This is the same for me. Feel like a collection of half-baked attempts at mechanics from too many other games. The five turn limit is to short to do anything interesting with them, and makes it so the winner of the game is basically decided after turn 1. I like the theme and there are lots of games that are technically worse, but it just feels kinda mediocre and dull.

I read the manual and then I search the internet for any rule unclarity to se if there is an answer (errata, FAQ, community consensus). Almost never watch videos, don’t learn from them as well as I do from reading. Usually read the rules if I’m going to introduce someone new to the game even if someone previously explained it live. Have had to many cases of someone teaching the rules wrong, to blindly trust someone (except like one other person I know who is usually correct about everything)

Basically you just use the cardbacks to make them indistinguishable from a normal card then put a note in if using sleeves (that way they are reusable as other cards) or write on them if not (but then they are obviously not reusable as other cards). You can find descriptions for all the cards released on arkhamdb.com and you can set the language to German. I have done so myself to be able to include a few cards from circle undone which came at a time when I did not have time to play the game and I have been waiting for the re-release of.

Obviously not as nice as having the real cards and unless you are using sleeves you can’t do it for every card, but a cheap way to use that one card you really want to have in your deck without buying a whole expansion for it.

The new campaign/investigator sets would be the cheapest. Some scenarios are really hard to find even in English. On a budget i would recommend the investigator set for dunwich as it really fleshes out a lot of the classes. Together with the card from the old carcosa deluxe it should allow for some decent deckbuilding. I would also suggest using the playercards from the Dunwich deluxe box as proxies for cards you really want to use in your deck from later sets. That way you have playercards for a long time while you get the new complete campaign in release order.

If you want some more playercards after that the starting investigators are quite good value.

These looks perfect. Thanks!

The problem I have with 2 player is that it always feel pretty obvious which tiles to take to block the other player and do that pretty much all time. With 4 player you have to figure out which player is most important to block and if doing that action have the potential to screw over yourself and leave you with a lot of tiles on the floor at the end as there are more variability in how many tiles on the floor you end up with. Going first is also much more important so sacrificing potential points to go first next round is a more important choice. Most importantly the increased amount of tiles makes it really unlikely that a pile of the tiles you need the most won’t come up at all, screwing you over by sheer unluckiness. All in all there are just so many more parameters to keep track of and with the increased amount of tiles reducing the luck of the draw at the start of the round and three other players likely move to keep track of and balance against your own and the increased importance of timing when to go for the first player tile makes for a much better game according to me. I find it quite easy to predict a players move in Azul compared to some other games so you will most likely have figured out what the other players will try to do, so two players feel quite predictable and luck based. 3 is a lot better but still suffers from some luck and being to predictable. Unlike many other games where the players moves feel a lot less predictable or do many more things each turn (unlike 1 thing in Azul) and I agree that the game-state will change too much in a more random way making it better at 2 or 3.

I find Azul really fun at 4 players, but only at 4 players, so I pretty much consider it a 4 player only game. It just doesn’t feel strategic enough at 3 and 2 players, too few tiles each round. So it is a game I often bring to boardgame meetups and pretty much never play on any other occasion.

Yup, unless the game has some well thought out dexterity element i find it hard to see how it will capture the wacky feeling of the video game

Hive is the perfect outside game. My number one game to play on the beach or directly on the grass in a park as the whole game is made out of heavy plastic.