Azul: Queen's Garden

I had had it on the shelf for ages and had not even bothered to open it. I took it on a trip in case the women and children felt like playing, and instead I found myself playing on Saturday night with the heir and the predecessor. From that moment, Azul: Queen’s Garden became my revelation of 2026. I have never played the original Azul, but this box pulled me straight to the table and did not let me leave easily.

At its core, it is hex-tile drafting built on the logic of Azul. You choose tiles and try to place them correctly, with every choice demanding a little more thought than the obvious one. It is one of those games where the order of your decisions matters, and where it is not enough simply to take something that looks useful at that moment.

Alongside that thought, there is push your luck: you can chase what you want, but there is always the feeling that your choice has to fit properly into placement and scoring. Interaction comes through the drafting, since whatever I take changes what remains for everyone else. The game moves quickly, but the scoring is satisfying and makes the choices feel meaningful.

I have already played eight games with different people and I am badly hooked, even though I am generally not much of an abstract-game fan. And the best part? After the last game, true to our “this is how we play it” tradition, we discovered that we had been playing in extreme hard mode: we were discarding one extra tile during placement. BLTG. Even so, or perhaps because of it, Queen’s Garden gave me exactly what I want from this kind of game: quick, clean, and ridiculously addictive.