Azul is a tile placement game designed by Michael Kiesling. It is published by Next Move Games. Azul is popular for its beautiful components and simple rules, but also for its deep and crunchy strategic planning. In Azul, you play as an artisan, decorating the walls of the Royal Palace of Evora. Your objective is to create the most beautiful wall by strategically placing your tiles on your personal board.

How does Azul play out? Gameplay is repeated until end-game conditions are met. Each round is divided into 3 phases: the drafting phase, the wall-tiling phase, and the scoring phase. In order, every player will choose a factory display, then they will choose a color and take all the tiles of that color on the display. During the wall-tiling phase, players will move their pattern lines to the corresponding spaces. And then the scoring phase will occur. Game-end is triggered when a player as completed a row of tile. Players will score points for completed row, colums and completing a colour. 

What kind of strategy should you use for Azul? My first piece of advice would be to strike for a balance between completing rows and columns, but keep in mind that the first completion of a row will trigger the game end. The second piece of advice would be to adapt your strategy as the tile comes out of the bag. The last strategy I am proposing to you is to keep in mind, when you choose a tile, to always consider the tiles you can’t place since they will give you negative points. Maybe you really need that red tile to complete this colour, but is it worth it to take the 3 extra tile that will give you negative points?

In short, Azul is quite simple to understand, but it can be quite challenging to master it. Thus, our CBG mastery score of 5/10. You can always play it casually and go with the flow, but you could also go full on strategic planning, maybe by blocking your opponent or owning your choices of tiles. Another good point about Azul is that many variants are available, and there is even an “Azul Mini” version that comes in a bag, making it easy to bring anywhere.

Calico is another tile-laying game that also includes an important part of pattern building. Calico is designed by Kevin Russ and published by Flatout Games. In Calico, you want to build the coziest quilt to please cats and attract them to it. You will have to create a complex design and pattern for your quilt.

How does Calico play out? During set-up, each player will get a personal board and will place three different goal tiles. Some options are available at the end of the rule book, for objective set up essentially for solo play. Us, we often use them to add a little extra crunch to the game. You know, why not? Each of your turns will be simple: choose a tile from your hand and place it on your quilt. At the end of your turn, you will draw a new tile. The mechanism of Calico is quite simple to understand. At the end of the game, once everybody has covered their personal board, you get points for the achieved goal, cat tokens, and buttons on your board.

What kind of strategy should you use for Calico? First and foremost, you will get the most points by creating patterns. You may have to create an amalgam of the same pattern or create a specific shape to attract the most cats. You will want to respect those goals, which will often go against the pattern you are trying to build. Another important thing to take into consideration while placing each tile is to be flexible with your strategy. You may not get the tiles you were hoping for, so you will need to adapt to every new draw you get. The last strategy to maximize your points would be to not forget the button collection aspect of tile laying. For every three tiles of the same color, you will be able to collect a button of the same color. This will give you easy extra points at the end of the game.

In short, Calico is another easy-to-understand hard-to-master tile-laying game. There are so many criteria to meet, so it can become overwhelming. You will have to make hard decisions about what you would like to achieve. Sometimes you will have to let go of some tile objective to be able to achieve other objectives, like pattern building to please cats. This is why we rate Calico at 5/10 on the CBG mastery score. Rules are simple to understand; you could always go with the flow and choose each turn what you do with your tile, or you could use a strategy and hope you get the tile you were hoping for.

Fit to Print is a tile-laying game where you will take on the roles of newspaper editors in the race with competition to get out your layout of your front page of tomorrow’s newspaper. This real-time game design by Peter McPherson and published by Flatout Games creates a fast-paced game that is quite different from other tile-laying games.

The game plays over 3 rounds, where each round you will create a new front page. Your goal is to create the most enticing front page, thus giving you the most points. You will have many different rules to respect during the layout of your tiles if you plan on making the most possible points. You will have to consider balancing good news and bad news. Nobody wants a newspaper filled with only bad news. You may also have to meet specific criteria for your layout, e.g., having a photo adjacent to a specific type of article. What makes Fit to Print different from other tile laying game, is the "real time action" part of the game. Everybody will select their tile from a common pool and lay them on their personnal board, but this as to be done before the timer run out (1, 5, or even 10 min).

What kind of strategy should you use when playing Fit to Print? The most important one of all is that you need to manage your time. Fit to Print is played in 3 rounds of a predetermined time. The faster you choose your tile, the faster you get to the layout phase, but be careful to take enough tile to file your frontpage. My second advice would be to adapt your strategy based on the tile you draw; do not waste your tile searching for a tile instead of starting to assemble them.

In conclusion, in fit-to-print you are trying to create the most compelling and well-organized newspaper. In this real-time game, you are collecting news, photos, and adds. Be careful to balance your news between good and bad, to match themes, and to choose carefully which article you place next to the picture. This unique combination of mechanisms creates a really fun game.

Honey Buzz, a game beautifully designed by Paul Salomon and published by Elf Creek Games, is all about bees and honey. This game manages to elegantly mix worker placement and tile-laying. You play as a colony of bee workers trying to sell off their production of honey and nectar. You will expand your hive by placing honeycomb tiles.

Your main goal in Honey Buzz is to earn the most coin by selling honey and fulfilling orders. Each turn you play; you will use one of your worker bees to select a tile and then place this tile in you hive. Each tile has a different action on them; Produce honey, sell (honey, pollen, and orders), collect more bees (expand the hive), collect coins, or go forage for nectar or pollen. Once placed in your hive these tiles will be activated when a space is created for nectar. The game will go on if orders and/or tiles are available. At the end of the game, points will be scored based on honey sales, fulfilled orders and leftover resources.

Honey Buzz is such a good game because you may have many different strategies to keep in mind. The first and most important strategy to remember when playing honey buzz is the layout of your hive. It is crucial to keep in mind the mechanism of activating your tile and thus optimizing every tile you play. The second thing to keep in mind is the timing of selling your honey. The values of different types of honey will decrease as the game goes on; sometimes selling your honey will be more fruitful than fulfilling an order. My third tip would be to make sure you diversify your nectar collection. Having different nectar types will make it more flexible for you to fulfill orders. The last strategy to keep in mind is where you will place your worker. Since the number of workers needed for every tile increased and decreased by moment, it is important to keep in mind that sometimes the expensive tile is not necessarily the most logical option.

The tile placement in Honey Buzz offers a satisfying puzzle-like challenge. The artwork and component are gorgeous. The production of this game is high-quality, and it makes the theme of the game resonate. The fluctuating market creates a path to victory that makes this game really engaging and affected by your opponent’s action. In conclusion, in Honey Buzz, you play as a colony of bees trying to make profit out of their production of honey. You need to balance your production of honey while building the most effective hive and competitively fulfill any orders. It may seem like a complicated game to learn, but the theme makes everything easy to learn, and the playthrough is very fluid. 

References: 

BGG. (n.d.) Azul. Board Games Geek. Retrieved July 2024, from: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/230802/azul

BGG. (n.d.) Calico. Board Games Geek. Retrieved July 2024, from: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/283155/calico

BGG. (n.d.) Fit to Print. Board Games Geek. Retrieved July 2024, from: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/352574/fit-to-print

BGG. (n.d.) Honey Buzz. Board Games Geek. Retrieved February 2025, from: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/284742/honey-buzz