Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra

Product Information

The game plays out in six rounds. Unlike the original, no one can end the game suddenly. You’ll always know how much time is left in the game. Why You may Not Like Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra: 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. At the start of the game a number of Factories (circular disks) depending upon the number of players are put out in a circle in the centre of the table. A cardboard Glass Tower is assembled and placed near the Factories. This will be used to hold “broken” Pane Pieces during the game. Each player chooses a colour and takes the appropriate Player Board together with the 8 Pattern Strips. The Pattern Strips each show a column of 5 coloured spaces on which Pane Pieces will be placed during the game. The Player Boards are doubled sided and change how the final scoring is carried out. All players agree on which side of the board will be used for the game. The Pattern Strips, also doubled sided, are randomly placed as vertical columns above the Player Board. One of the Pattern Strips shows 2 joker spaces instead of coloured spaces and this Strip must be placed with the joker spaces face down. Each player places their Glazier pawn above their leftmost Pattern Strip. Sounds simple enough but, of course, there are constraints on both the drafting and the placement of tiles, and there are also bonuses to aim for when scoring panels and at the end of the game. And, of course, you’ll need to keep an eye on what your opponents are trying to do.

Updated to include Azul: Queen’s Garden* Azul is one of the most popular modern board games of the last 5 years. Azul, once a title for a single game, has since become the name of a series. With four stand alone games that each sound and look similar, you might be wondering which game is right for you. Craig M (5 plays): Given the choice, I would choose Azul of Sintra. While I have enjoyed my games of the latter, I think apparent depth is illusory. Sintra is a nice variation on a theme that I would be happy to play, but in the long run Azul owns a permanent spot in the collection.

AZUL VS STAINED GLASS OF SINTRA ANALYSIS

Players who like the ability to plan their moves based on assessing the tiles available at the start of the round may not enjoy the drafting found in Queen’s Garden. Tiles are revealed progressively as other tiles are taken. This leads to more chance in the game and an inability to plan your moves based on the knowledge of all the tiles available for that round. 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. 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.

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.

VERDICT

Side A scores points for the number of Pane Pieces placed on the Player Board when Pattern strips have been completed. These are scored in pairs of Pattern Strip columns (i.e. Pattern Strips 1 & 2, 3 & 4…). Points range from 2 points for 2 Pane Pieces to 10 points for 4 Pane Pieces.

The end game scoring isn’t overly complicated but it isn’t obvious either. While it is intuitive that the number of fully window finished is beneficial, it is the multiplication that new players seemingly forget or confuse. Some kind of symbology or mentioning of the scoring on the player boards may have eased this problem, serving somewhat as a reminder throughout. Despite this the end game scoring works well at giving players something to work towards. It might take a game to understand but it is worthwhile learning. Stained Glass of Sintra is mechanically simple, relatively short, very engaging, and should appeal to non-gamers as well as gamers. It’s the type of puzzle game that people seem happy to start again as soon as they’ve finished. The original is perfectly simple. With straightforward and easily understood rules, this is the least overwhelming in the series. It doesn’t try to get too cute with mechanics and that’s the beauty of it. In this way, Stained Glass of Sintra joins Queendomino as a follow-up to a Spiel des Jahres-winning game that builds on a simple gameplay hook with a slightly more complicated expansion of those ideas. The difference here is that where Queendomino and Kingdomino could be combined, the Azul games remain completely standalone, so there's not quite as much value in owning both.If a section of the design is completed, it is scored and then turned over to reveal a different combination of colours. If completed a second time, it is scored again and then discarded into the box. The modular boards make the game fiddly in a way the other two are not as you will flip and remove window panels throughout the game. This often results in bumping and disrupting your placed tiles if you aren’t careful. Here are our thoughts on the positive and negative elements of each game in the Azul series. Azul What Azul does best: Queen’s Garden is also quite a bit heavier than the previous four games due to all of the drafting and placement restrictions. This leads to a much longer play time and Queen’s Garden outstaying its welcome. (All our games lasted 70+ minutes.)