Plan B Games | Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra | Board Game | Ages 8+ | 2 to 4 Players | 30 to 45 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

There are ways to score both in turn and at the end of the game, and you can also be penalized points for over-drafting. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Nevertheless Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra is an attractive game and looks interesting on the gaming table. If a section of the design is completed, it is scored and then turned over to reveal a different combination of colours.

Brandon (6 plays): Gameplay wise, Sintra does feel to have a bit more depth than Azul, but sometimes I do wonder if that depth is an illusion? Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra is the sequel to the incredibly popular Azul, from the same designer, Michael Kiesling, and the same publisher, Next Move Games. Each player chooses a colour and takes the appropriate Player Board together with the 8 Pattern Strips.I do really enjoy Sintra though, and will save a space for it on my shelves right next to its predecessor. I prefer the single scoreboard used in Sintra as I found with the Azul scoreboards being part of the original player boards, accidents did happen and the scoring marker could easily be jogged out of position.

Play progresses in a very similar fashion to how I imagine play in Azul progresses; at the very least, parts of it look very similar and the tile mechanics are something Azul players will find very familiar. In this version, players can expect to discover new artwork and components, including translucent window pane pieces, a tower to hold discarded glass panes, and double-sided player boards, and many other new additions.The window panels are double sided providing players with a dynamic player board that affords nearly infinite variability! We are trying to complete windows in Sintra, so we’ve moved from Evora to Sintra, but we have stayed in Portugal. Secondly, when you complete a panel, you score points for that panel AND re-score any previously completed panel to the right of that panel. I think those who like the more variable side of the board in Azul will like the variable setup here in Sintra, and I think that folks who like to have a bit more control or choice will like Sintra as well. My family picked up Stained Glass of Sintra over the course of a single game, and were able to very quickly start making strategic decisions about play and screwing each other over in fun ways in our second and third games.

Maybe that’s what happening here, who knows, maybe there is something else in Portugal for us to cover or enclose and we just haven’t seen it yet. I find that the broken glass track is particularly brutal in two player games where it is possible to manoeuvre your opponent into picking up far more Pane Pieces than they can place. A lot of folks are going to like that, and they may use nonsense descriptors like “gamer-y” or “thinkier” when describing it.

To set up the game, a number of circular displays are placed in the middle, and 4 colored tiles begin on each. Part of my newer review style is going to be assigning a letter grade to each game as if I were a teacher grading a paper. Unlike many remakes, which just add glut to a game that was already fine without it, this new Azul game is equally, but differently good.

However, at the end of the day, it’s still an abstract and that’s just not the kind of game I’ll ever love. This game is very easy to pick up and play, as you draft your coloured tiles to your personal player board.Each window has a static point value assigned to it on the bottom of the player board, you will score that many points, plus any points for windows to the right that have been completed previously. When this is coupled with a clever scoring mechanic where completing a Pattern Strip scores that position and already completed positions to the right, then the value of completing those rightmost strips is considerable as they can be scored multiple times during a game.