Azul Cup: Season 2

[Injured Pigeon]

Hobbs: Hello, and welcome to another edition of…

Royce: Incredible Azul Gaffs!

Hobbs: …

Royce: I can’t believe you added up 10 games in the qualifying games for group D.

Hobbs: I knew this was coming.

Royce: 3 + 3 + 3 is… ?

Hobbs: 10. In my defence, it was very late when we recorded that, and I was very, very tired.

Royce: The thing I find funny is that last season we were making jokes about the Azul Extension counting to 20 and the uproar that caused.

Hobbs: Were WE?

Royce: You know what I mean. And now, you failed to count to 9. Maybe we need CodeMonkey to code us up a match counting extension.

Hobbs: *Sigh*. OK. Well, I apologise for all the cuffuffle caused by my inability to add up. To clarify however, India won 2 head-to-head games, Bulgaria won 3, and the UK, miraculously won 4.

Royce: Don’t you Micalis-ously

Hobbs: You’ve been waiting all day to use that one, right?

Royce: Indeed, I have.

Hobbs: OK. So, there’s still 1 game to play in Group A, against France’s Skloki and Guatemala’s PJ, but Skloki’s earlier loss means that now it is impossible for France to contest the final wild card spot, which means, as of tonight, we are able to announce Season Two’s finalists…

Royce: Ooo, exciting.

Hobbs: In Group A we have the USA. In Group B we have Germany, in Group C we have China after a fiercely contested final game, and in Group D, based upon head-to-head record we have the UK.

Royce: And the wild cards.

Hobbs: Qualifying from group B we have Russia on 11 points, and finally, in groups A and C we have Hong Kong and Hungary.

Royce: Oh no, does this mean you have to do more Math?

Hobbs: Sadly yes, but thankfully, Angry Zoological Usrname Lampoon helped we with the Math.

Royce: Does he realise he missed the E out of his username?

Hobbs: Possibly not.

Royce: So good at Math, but bad at spelling?

Hobbs: And based upon the calculated score differences from the tournaments games we have:
Hong Kong’s Sunny with 54 points, CTCTCT with 64 and Helic with -28.

Royce: What the Helic, Helic!?

Hobbs: For Hungary we have Kvarclovag with 34 points, Csincsi with -7 points, and Xalax with 42 points, which means with a score difference of 90, Hong Kong take the second and final wild card spot.

Royce: Wow, so close.

Hobbs: Indeed. And commiserations go to those that narrowly missed qualification, Hungary, India, Bulgaria and Brazil. And a special shout to India who achieved so much in their first Azul Cup, but congratulations too to Hong Kong who narrowly missed out on the finals last year.

And so, we have our finalists, USA, Germany, China, UK, Russia and Hong Kong.

Royce: Barring another late-night cockup of course.

Hobbs: So, the finals tournaments will be set up tomorrow and will start on Monday the 14th of July. Team captains wishing to rotate players have until Friday to register their new players. On Saturday the ELO of players will be taken and based upon that, the players will be placed into their relevant groups.

Until then, all that remains is to thank all the 24 teams that took part in the regional competition, and a big thanks to all this season’s regional players for completing just about all the games in just over one week.

You’re all amazing people!

See you soon.

[End transmission]

[Injured Pigeon]

Azul-Cup: The Finals begin


Hobbs: Hello and welcome to 花砖物语

Royce: What the hell?

Hobbs: Welcome to a Story of Decorative Tiles!

Royce: Oh, you mean we’ve stopped covering the Azul Cup? Thank God for that, I can’t tell you how bored I’ve become of covering a game who’s options are “do I take, blue, red, yellow, black or white…” man that was so boring.

Hobbs: …

Royce: And the players, Jesus… could they be any duller? I mean some of them have been doing this shit for 10,000 or more games.


Hobbs: Err… actually, that’s the Chinese name for Azul.

Royce: …

Hobbs: We’re still covering the Azul Cup.

Royce: For %$#@ sake Hobbs. You realise that this was your worst opening ever, right?

Hobbs: Well, it was supposed to be fitting, as China is joined by none other than CN_Azul.

Royce: And by none other than, you also mean QueenDong, AKA Miss Dong, AKA CN Player, AKA …

[Fade out for 10 minutes]

Royce: … AKA Bing0924….

Hobbs: Are you still doing this? Here’s your cup of tea.

