Azul is a tile-drafting game for two to four players. Each round you take tiles from a shared market, arrange them on your own board, and move finished lines onto a wall that scores as it grows. The rules fit on six pages; the tension comes from what you leave behind for the next player.
This guide follows the publisher’s English rulebook for the original Azul base game. Check the title and rulebook on your box: Azul Duel and other games in the series have different rules. We have not yet run measured sessions of Azul, so everything below is rules and arithmetic from the rulebook, not playtest experience.
What is in the box
- 100 tiles, 20 in each of five colors, plus a cloth bag to draw them from.
- 9 Factory displays, the small round mats that form the market.
- 4 player boards, each with a score track, five pattern lines, a 5 × 5 wall and a floor line.
- 4 scoring markers and 1 starting player marker.
The publisher lists 2 to 4 players and 30 to 45 minutes.
Set up
- Everyone takes a player board, colored-wall side up, and puts a scoring marker on 0.
- Place Factory displays in a circle in the middle of the table: 5 for two players, 7 for three, 9 for four. The space inside the circle is the center.
- Put all 100 tiles in the bag.
- The starting player takes the starting player marker and fills every Factory display with exactly 4 tiles drawn at random.
How a round works
Every round has three phases: take tiles, tile the wall, prepare the next round. The game ends after the round in which somebody completes a horizontal row on their wall.
1. Take tiles (the factory offer)
The starting player puts the starting player marker in the center and goes first; play continues clockwise. On your turn you do one of two things:
- Take from a Factory display: take every tile of one color from one display, then push the rest of that display’s tiles into the center.
- Take from the center: take every tile of one color from the center. If you are the first player this round to take from the center, you also take the starting player marker and put it on the leftmost free space of your floor line.
Then place the tiles you took on one of your five pattern lines. Line 1 holds one tile, line 5 holds five. Three rules apply:
- A pattern line holds only one color at a time.
- You may not start a color on a pattern line if that row of your wall already has a tile of that color.
- Tiles that do not fit, or that you choose not to place, go to your floor line from left to right. If the floor line is full, extra tiles go to the box lid.
The phase ends when every display and the center are empty.
2. Tile the wall
Everyone does this at the same time. Go through your pattern lines from top to bottom. For each complete line, move its rightmost tile to the space of the same color in that row of your wall and score it immediately. Put the other tiles from that line in the box lid. Incomplete lines stay where they are for the next round.
3. Prepare the next round
If nobody has completed a horizontal row, the holder of the starting player marker refills every display with 4 tiles from the bag. When the bag runs out, refill it from the box lid and keep going.
Worked example: from Factory to score
This example uses the original game’s colored wall and a two-player round: five Factory displays × four tiles = 20 tiles are placed in the market. Imagine one display has two blue, one red and one yellow tile. Your third pattern line already has one blue tile at its right end. Its corresponding wall row has no blue tile yet.
- Pick: Take both blue tiles from that Factory; move its red and yellow tiles to the center. You must take both blues, not just one.
- Fill: Add the two blue tiles to the one already in your third pattern line, from right to left. The three-space line is now complete. If you instead took three blues for that line, one would overflow to your floor.
- Tile the wall: At the wall-tiling phase, move the rightmost blue from the completed line to the blue space in wall row 3, column 3. Put the other two blues from that pattern line in the box lid. Suppose row 3 already has tiles in columns 1 and 2, and row 2 has a tile in column 3. The new blue links three tiles horizontally and two vertically, including itself in each count: 3 + 2 = 5 points.
- Apply floor penalties: Suppose you also took the starting player marker from the center earlier in this round and later chose to put two unwanted tiles on your floor. They occupy the first three floor spaces and cost 1 + 1 + 2 = 4 points. From a score of 10 before wall tiling, this example ends at 10 + 5 − 4 = 11, assuming no other completed lines.
The wall positions shown are possible after earlier rounds; the example is a rules calculation, not a claim about a played session. The publisher’s rulebook governs placement order and scoring.
