Episode 234: Azul Queen’s Garden

You have been commissioned by King Manual 1st of Portugal to construct the most extraordinary garden for his wife Queen Maria of Aragon. Each player has their own player board which represents the garden and a storage board where you will be moving your collected tiles into your garden.

To set up the game, create stacks of garden expansions face down according to player count and place 4 tiles from the draw bag on the first stack. Each stack represents the 4 rounds in the game.

On a player’s turn they will either take similar tiles from the stack and put them in their storage, move tiles from storage into their garden, place garden expansion from storage into their garden or pass.

When taking a tile or garden expansion players will either select a pattern or color from the display and take ALL the tiles and garden expansions that match. So the same pattern, different color OR same color but different patterns. Once tiles are taken off the stack, the garden expansion is moved off the stack and 4 new tiles are supplied from the draw bag. When players want to move their tiles to their garden they pay the cost (depending on the tile being placed) and are attempting to place tiles next to adjacent tiles of either same color or same pattern to build groupings that will provide points during end game scoring. When the ornamental features depicted on the gardens are fully surrounded they will acquire “wild” tiles that can be used as anything.

After each round there is a scoring phase. There will be 4 mid game scoring and then final scoring at the end. Did the pegs construct beautiful gardens for Queen Maria of Aragon or did their landscaping skills fall flat? Let’s jump back into the studio to find out.