Royce: Oh, thanks.

Hobbs: You realise that none of what you said was ever proven to be true?

Royce: Neither was that the Earth is round.

Hobbs: …

Royce: Look at the evidence. Clearly Chiba1i has fallen off the edge, never to be seen again.

Hobbs: O-K. So, for the sake of brevity, can we just collectively call them QueenDong?

Royce: For the sake of our jokes, yes, yes, we can.

Hobbs: Great, so to confirm, the only change for the finals is that LeoWanjie has been replaced by arguably the best Azul player in the world, QueenDong.

Royce: Why replace Leo?

Hobbs: Didn’t you hear me? She’s likely the best Azul player in the world ever!

Royce: You realise Zeus will edit this out right?

Hobbs: He may want to edit a lot more than that out by the end of this segment.

So, let’s kick things off. The tournament that everyone is talking about is tournament 1 which features perhaps some of Azul’s finest players, QueendDong, Zeus, Sunny369, Admitted, Micalis and Ac1dd. The minimum ELO entry for this bracket was 791.

Royce: That’s quite a lineup.

Hobbs: On paper, QueenDong, is the favourite of the group. Fewer players have had so many accolades. She has won more Arena seasons than she has BGA accounts. She has her own tournament series, which she consistently wins. She’s reached an ELO of over 1100 and has her very own video series. She is probably one the most famous players in the game.

Royce: Gush much?

Hobbs: Perhaps QueenDong’s only disadvantage coming into this is that she did not compete in the regionals.

Royce: Well, of course she didn’t. The Queen can’t be seen to consort with all the peasants from regionals. You wouldn’t expect her to lower herself to play the likes of Telborn. She has a reputation to think of. Let the plebs do the donkey work, she can turn up for the victory parade.

Hobbs: Well, the stakes are that much higher when you’re competing for your team, so we will see how she hold up to the pressure.

Next up we have Zeus. Zeus was walking the road to ELO 1000 for some time…

Royce: Yes, he was a nobody in late 2024…

Hobbs: Then suddenly in 2025 he blossomed like a flower.

Royce: Yes, like the pansy he is.

Hobbs: Some say he fell under the wing of Sapperlot and was taught the way of the Flower Brick. He also has a lot of accolades to his name.

Royce: Name one?

Hobbs: He has his own video series, the Road to 1000 ELO.

Royce: Oh, you mean the whole 3 episodes that never actually featured him reaching 1000 ELO? That was more disappointing than Firefly being cancelled.

Hobbs: OK, but he does have an ELO of over 1000!

Royce: Oh, I guess we can all look forward to his one video series sequel, the Road to 1100 ELO.

Hobbs: … he’s the second-best German player.

Royce: Wow, you’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Hobbs: When did Zeus become a joke?

Royce: It’s the QueenDong effect baby. In his one game against CN_Azul, he lost. All hail the Queen.

Hobbs: Let’s hope we don’t have the wrath of a god baring down on us. I’m sure Zeus will be out for redemption and will have his sights firmly set on QueenDong. Let’s move on to Sunny.

Now Sunny, does have a real and recognised accolade to his name, he is 2024’s Azul World Champion!

Royce: That’s the one they played in Lisbon, Portugal, right?

Hobbs: Yep, all official like, they even got T-Shirts.

Royce: Competing in 4 player games?

Hobbs: Well, yes, but…

Royce: And Bangerz was one of the finalists?

Hobbs: Sure, but…

Royce: This means nothing.

Hobbs: *sigh* Sunny is a professional board game player. The only one I know of!

Royce: That’s because it’s not a real thing. It’s what kids tell their parents because they’re lazy b@sta@rds.

Hobbs: Well, Sunny has an ELO of over 800. He’s played Zeus once before and lost…

Royce: Wow, can’t even beat Zeus.

Hobbs: So, he’ll be determined to make it all even, I’m sure. Next up we have Admitted, or Al to his friends?

Royce: I’ve never heard anyone call him that… Oh, I see. Sad.

Hobbs: Admitted, is the USA’s new teammate and like Zeus and Sunny, won all his regional games. Admitted peaked at 900 ELO but he’s mostly known as being the WSBG 2024 Azul champion!

Royce: Respect.

