Azul is one of our “oldest” games that started our collection almost 10 years ago! Azul has surprisingly changed a lot as they are multiple versions! We decided to give our review on all of them.

And rank them!

I (Michelle) used to pretty hesitant when it came to boardgames and continuing to add to our collection. Zach definitely lead the way at first! Eventually I started coming around to I quickly fell in love with playing Azul adding more games and Azul was part of that reason! This became one game we played weekly early on! The pattern building, order in which you place your tiles, and overall strategy are unlike most games.

Azul is a light abstract strategy game where you draft tiles for a mosaic design. It is for 2-4 players, plays quick and has earned a lot of praise for being just enough of a challenge without being too frustrating! We like it for quicker week nights or early on weekend mornings with our homemade lattes!

Azul Duel takes the strategy of Azul and bumps it up a notch! We think this version elevates some of the drafting as there are two ways to draft and plan more for how you place your tiles on the mosaic spaces. The competitiveness is roughly the same but there is an additional component of moving tiles to the “moon stacks” instead of the center pool like the original. This added layer changes how you draft multiple matching tiles to eventually place on your own board. While more complex, we still think it is approachable and definitely not as complex as say…Azul Queen’s Garden! That one was a no go for us haha.