounds
Next, openings. We look at the first two rounds, where your first tiles should land on the wall, and when the starting player marker is worth a point.
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