Azul Summer Pavilion Mini Review – All the Tiles, None of the Teeth

Disclaimer: Azul Summer Pavilion Mini was provided for free by VR Distribution, although the writing and opinions of this article are my own.

My love for Azul is the stuff of a Shakespearean sonnet, whereby I prance around the house and compliment my wife with a speech that starts, “Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s abstract game?”

Because of this love, however, I’ve been cautious about picking up the sequels. How could anything live up to that tense, creative game of bathroom tiling? I’m not sure, which is why I’ve never pulled the trigger on purchasing these titles.

Thankfully, the opportunity to review one of these titles arrived.

Now, as it sits before me, the first thing I must tell you about Azul Summer Pavilion Mini is that it’s a traveller’s edition. All of the player boards are plastic with inlets to hold your tiles. Perfect for a moving train, a turbulent aircraft, or hitting the outback with Kmart camping chairs and swag roll.

But for how it plays? Well… Read on to find out.

How to play

Just like in the original Azul, Summer Pavilion is a game of drafting, tiling, and scoring big.

To begin, several factories (a fancy name for a pile of four tiles) are set up. On your turn, you pick one colour from one factory, collecting all tiles of the selected colour from that factory. Pushing the rest into a central rejection pile.

In addition to regular tiles, there are also wild tiles. No, these tiles aren’t getting tattoos or listening to rock and roll. Instead, you can use them as a tile of any colour throughout the round.

If there are wild tiles on the factory you select, you also pick up one bonus wild tile. You cannot choose to pick up wild tiles from a factory by themselves.

Most of the time, you draw from these factories. However, in an hour of desperation, or if there are no more tiles on these factories, you can draw from the rejected tiles or trash pile as we like to call it.

This heap acts like any other factory with one exception. The first player to draw from here gets to go first in the next round and receives negative points for each tile they take.

Once you’ve completed the hard work of drafting a collection of tiles, it’s time to reap the rewards by placing them onto your player board.

On your player board, you’ll find seven stars made up of six segments. Each of these segments is numbered from one to six, representing the number of tiles required to fill them. These tiles must be the same colour as the star you’re trying to fill. So to fill the red-star segment labeled three, costs you three red tiles.

This is when wild tiles go from societal misfits to heavenly saviours, as they may also substitute any tile that you’re missing.

As you fill in these stars, you gain one point for each tile placed. Plus one additional point for all tiles attached adjacently.

A tile by itself is worth one measly point, but placing a tile to complete the star is worth a whopping six!

Additionally, there are several icons around the board. While completing star segments, if you manage to surround these icons, then you’ll be able to pick up additional tiles from a platter in the centre of the table.

After six rounds of drafting and tiling, it’s time for end-game scoring.

Beyond the points you’ve received from placing tiles, you also get points for completely filling in stars. Covering the same numbered segments (for one to four) on all of the stars also nets you points. Add these end-game points to your current totals to find out if you’ve won.

The biggest let-off

True to its name, Summer Pavilion takes the original Azul and opens it up like a picnic basket on a sunny afternoon. It retains a similar feel to its predecessor through its drafting and pattern placement, but it’s a lot more forgiving in its play.

The biggest let-off from Azul’s teeth-gritting tension is the ability to store up to four tiles at the end of each round. Previously this would cost you a lot of points, and not a single tile would be saved. Summer Pavilion’s approach is not only more friendly but adds a new layer of strategy to your tile placement.

Mainly to do with how you treat wild tiles. Because there are minute rules that make storing them a lot more interesting.

Firstly, the colour of the wild tiles changes each round. So all reds could be wild one round, followed by all the yellows in the next. Secondly, you can’t make star segments of a colour while it’s wild.

Now, hopefully, you can see how saving tiles allows you to play around these restrictions. Either by storing wild tiles so you can use them for coloured star segments next round. Or storing other coloured tiles knowing next round they’re going to be wild.

Another way Summer Pavilion makes Azul friendlier is by removing the punishment of picking up too many tiles. In the original, you wanted one tile of one pattern, two tiles of one pattern and so forth. Picking up more tiles than what you could fit led to you losing a lot of points.

Greed is a sin after all.

However, there’s no such penalty in Summer Pavilion. So pick up as many tiles as your grabby little hands can manage and then deal with finding places for them later. Because no matter what you pick up, you can almost always find a spot for your tiles. Or just save them for another round.

I should add this is not a great way to maximise your points. But at least you won’t be punished for it!

I miss the risk of the original

While Azul Summer Pavilion Mini doesn’t put you into the same pressure cooker as the original, it makes up for this by putting more tools in your tiling toolbox.

We’ve already talked about reserving tiles but have yet to cover the bonuses you get for surrounding icons on your player board. The three types of icons you’ll find on your board give you one, two, or three extra tiles of your choice from a central board.

Figuring out how to surround these icons, the best time to do it, and whether you can combo the extra tiles gained into your current round’s plans, all play a part in your strategy.

Icon surrounds are another neat addition that changes the feel of the game from the original Azul.

Once you’ve got the basics down pat, strategically weaving in these icon surrounds lets you take your tile-laying skills to the next level. However, as good as this addition is, it does come at a gameplay cost. Play slows down significantly when you move onto the pattern placement portion of each round. As you must take turns to ensure proper turn order for choosing your extra tiles.

To combat this, after our first play, Steph and I just started taking turns simultaneously. Calling out if we were going activate an icon surround. This sped up play and made the game more enjoyable for us.

Coming into Summer Pavilion I was worried about whether it would live up to the original game that I love so much. Now that I’ve played it, my concern was justified.

Despite being the games’ hype man for three-quarters of this review, a large part of the original’s identity is the threat of messing up. Or being caught off-guard and having to draw more tiles than what’s in a game of Scrabble.

This is missing in Summer Pavilion, so the more I played the more I missed that feeling of risk.

So, by the time I finished playing, I was left feeling fine about the game. Whereas the original left me excited and wanting to play over and over.

In saying that, Azul Summer Pavilion Mini positions itself as a game you could play on the porch with a couple of golden ales watching the afternoon glow. For this, it’s perfect.

It’s a great alternative to Azul for whenever you want to play and not strain yourself with the worry of messing up. Now, with the mini edition, you can take this game anywhere and have a fun relaxing time wherever you find yourself.