Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra

Product Information

In the Azul game series, players will take turns drafting colored tiles from the center circles to their player board. When certain sets of tiles are collected and satisfy placement requirements on their board players are able to score points. If players draft more tiles than they need they must discard the leftovers — this causes them to lose points. Mechanics: In Azul classic, you have a set square grid of your own that you need fill while in Sinatra you still have your own grid, but it is made of different strips and they flip over throughout the game with different formations. There is also a wild system and a meeple character that changes the value of things round by round. If you are looking for an abstract game that is straightforward without sacrificing the depth of strategy Azul Summer Pavilion could be a great choice for you.

If you are looking for a crunchy abstract game with a large lean toward the puzzle category, Azul: Queen’s Garden could be a good fit for you. Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra offers a different experience to the original Azul, which may be slightly more challenging and suited to experienced players. Much like Azul, the experience is improved with fantastic components as well as the puzzly gameplay.

VERDICT

For anyone familiar with Azul, winner of the 2017 Spiel des Jahres award, the tile-drafting mechanic of Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra is instantly recognisable. What you do with your tiles, however, is a different story. Stained Glass of Sintra - The Game Move the Glazier by moving the Glazier to above the leftmost Pattern Strip. If the Glazier is already above the leftmost Pattern Strip this action cannot be taken. Here are our thoughts on the positive and negative elements of each game in the Azul series. Azul What Azul does best: To summarise the drafting of glass, there are nine glass factories (in a four-player game). Each offers four pieces of coloured glass, drawn randomly from a bag. In your turn, you can select ALL glass of ONE colour from ONE factory. Any remaining glass pieces in that factory are moved to a central pool. Due to the heavier nature and the considerable playtime for an abstract game, this can push Queen’s Garden outside the realm of “welcoming” for those looking for an easy to teach game for new players.

Each round a new color tile is wild which gives you something to plan for and work towards to help complete valuable sections on your board. Is that part of the game? Sure. But it can also feel quite mean and we suggest not playing that way if you want to keep things friendly. Queen’s Garden is the heaviest challenge of the four Azul games. There are strict rules for both drafting and placement. Players who enjoy the chance to create big scoring combinations will enjoy how Queen’s Garden has both round scoring where specific tiles score at the conclusion of each round and end of game scoring where all tiles score again based on their groupings of color and symbol. This creates for the largest puzzle feel among the Azul series. Throughout each round you’ll think and rethink where you can maximize each tile’s scoring potential to the fullest.

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The starting player pulls Pane Pieces from the bag and places four of them on each Factory, and then places the starting player tile in the centre of the circle of Factories. On their turn a Player must do one of two actions: Here, for instance, there’s a glazier who limits which strips of the variable player board can be filled as they travel from left to right, forcing players to plan ahead to slot in as many panes as they can before the glazier is eventually reset to the left like a typewriter. The progressive movement of the glazier neatly counterbalances a combo system that makes filling in right-hand columns first more valuable, as any completed strips to the right of a newly-finished window add bonus points to that score, presenting the chance to set up game-winning combos with the right strategy. It's a notably different but no less interesting flow to Azul’s rewarding of adjacent tiles on a grid, and gives a nice structure and flow to each round. If preferred, you may select ALL pieces of ONE colour from the central pool, and the first player to do so also claims the first player marker – but also takes a penalty. Gameplay: Stained Glass of Sintra takes everything about Azul and makes it a bit more complicated with not too much upside. The trademark tile drafting system of Azul remains the same in Sinatra, but the big difference is that you are working a more dynamic board that changes and there are many more rules to scoring. Scoring is probably easier to do than in Azul but there is more to it. Azul released two years ago and took the board gaming hobby by storm. The sequel, Azul Stained Glass of Sintra, has recently been released by Next Move Games. Designed by Michael Kiesling, with art from Chris Quilliams, this time around 2 – 4 players will be constructing windows with colourful glass panes. Taking around 30 – 40 minutes to play, the tile placement mechanics have been shaken up somewhat. However, is there enough of a change to warrant owning both this and the original? Let’s find out!

Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra is the sequel to the incredibly popular Azul, from the same designer, Michael Kiesling, and the same publisher, Next Move Games.Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra (created by Michael Kiesling) is a standalone game for two to four players – it is not an expansion to Azul. Thematically, players are competing to create the most impressive stained-glass panels for the Portuguese palace of Sintra. In turn, players draft coloured glass from a central pool of glass factories to gradually complete their design. We’ve played all four and we can confirm that each are perfectly lovely in their own way. Yet, because they are each so similar to the other, we don’t feel that you need to have each game on your shelf.