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REVIEW Azul
Tactical Tactile Beauty
Azul is the latest game from Plan B, the company that brought Century - Spice Road to the gaming community earlier in 2017. The early impressions from these two games is that they have focused on high-quality produc- tion, simple gameplay that leads to the desire to replay.
Azul is an easy game to learn, whose subtleties only become apparent as you progress through the game. For the set up, a series of circular coaster mats are selected depending on player counts. Each mat has four resin tiles added, drawn at random from a bag contain- ing the 100 tiles, 20 of each Moor- ish-styled designs. The tiles are suffi- ciently weighed to have a good chunk factor, which feels good in your hand as the tiles are drawn, and they chink together pleasingly when touching one another.
In turn order players select a set of tiles from a mat, taking all the tiles of one design. The rest of the tiles from that mat are placed in the center of the table. The selected tiles are added to a personal player board that features rows of one to five spaces. Subsequent players can carry out the same action, though now the tiles from the center of the table can be chosen too. The first player to do so takes the first player tile too, but this will score a negative point, being placed in the Floor area of their personal board for negative points. Once a design of tile has been added to a row, only that design can be added to that row, and that design cannot be added to a row once it has
been tiled on the right hand side
of the board in the second phase of the game.
If the tiles chosen exceed the spaces on the row where the tiles can be placed, the excess are added to the Floor area of the player board and will score negative points. This is unlikely at the beginning of a game of course. In a four player game there are nine mats, so 36 tiles are played and once all the tiles have been taken the drafting phase of a round ends.
I Ten points in one go
The tiling phase begins with players taking the rightmost tile from com- pleted rows and moving it over to a 5-by-5 grid, starting at the topmost such row. Each board features the same pattern of designs, and as these are covered they score. Single tiles such as the first played score one point; if there are other tiles orthogonally adjacent, then each contiguous row or column is scored, adding one point for these con- tiguous tiles. So it is possible to score up to ten points this way by tiling into a space that has four tiles in the same row and column – though this would
be an uncommon occurrence.
The round is reset with a new set of
tiles on the mats and begins with the player who received the first player tile. The opening position for each player
is how the game round concluded las
nt rounds. This creates a differ- ent matrix of problems to
st
at
t
round, so incomplete rows of tiles wi
l
il
ll
need to be completed in order for tha
t
row to be freed up in subsequen
t
solve for each player.
The game ends in the
round when one or more player
s rs
complete a row. This means tha
at
t
a game could end as early as after fiv
single tiles, it’s something quite po
-
e
ve
rounds – as the top row only needs fiv
e
ve
os
s-
sible to achieve. Most games will las
between six and seven rounds with th
he winner scoring the most points.
st
t
e
action. Nevertheless, everything that is scarce is fiercely contested. You can neither obstruct other players ways nor attack them; but you can hit them where it hurts – that is, when it’s about victory points – by snatching away extensions, houses or boats that would go well with their strategy. In combination with the necessity of getting your own machine up and running, this is where the heart of Altiplano beats.
Optimized optimization strategies
Altiplano is quite complex, yet suited for families. Your constant improvements give you the pleasant feeling of having accomplished something that can’t be dampened by any outside forces. A family dispute at the game table is unlikely.
As much as the procedures and strat- egies might be similar to Dominion and especially to Orléans, Altiplano is differ- ent in a sophisticated way, giving players an incentive to play again and again and to refine their optimization strategies more and more. Or, for variety, to play in a very simple manner, without extensions and with just a bit of money, which can also work amazingly well. For me, the potential of Altiplano is far from being
fully exploited. A great game.
Lars Schiele/sbw
Title: Publisher: Designer: Artist: Players: Age: Duration: Price:
Altiplano
dlp games
Reiner Stockhausen Klemens Franz
2–5
about 12+ years
about 120–180 minutes about 50 €
Reviewer Playing appeal
Lars Schiele . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Stefan Ducksch . . . ............ Matthias Hardel* . ............ Wieland Herold . . . ............ Alan How. . . . . . . . ............ Christian Klein** . ............ Harald Schrapers . ............
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8 8 7 8 7
. 7
* Too long, but fortunately, it doesn’t feel like it. The Orléans principle is refreshed mainly through the necessity of being at the right location for the actions you want to take.
** Nice solitary game for multiple players.
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