Do You Like Azul? Than You Should Try…
Do you enjoy Azul, but find yourself wanting to branch out and try some new games? We have hand selected the following games that seem to fall into the same “drafting” category that Azul does.
Kingdomino is a tile drafting game where during each turn, a player connects a new domino to their existing kingdom, making sure at least one of its sides connects to a matching terrain type already in play. The game mechanics for obtaining the tiles is clever: the order of who picks first depends on which tile was previously chosen. Make sure to secure tiles with crowns- these royal treasures help to multiply the worth of your kingdom at the end of the game! The game ends when each player has completed a 5×5 grid, and then points are counted based on number of connecting tiles and crowns.
In the game Reef, players take on the role of a coral reef, carefully selecting colors and patterns in which to grow and expand. On each turn, players can choose to pick up a new card from a choice of four, or play a card that is already in hand. Each card provides two reef pieces and a pattern that scores points if the existing reef has it. Whoever has the most points when the reef pieces run out wins! Unlike Azul, Reef does not have much of a “drafting” process, but it still is a good game to try if you’re looking of something a little different than Azul.
Carcassonne is a tile-placement game in which the players draw and place a tile with a piece of southern French landscape on it. The tile might feature a city, a road, a cloister, grassland or some combination thereof, and it must be placed adjacent to tiles that have already been played, in such a way that cities are connected to cities, roads to roads. Having placed a tile, the player can then decide to place one of his meeples on one of the areas on it: on the city as a knight, on the road as a robber, on a cloister as a monk, or on the grass as a farmer. When that area is complete, that meeple scores points for its owner.
Perhaps the most like Azul, Sagrada is a dice drafting game where players try to fill in their individual stain glass windows. Each board has some restrictions on which color or value of die can be placed there. Dice of the same shade or color may never be placed next to each other. Dice are drafted in player order, with the start player rotating each round, snaking back around after the last player drafts two dice. Scoring is variable per game based on achieving various patterns and varieties of placement…as well as bonus points for dark shades of a particular hidden goal color.
