Board Games
How to play Azul
Draft tiles into pattern lines, then transfer completed lines to a scoring wall. Overflow creates penalties.
What you need
Original boards, 100 tiles, bag, factories, starting marker and scoring markers
Set up the game
- Use colored walls and zero scores. Use five/seven/nine factories for two/three/four players. Fill each with four random tiles.
- The player who most recently visited Portugal takes the starting marker and begins. Thereafter the first center taker starts the next round.
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Playing Azul
- Take all one color from a factory, pushing its leftovers to the center, or take all one color from the center. Its first taker also takes the starting marker onto their floor.
- Put the draft in one pattern line of that color. Do not use a row whose wall already contains that color. Excess goes to the floor; drafts cannot split between lines.
- When all tiles are taken, process complete lines top to bottom. Move one tile to its matching wall square; discard the rest. Incomplete lines remain.
- An isolated wall tile scores one. Otherwise score the contiguous horizontal and vertical lines separately, including the new tile in each. Apply floor penalties, never below zero.
- Refill unless a wall has a complete horizontal row. After that round add two per full row, seven per column and ten per complete color. Highest wins, then most full rows; remaining ties are shared.
One destination per draft
Your three-space line holds one blue. Taking three more fills two spaces and sends one to the floor. You cannot place that spare in your one-space line, even if it would complete it.
Read the remaining draft
Count what colors remain and where they have accumulated. A line needing one tile may be difficult to finish if its only remaining group contains six. Before starting a new color late in a round, compare plausible collections with what opponents could leave behind. Timing matters because a useful early draft may become an expensive forced pickup later.
Beginner decisions
- Check empty pattern spaces before drafting a large group. Attractive tiles may create more floor loss than wall value.
- Look at the destination wall square. A small completed line connecting existing tiles can pay sooner than a large isolated one.
Common rule mix-ups
- Moving all tiles in a completed line onto the wall.
- Emptying unfinished lines between rounds.
Questions about this game
Can I reject tiles?
You may put drafted tiles on the floor, but must take all of that color from your chosen location.
Does a completed row stop immediately?
Finish the wall-tiling phase and floor penalties before end bonuses.
Sources and edition notes
Original Azul, colored-wall side, Next Move 2018 English rules. Gray-wall variant and other Azul titles differ.
Sources and stated format checked October 14, 2026. This records a document check, not a claim of hands-on testing.
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