The Azul Midgame: Reading the Table

By the middle of a game of Azul, every wall has a shape and every board has a plan. The opening was about your own wall. The midgame is about the whole table. This is where Azul stops being a quiet puzzle and starts being a contest, even if nobody raises their voice.

Read every board first

Before you look at the displays, look at the other boards and ask three questions:

1. What does each player need? Which pattern lines are open, in what color, and how many tiles short?
2. What can’t they take? Each wall row takes each color once. A player whose rows already hold blue in most places has few homes for blue.
3. Who goes first next round? If nobody has taken from the center yet, the marker is still up for grabs.

Now look at the displays. The best pick is often not the one that helps you most. It is the one that helps you while giving the next player the least.

Count the colors

Azul has 20 tiles of each color. By the midgame you can count where they are:

• On walls: gone for good.
• In pattern lines: spoken for, until the line finishes and its extras go to the box lid.
• In the box lid: out of play until the bag runs empty and gets refilled.
• On the displays and in the center: in front of you.

A worked example. If 12 blue tiles sit on walls and 3 sit in pattern lines, only 5 can be anywhere else: the bag, the lid, the displays, and the center combined. If your fifth line needs four more blue, that line is in trouble. Switch your plans before the round makes the choice for you.

The center is everyone’s problem

Every pick from a display pushes the leftover tiles into the center. As the round goes on, the center grows, and the displays empty. Near the end of the round, players run out of good choices and must take what is left. On your turn you have to take tiles, even when every choice hurts.

That gives you a lever. When you pick from a display, you choose which tiles you send to the center. Send colors that the players after you cannot place, and the center becomes a pile someone will have to eat on the floor.

Watch the count of picks left in the round. With only a few displays left, you can often see who will be forced to take the big center pile. Make sure it is not you. Keep one line open that could absorb it, or take your share of it early while it is small.

Denial: taking what someone else needs

Sometimes the best pick is one you do not want. If the player after you needs exactly the four black tiles on one display to finish a line, you can take them yourself.

Compare the two sides of the trade. If taking those tiles puts two on your empty floor, you lose 2 points. If those tiles would have filled their line and placed a tile worth 6, you just stopped a 6-point gain for a 2-point cost.

Denial works best:

• At two players. Every point you stop is a point your only opponent does not score.
• Against the leader. At three or four players, a denial also helps the players you did not target. Spend it on the person ahead.
• When the cost is low. Dropping tiles on an empty floor is cheap. Dropping them at the 3-point end of the floor is not.

Stay flexible

A board where every pattern line holds a different color can only use a few colors. Opponents can see that, and you become easy to squeeze, because most picks send something to your floor.

A few habits keep options open:

• Finish lines rather than starting new ones. A finished line empties and can take any color its wall row still needs.
• Keep a dump line. A long line that is still empty can soak up a forced pick without floor penalties.
• Avoid two long lines in the same color. They compete for the same tiles.

The marker in the midgame

The first trip to the center costs the marker and at least a point. Sometimes the best move is to wait. If the center holds a small pile, let someone else take it and the marker with it. You keep your floor clean, and they spend a point.

Take it yourself when going first next round matters. If you are one tile from a big placement and only one display is likely to have it, first choice is worth a point.

Two players and four are different games

At two players there are 5 displays and 20 tiles a round. You can track almost everything, and every pick is a direct duel. At four players there are 9 displays and 36 tiles. The table changes a lot between your turns, so long plans are riskier and a clean, flexible board is worth more.

Our Azul strategy guide goes deeper on denial and on why columns beat rows.