You sit across from your opponent, placing small weathered stones on a colorful board. But around you, qi energy begins to hum. Soon, as you focus your qi, you invoke the power of one of the four Auspicious Beasts! Sounds cool, right? Well that’s the name of the game in Azure! Read on for my review.
Что такое Azure?
Azure is an abstract strategy game for two players, designed by Trevor Benjamin & Brett J. Gilbert, with artwork by Kwanchai Moriya. In the game, each player will lay stones down on a tiled board, competing to be the first to score enough points to claim victory, using qi cards to make smart moves and progress on the point track.
Like other abstract strategy games, Azure is light on story and theme, but high on tactical decision making. It runs fast, each game is about twenty minutes long, and features ways to augment and expand the game, which I’ll touch on at the end.
Как играть в Azure?
The game is, in its purest form, simply a race to 25 points. You gain said points by placing stones (one player controls the white stones, the other takes the black stones) on a board divided into four different colored quadrants.
To place a stone, you must be able to pay for the placement with qi, represented by cards in your hand. You’ll start the game with a few of these cards at random, and will gain more as rewards for placing stones. Each stone you place has a set cost, and the cards you pay to place the stone must match the color of the quadrant of the board you’re in.
So, in essence, you’re spending resources to place stones, which score you points and gain you more resources. It’s a simple and satisfying gameplay loop, but things are complicated slightly by the four Auspicious Beasts.
Each Auspicious Beast sits atop a mountain, which blocks your flow of qi. But what do I mean by flow of qi? Why does that matter?
While the core of the game is all about paying with cards in hand to place stones, these costs are reduced by each stone already in an orthogonal line out from where you want to place your stone. Your opponent’s stones don’t block you, but mountains, with their beasts, block that flow.
Each of the four beasts can be harnessed based on how you play your stones, and they give small bonuses like extra points or cards. But their points and benefits aren’t permanent — and your opponent can steal the beasts from you!
Как ощущения от игры в Azure?
One of my favorite aspects of the game is the fact that, as mentioned above, some points can be taken right out from under your nose. You’ll think you’re closing in on victory, and then all of a sudden your opponent places a stone that yoinks one of those beasts from your control to theirs, and you may find yourself having to give them some of the points that came along with initially acquiring that beast!
This creates a very tense and rewarding feeling of push-and-pull, which is how you’ll feel throughout the game as you carefully consider each placement. At the start of the game you won’t have many options at all, so it will start rather slowly. But as the game progresses, little by little your options widen, but the path to victory narrows.
Azure Expansions Bring More Layers (И Развлечений!)
Azure включает в себя два дополнения: расширение Gifted, которое поставляется вместе с базовой игрой, и расширение Cosmos, продаваемое отдельно. Расширение Gifted включает в себя два Gifted-камня и две двусторонние Gifted-карты. Прежде чем начать, вы выбираете одну сторону каждой карты для использования во время игры. Когда вы размещаете Gifted-камень, вы мгновенно получаете выгоду, указанную на соответствующей карте! Это простое дополнение, но такие преимущества, как диагональное влияние или дополнительные награды, могут дать вам решающее преимущество.
Расширение The Cosmos добавляет больше игровых фигур и представляет две большие игровые доски, заменяя некоторые стандартные. Оно также включает в себя трек The Cosmos, по которому движется Жёлтый Дракон. Получая влияние на этом треке, вы перемещаете Дракона к себе, зарабатывая очки и дополнительные карты. Однако, если ваш оппонент возьмёт под контроль трек, вы потеряете набранные очки и карты.
Кроме того, если вам удастся провести дракона до своей стороны игрового поля, достигнув конца своей дорожки, вы немедленно побеждаете! Это добавляет дополнительный уровень волнения и стратегии в игру.
Azure — Заключительные мысли
Maybe it’s not fair to complain about this in an abstract strategy game, but any thematic tie here is holding on for dear life. Games like
Hive do a much better job of taking
abstraction and adding flavor on top, reinforcing how the game itself is played. Even the horsey in chess seems to canter across the board. But with
Azure, you’re not getting much of anything flavor-wise to help cement the fundamentals of the game.
Which would be a problem if the core mechanics of the game itself weren’t so damn satisfying! We played way more reps of this game than I probably needed for this review, in part because of the quick playtime — but also because of how addicting it was to try to squeak out wins from my opponents. Each game feels fresh and different, with the randomization of the four-tile board, and it ended up being a truly satisfying experience I kept coming back to. If you’re a fan of abstract strategy games, you’ve got to give Azure a try!
Копия Azure использованная для создания этого обзора, была предоставлена нам Asmodee USA.
Смотрите также
2026-05-31 03:32
