When comparing Azul vs Sheriff of Nottingham, the Slant community recommends Sheriff of Nottingham for most people. In the question“What are the best board games?” Sheriff of Nottingham is ranked 44th while Azul is ranked 48th. The most important reason people chose Sheriff of Nottingham is:
“Sheriff of Nottingham” is a great game for providing some action and laughs at a smaller get-together, which is to be expected from an easy game that revolves around light roleplay, random banter, and lying and bribing your way to victory. While not necessarily a roleplaying game, sometimes players can’t help but change their voice when taking on the role of the sheriff and threatening the merchants. The same principle works the other way around – merchants tend to come up with witty excuses when trying to bribe the sheriff or pass their stock as legitimate. All of this can lead to some hilarious and memorable moments.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Tactically rich
Apart from the initial setup, luck plays little to no role in the outcome of this game.
You have to try to predict the moves of your opponents while simultaneously thinking about your own moves, in order to win. For example, if you're trying to collect the full set of same-color tiles, you need to be aware if other players are doing the same. There are 20 tiles of each color, and if all players are trying to collect the yellow ones, there might not be enough in rotation for all to succeed.
You get points from placing tiles, and various combinations give you more points. You can lose points if you don't think ahead, and you can also take risks where you lose a few points to gain many more.
Pro Aesthetically pleasing
The game itself is very beautiful. Azul was inspired by the tiles at Alhambra. The design is bright, upbeat and colorful.
Pro Variety of strategy and patterns keep the game from becoming repetitive
There are multiple ways to get points. For example- aiming to get all tiles of the same color or getting the most columns.
If the preset pattern has become too familiar, you can use the other side of the board to create your own pattern. It's completely blank, so you can come up with multiple possible patterns.
Pro Great party game
“Sheriff of Nottingham” is a great game for providing some action and laughs at a smaller get-together, which is to be expected from an easy game that revolves around light roleplay, random banter, and lying and bribing your way to victory.
While not necessarily a roleplaying game, sometimes players can’t help but change their voice when taking on the role of the sheriff and threatening the merchants. The same principle works the other way around – merchants tend to come up with witty excuses when trying to bribe the sheriff or pass their stock as legitimate. All of this can lead to some hilarious and memorable moments.
Pro Simple to understand
"Sheriff of Nottingham" makes for a great gateway game because of how easy the rules are. Even children can understand the main gist quite easily. The game revolves around managing your hand, collecting sets, and lying straight to the sheriff's face.
Every turn the players discard and redraw cards from discard piles and the deck and maintain 6 cards in-hand. The players then choose 1-5 cards, place them in a burlap sack, and declare them to the player taking the role of the sheriff by saying how many cards of one type are in the sack, but the only thing that must be truthful is the number of goods - the actual contents can be contraband or different types of goods. For example, a player says that their sack contains 3 chickens, whereas it actually contains 2 chickens and a crossbow.
It is up to the sheriff to decide who is inspected and who is let in. If the sheriff catches a merchant trying to bring in contraband or different goods than he declared, then that merchant must pay the sheriff the penalty price written on the cards. If the sheriff inspects the bag of a truthful merchant, then the sheriff must compensate the penalty to the player and let the goods go to the merchant stand.
The game is won by the player who has accumulated the most wealth after every player has been the sheriff two times (three times if playing with three players).
Pro Quality components
The components are all well-made and should hold up to regular wear and tear and even an accidental drop now and then. The game consists of gold coins, merchant stand boards, and a Sheriff marker made from thick cardboard, cards made of durable cardstock, merchant bags made of dense fabric, and a useful foamcore card insert for holding the cards during the gameplay.
Pro Useful mobile app
Arcane Wonders have made a free mobile companion app for “Sheriff of Nottingham” that helps with keeping the time of inspections if you’re playing with a time limit, keeping score of your finances and who is in the lead, and providing an atmosphere with ambient sounds and voice-acted audio comments.
If you just want to make the game funnier, you can pay 3$ for the “Merchant Fun Pack” to get a clickable soundboard and unlock over 70 more audio comments to spam throughout the game, featuring such highlights as “COUGH Contraband COUGH COUGH” or “Crossbows are illegal, right?”.
Cons
Con Scoring system can be confusing
Scores are counted at the end of each round (when there are no more tiles left in the factory). It's confusing for the following rounds, because you have to count each single tile only once. The scoring system is also confusing in the way that it counts tile combinations. For each adjacent tile, you get an extra point for the row and for the column. It takes a little practice to get use to it.
Con Minor design flaw may cause you to lose a piece right out of the box
When you first open Azul, you'll have to push out the cardboard pieces from a larger sheet of cardboard (as is often the case with many games nowadays), which is not a problem. However, one of the game pieces- the 1st player token- is not easily noticeable at first. Some users have accidentally thrown out this piece in the trash.
Con Very group dependent
The game will not fit every group due to the social nature of it. It's a whole different game when played with children, adults, or more introverted people. The personalities of people greatly influence the banter, the roleplay, the bribery, and the negotiation parts, which are core aspects of "Sheriff of Nottingham".
Moreover, if players choose not to engage in the more cutthroat side of the gameplay (bribery, lying, etc.), the game gets boring very fast. "Sheriff of Nottingham" is all about bluffing, and if you take that part of the game out entirely then it just becomes a card game where people race for the most points.
Con Not greatly replayable
The game manages to keep the players excited for the first few plays, but it easily loses its charm after you play it more than ten times or so. It starts to feel samey even when played a few times in a row.
The variations of the game don't really impact the replayability either - they only add a little bit of difficulty, for example, you can add a time limit, make players have 7 cards in-hand, remove some cards from the deck, or play with "royal goods", which are basically cards that are counted as contraband but add to your legal good count at the end of the game.