Scoring
A tile placed on the wall scores the moment it arrives:
| Situation | Points |
|---|---|
| No tile directly next to it horizontally or vertically | 1 |
| Tiles linked in a horizontal line | 1 per tile in that line, including the new one |
| Tiles linked in a vertical line | 1 per tile in that line, including the new one |
| Linked both ways | Both counts added together |
After moving tiles, you lose points for every tile in your floor line. The printed penalties under the seven spaces are −1, −1, −2, −2, −2, −3, −3. A full floor line costs 14 points in one round. The rulebook’s own example fits that row: four tiles plus the starting player marker cost 8. Your score never drops below 0. The starting player marker counts as a floor tile, then goes in front of you instead of into the lid.
End-of-game bonuses
| Goal | Bonus |
|---|---|
| Each complete horizontal row of 5 | +2 |
| Each complete vertical column of 5 | +7 |
| Each color with all 5 tiles on your wall | +10 |
Most points wins. On a tie, the player with more complete horizontal rows wins; if that is still tied, the victory is shared.
What the numbers tell you
A few facts follow directly from the rules. None of them are strategy tips, but they explain why Azul feels different at different player counts.
| 2 players | 3 players | 4 players | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Factory displays | 5 | 7 | 9 |
| Tiles in the market per round | 20 | 28 | 36 |
| Average market tiles per player, not a guaranteed share | 10 | about 9.3 | 9 |
| Rounds before the bag runs dry | 5 full rounds | 3 full rounds | 2 full rounds |
| Discarded tiles can re-enter play from | round 6 | round 4 | round 3 |
- A game lasts at least five rounds. Each wall row receives at most one tile per round, because each pattern line moves one tile, so no row can be complete before round five.
- With two players, the bag can fill five full rounds. At 20 tiles per round, 100 tiles last through five refills if the game lasts that long. Tiles in the lid cannot re-enter before a sixth round.
- With four players, discards return quickly. After two rounds of 36 the bag holds 28, so round three is topped up from the lid.
- Columns are worth far more than rows at the end. A column bonus is +7 against +2 for a row, and a completed color is +10.
Azul with two players
The rules are identical at every player count; only the number of displays changes. With five displays and one opponent, every tile you do not take is a tile your partner may take next, and every tile pushed to the center stays visible to both of you. On paper, that makes the two-player game the easiest one to read: the whole market and one opposing board fit in view at once, and each turn is a direct choice between helping yourself and not helping your partner. Whether it plays that way at the table is one of the questions our measured sessions will answer.
How long a two-player game takes at our table is the kind of thing we will measure before writing a review. Until then, the publisher’s 30 to 45 minutes is the only figure we quote.
The gray side: variant play
The back of each player board shows a blank gray wall. The rules stay the same, except that when you move a tile to the wall you may place it in any space of that row, as long as no color appears twice in any row or any column. If a finished pattern line has no legal space left on the wall, all its tiles go straight to your floor line. Everyone must use the same side.
Questions from first games
Do I have to take all tiles of a color? Yes. You always take every tile of the chosen color from that display or from the center.
Can I put tiles on my floor line on purpose? Yes. The rulebook allows placing any tiles you cannot or do not want to place on a pattern line into the floor line.
What happens to a half-filled pattern line at the end of a round? It stays on your board. Only complete lines move a tile to the wall.
Does the starting player marker cost points? Yes, it takes a floor-line space and its penalty like a tile. You also start the next round.
When exactly does the game end? At the end of the wall-tiling phase in which at least one player completes a horizontal row of five. Finish that round’s scoring, then add the bonuses.
Quick reference: original Azul
- Set up: 5 / 7 / 9 Factories for 2 / 3 / 4 players; four tiles on each display.
- Pick: all tiles of one color from one Factory or the center; push unchosen Factory tiles to the center.
- Place: picked tiles on one legal pattern line, right to left; excess or unwanted tiles go to the floor.
- Wall: move one tile from each completed line, top to bottom, and score each placement; incomplete lines remain.
- Floor and finish: lose 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3 by occupied floor space. End after the wall phase that completes a five-tile horizontal row, then add bonuses.
Sources
- Azul rulebook, Next Move Games / Plan B Games, English edition. Components, setup, all phases, scoring, bonuses, tie-break and variant. Floor-line penalties as printed on the player board, checked against the rulebook’s scoring example.
- Azul product page, Next Move Games: player count, play time, contents.
Looking for more games for two? Our game-night style guide lists Azul alongside co-op, duel and story games, with the player counts for each.