Azul

Thursday night is wargames night!

Catherine and I were going to play HOTT, but we ended up messing around with a webcam for a chunk of the evening (a current sign of the times - it was broken, by the way), and afterwards I couldn't be bothered sorting out figures and terrain

So instead we played Azul, a boardgame we played with John and Cathy in Canberra the other week, and whch we enjoyed so much that I bought a copy (in what was probably my last non-food related face-to-face retail interaction for the foreseeable future).

Anyway, here's the BoardgameGeek entry, to save me the effort of a detailed description - Azul. It's basically a tile-laying game - literally. It's about tiling a palace wall, but without the grouting or spousal nagging. The person who gets the most complete set of tiles on their board wins.

Catherine ponders her opening move. You draw tiles from the 'factories' in the middle.

Early stages on my board. As you can see, it's quite pretty. And the rules are very simple. But the strategies could get quite involved. You have to plan ahead, but also look out for what your opponent (or opponents - it plays with up to four) are doing. It's possible to block them, or completely screw them up if you're crafty.

End of the first game, and my winning board.

We set up a second game - it plays fairly quickly. Catherine won that one.

Best of three? Certainly. Except we had a feline intervention two turns in, that scattered the tiles. We decided we couldn't be doing with setting it up again, so called the evening a draw.

Here's the feline intervention, looking suitably contrite. Not.

Anyway, Azul is good fun.