{"id":998,"date":"2020-04-08T14:53:59","date_gmt":"2020-04-08T19:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/?p=998"},"modified":"2020-04-03T14:55:33","modified_gmt":"2020-04-03T19:55:33","slug":"first-impression-azul-crystal-mosaic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/2020\/04\/08\/first-impression-azul-crystal-mosaic\/","title":{"rendered":"First Impression: Azul Crystal Mosaic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Azul<\/a>
Azul Crystal Mosaic<\/figcaption><\/figure> I have written about Azul<\/a><\/em> before. Today a fresh delivery made it through quarantine and onto my doorstep! I’m talking about Azul Crystal Mosaic<\/em>. Here’s my first impression. <\/p>\n

First a clarification: unlike other titles in the Azul<\/em> line this is not a standalone game. This is an expansion for the base game, and it provides two new features. First (and most requested) is a plastic overlay for the standard game board that is designed to keep tiles and (more importantly) the score marker in place. In the original game the game boards were nice and sturdy (unlike the player mats from Terraforming Mars<\/em> which are also roundly criticized for allowing components to slide around). But they were flat. It wasn’t a huge problem for the tiles themselves, but the score marker was a light-weight wooden cube that was easily disturbed \/ moved if you were not careful. Unless you were playing for “funsies” and not keeping score \ud83d\ude09 this was a bit annoying.<\/p>\n

\"Azul
Azul Crystal Mosaic Acrylic Overlay<\/figcaption><\/figure> The new plastic overlay trays are not…sturdy. The acrylic trays that I bought for my Terraforming Mars<\/em> player mats were fantastic. They were also $15 each. This entire upgrade package was only $15, so I wasn’t expecting more than what I got. What I was expecting was something that would hold the score marker and the tiles and keep them from moving around.<\/p>\n

\"Azul
Azul Crystal Mosaic Gravity Test<\/figcaption><\/figure>The tiles that you place on your board are held in place extremely well! Check out the picture where the overlay is slanted at nearly forty-five degrees! Unfortunately this wasn’t the problem that I was hoping these overlays would solve. I rarely had problems with bumping my tiles…or if so, it was easy to reconstruct. The problem was with keeping the score marker in place. In my opinion, these overlays do a poor job of solving the more important problem.<\/p>\n

\"Azul
Azul Crystal Mosaic Score Track<\/figcaption><\/figure> The spots on the score track are finicky. Some feel too small for the original wooden score marker, resulting in situations where (at least in my case) the wooden score marker occasionally sits on top of the hole rather than snapping or fitting snugly into a specific spot. The other disappointment with the score track is that instead of unique holes \/ slots for each score position there are groups of two. I don’t know how well it will show up in the larger image below.<\/p>\n
\"Azul
Azul Crystal Mosaic Score Track Close-up<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How should this have been done? I think the publisher should have created the overlays with a smaller score tracker in mind, and provided four new cubes that were going to fit into precisely sized pockets. It would not have drastically increased the cost of the package to include four new (smaller) wooden cubes, and they would have fit so much better. Bottom line: the overlay solves a problem that didn’t need solving (sliding mosaic tiles) and didn’t do an effective job of solving the problem that did need solving (bumping the score tracker).<\/p>\n

Does that mean I regret purchasing this expansion? Not at all!
\n<\/p>\n

If the overlays were the only components of this expansion, I would be really disappointed. However, there is a second component. There are four new boards that present new challenges for experienced Azul<\/em> players. In the base game there are two options: one where the tile pattern is completely laid out for you, and one that is completely blank where you create your own design (following the appropriate placement restrictions). With this expansion there are four new double-sided boards in addition to the plastic overlays. One side has a few tiles specified and the rest left blank. It’s a medium step between having everything versus nothing laid out ahead of time. But I like the second side even better! On that side there are again some predefined tiles but there is a score multiplier (x2) on them. <\/p>\n

\"Azul
Azul Crystal Mosaic New Board Option<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When you score that particular tile you add up the horizontal and\/or vertical score and then double it! It adds a more strategic element in that you get to decide when you’re going to try to fill that specific colored tile. The longer your horizontal and vertical combinations are, the more valuable the multiplier becomes. But wait too late, and you might get blocked by the other players just when you want to play that color!<\/p>\n

If you look carefully the penalties for tiles on your floor are also different. In the base game the first tile subtracts a point from your score, as does the second. The more tiles that you have landing on your floor the worse the penalty gets. Look carefully at the image above. \ud83d\ude42 The first tile is still minus one point, but the second one is free! New strategies!<\/p>\n

Overall First Impression<\/strong>
\nI would give this expansion a three star rating (out of five). I give the new boards a 4 and the plastic overlays a 2. I think what I am going to do is create my own smaller score cubes and see if that helps with the new overlays…otherwise I will probably just ditch them altogether.<\/p>\n

List price for this product is $15. I paid closer to $12. Given that I am looking forward to the challenge provided by the new boards I feel that it was money well spent. Azul<\/em> gets played quite a bit at our house and is one of the frequently requested games when I bring things to work. But I don’t like the plastic overlays as they are currently provided. I will post back later after I experiment with a smaller wooden cube and see how that goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have written about Azul before. Today a fresh delivery made it through quarantine and onto my doorstep! I’m talking about Azul Crystal Mosaic. Here’s my first impression.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-impressions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=998"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1017,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998\/revisions\/1017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sunderedrealm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}