Azul (NL/FR)

Each player has a personal board with five pattern lines on the left and a 5x5 mosaic wall on the right. During the drafting phase, you take all tiles of one color from a factory display; the remaining tiles are moved to the center of the table. The tiles you take are placed in one of your pattern lines, and once a line is full, one tile moves to the wall, and you score points for each adjacent tile. Too many tiles that don't fit in a line end up on the penalty track and cost negative points. The game ends as soon as someone completes a horizontal row on their wall, after which bonus points follow for complete rows, columns, and diagonals.

Azul won the Spiel des Jahres in 2018, the most prestigious award in the board game world. It is the most direct and tactically tense title in the entire Azul series: you learn the rules in one round, but the depth lies in reading your opponents and deliberately blocking their plans. The heavy resin tiles feel good to the touch and look beautiful on the table. Critics note that the game is quite abstract and that the theme sometimes feels distant, but that doesn't detract from the tension that arises when the central pile grows and no one wants to be the first to grab tiles. Azul combines accessibility with sharpness in a way that draws both non-gamers and seasoned enthusiasts back to the table time and again.