Azul Duel takes the classic formula and transforms it to a tense head-to-head experience
Back in December 2017, the original Azul wowed the boardgaming world with its simple gameplay and beautiful yet straightforward components, and even became our best light to medium weight game of the year. Since then, Azul has spawned several sequels including Azul: Summer Pavilion and Azul: Queens Garden with each one arguably getting more complex than the last. With this in mind, I hoped Azul Duel would return to the simple ideas of the original game – but how does it do so whilst also increasing the tension needed in any good head-to-head game?
Firstly, Azul Duel does return to some of the more straightforward ideas of the original, with simple scoring and a clean tile placement mechanic that will be immediately familiar to returning players and very intuitive for those new to the series. Each player begins the game with an empty nine by nine grid that will ultimately fill up with tiles and each tile in turn has three to four spaces on them for the placement of Azul Duel’s iconic lozenge style pieces.
The trick here is that during the game, players will draft both the lozenges (to place on the tiles) and the tiles themselves, with key decisions in the game pushing a player one way or another. As in the original Azul, a lozenge can only be moved onto a tile when a row of them (ranging from one to six) has been completed, and so the game here is to place tiles that have the correct colour spaces in lines that you have either filled, or are expecting to fill soon.
Scoring at the most basic level occurs when you do this. Move a lozenge from a complete row onto an empty space on a tile and it will score one point plus a point for each tile in an orthogonally connected way. Add a new lozenge to an existing arrangement of three (for four in total) and you’ll score four points, for example. At the end of the game, three additional scoring tiles (chosen at random) will provide bonuses for completed patterns of lozenges across multiple tiles — for example a diagonal row of six.
Players obtain lozenges in a similar way to how they do so in other Azul games, with the trademark factory tiles returning to drive the action. Unique to Azul Duel is the use of bonus tokens, which are cardboard tokens that can be drawn at random, and which have two halves coloured to match two different styles of lozenge. When a player is completing rows at the end of a drafting phase, that player can spend two halves of any colour to replace a lozenge of the same colour, and in doing so might be able to finish a row that otherwise there simply wouldn’t have been enough tiles for (or one where the opponent specifically took tiles of that colour to block them).
Mechanically then, Azul Duel is quite charming. The basic mechanism of drafting tiles from factories was always a much loved feature of Azul, and the components here are just as nice as the original game despite the lower price point. Lozenges remain big and chunky, whilst the bag you draw them from is still a nicely printed, thick and lovely thing to hold, jangle around and then dip your hand into when it comes time to pull the lozenges out.
The tiles that make up your individual player board are also thick and of good quality, which is handy when you consider that these need to be shuffled before every game, and considering how much handling they will receive over time. Other components like the player boards are perhaps a bit less pleasing, with the boards themselves being made out of thin, flexible card which unfortunately comes with a crease down the halfway point that is virtually impossible to flatten out completely before each game. Thick card would have been preferable, even if it came at a small additional cost.
In terms of gameplay, Azul Duel hits a really sweet spot. Aside from all the look and feel qualities that I’ve already discussed, the mechanics are just about the perfect level for a game that needs to appeal to relatively casual players. Azul Duel is a game that a core gamer can use to appeal to a non-gaming partner, friend or family member. It’s a game that (in my case) I can ask my wife to play even though she doesn’t like 90% of the games I put in front of her. It’s a game I can play with my eight or ten year olds when the other doesn’t want to play, and it’s a game that I could see people taking to play with a grandparent or older parent.
The main element of drafting lozenges is super simple to explain, as is the way that the lozenges are placed onto rows (that can then be moved over when complete). Drafting tiles is also simple, but it means that players now need to process twice as much — can I complete a row of lozenges AND have a tile (and a space) aligned to that row for them to land on? Again, it’s simple, but it takes a turn or two to get the hang of. The only element that I found caused real confusion was the bonus tiles, which weren’t actually that much more to process, but you can always leave them out of your first game or two and it doesn’t take that much away from the game.
Considering the price point and overall quality of components, there’s very little reason not to recommend Azul Duel as a product. If you factor in the small size, the ease of play and the broad appeal, it starts to make a case for a game that anyone with a serious collection could own just for the times when it suits your audience. Clearly, it’s limited by the number of players, but if you need a game for three or four at this weight, then I doubt many people reading this would have overlooked the original game. If you do play regularly at two players and like abstract games, then Azul Duel is absolutely a game you should try, and will probably also want to simply go out and buy.
You can buy Azul Duel either on Amazon, or preferably at your nearest friendly local game store.
