Take your trees through their life-cycle, from seedling to full bloom to rebirth, and earn points as their leaves collect energy from the revolving sun’s rays.

I would highly recommend Sintra to you if you enjoyed the original Azul or if you like simple, yet strategic, drafting games! If they are the first player to take from the centre of the table, then they also take the Starting Tile for the next round and move their marker on the broken glass track one space downwards. What I mean by that is that it feels like it came first and when it was presented to the developers they chopped it up a bit and gave us the perfectly streamlined Azul that we got last year.Firstly, the player scores 1 point for each Pane Piece which matches the colour of the round track’s Pane Piece. You may place glass in any of the windows directly below or to the right of the glazier, moving the glazier to the window where you placed.

This is where the positioning mechanic creates some wonderful tension: Scoring windows on the right is worth more points over the course of the game, but those windows tend to be worth fewer points initially, and being unable to place tiles to your left means you’ll eventually have to give up one or more turns moving your glazier back to the leftmost window. Your decisions are often skewed by what you think your rivals are trying to do, and the game offers a couple of end game bonus variants that increase replayability – in addition to the variability of your window design and the way tiles come out of the bag.The penalty for dropping a few unused tiles starts minor but doubles for each additional tile you break, creating some harsh penalties if you play it too fast and loose. You need to pass, and you need to have others need those pieces or have planned worse than you and have to take those pieces.

There is something to say about a game that makes you forget just how simple the game really is, and it’s another thing for a game to constantly remind you of things you have to think about. The simple, yet elegant, nature of the Glazier dictating where you can place tiles, and allowing you to essentially “skip” your turn changes the math of the game. I think the answer falls right in the middle -- for some, like me, these differences are enough, to others, though, that won’t be the case, it’ll just be too similar.The Pattern Strips each show a column of 5 coloured spaces on which Pane Pieces will be placed during the game. You’ll discover that its worth it to take the 6 Magenta Panes even though you only need 4 because in the moment it will score you 14 points while you will only lose up to 6 at the end of the game. Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra | The Gaming CircusHave you ever dreamed of creating beautiful stained glass windows? I really like the mechanic of only being able to place either under the Glazier or to the right of it. As a stained glass artisan, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to demonstrate your exquisite abilities for king and country.

Side A scores points for the number of Pane Pieces placed on the Player Board when Pattern strips have been completed.The player chooses one colour and multiplies the number of times that colour occurs in the completed windows by the number of completed windows. I am so glad to say that Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra remains faithful to the original Azul, while meaningfully building upon it. Carefully pick where you sow and when you grow, as trees in the shadows are blocked from light, and from points. It was a simple, it was elegant, and it was interactive in a way that modern games just don’t seem to accomplish anymore. Sintra is a Portuguese city in the foothills of the Sintra Mountains near the capital city of Lisbon.