Hobbs: He hasn’t played either, Zeus or QueenDong but he has defeated Sunny in three of their four 2-player Azul encounters. So, he appears to have the measure of him. This means Sunny is going to have to work very hard to place in the top 3. Next up we have Micalis…

Royce: Go on then, astound me with his list of accolades too…

Hobbs: Err…

*sound of flicking pages*

Hobbs: He’s defeated Injured Pigeon in 6 straight games…

Royce: … … … Hahahaha! Christ, Reish Galuta defeated Pigeon this season. Is there seriously nothing else of note that he’s done?

Hobbs: He plays a lot of competitive ticket to ride.

Royce: I guess the board game library is sparse in prison.

Hobbs: He has lost to Zeus, Sunny and Admitted before, but he’s on great form. He also won all 5 of his regional games and shot into the upper echelons of Master Azul players be exceeding 800 ELO. He’s being hotly tipped as one to watch out for in F1.

Royce: … it’s Injured Pigeon’s tip, isn’t it?

Hobbs: … yes.

Royce: I guess someone needs to be the UK’s cheering party.

Hobbs: And so, that only leave’s Russia’s Acc1dd. Acc1dd is the only one of the players in this group that did not win all his regional games, QueenDong aside. He’s also the only player that weighed in under 800 ELO when it started, but has now exceeded that, meaning in this group, the lowest ELO player is 807… that’s a fiercely competitive group there.

Unlike our other competitors, Acc1dd pretty much only plays Azul and recently defeated Germany’s SchengW in an unrelated Arena encounter. Acc1dd has defeated Admitted before but has been beaten by all the players except Micalis, as the pair have never encountered one another.

So, there you have it, all our F1 finalists. So, who is your money on in this group?

Royce: The smart money must be on QueenDong. An impressive 94% win rate and a long history of winning BGA’s arena, season after season, shows pedigree like no other.

Hobbs: But they’ll be no easy games in this group, and one slip by the Queen could see any of the other competitors claim the title. China only just qualified for the finals, so they’ll be relying on QueenDong to take maximum points. One thing is for sure, this is going to be an exciting group to watch and everyone will have their eye on it.

[End transmission]

[Injured Pigeon]

Hobbs: Hello, and welcome to the Azul Cup’s Final Countdown.

Royce: Thank god for that…

Hobbs: Games are already being completed at a rapid pace and there’s some surprising results already recorded. So, without further delay, let’s take a quick look at the results so far, starting in F3.

Hobbs: The UK’s J2Wheels has caused an early upset after claiming a convincing victory over USA’s Priptonite.

Royce: Well, it is that time of month for Priptonite. No doubt he’ll be reaching for his Menstruazul products.

Hobbs: …

Royce: Come on! It’s late in the season, and I have little to work with here.

Hobbs: It’s not complete doom and gloom for Prip, as he registers a victory against Russia’s Andrew AD. But so far, the UK are leading the group.

Over in F2 only one game is completed, but KevinWise is progressing through his games well. He’s already defeated Russia’s Ramapatit and is leading in his game against Injured Pigeon, though he’s behind in his game against AbCd but does have a column and a row 2 advantage to progress the rest of the game with.

Royce: And what about F1?

Hobbs: I was just getting to that.

Royce: I know, but it’s been a while since I spoke, and I don’t want to be forgotten about like poor old Bengerz now is.

Hobbs: He’s busy, remember. So, in F1 I called it right. Admitted did and continues to still have the measure of Sunny and acc1dd and claims early victories over them both.

Royce: Go Al!

Hobbs: The only thing that has stood in his way thus far is Zeus, who scored what would appear to be a critical victory over the current F1 leader.

Royce: What about QueenDong?

Hobbs: No game has been completed by her yet, and in her game with Zeus, only one move was taken, a very considered 2Blue to row 3 by Zeus that he took two attempts to be sure of.

Royce: Wow, she’s not even taken a move and he’s already rattled.

Hobbs: I wouldn’t say that.

Royce: The plebs have spoken, and she is their favourite to win the group in our recent poll.

Hobbs: Sure. But there were some suspicious voting going on.

Royce: Are you trying to insinuate that the very virtuous Queen Dong, may have created multiple new Discord accounts to improve her results?

Hobbs: …

Royce: I am insulted, nay, I am appalled at such allegations. Shame on you sir!

Hobbs: You’re putting words into my mouth. But you must admit, who are these people?

Royce: Just because you haven’t heard of Mario_Min, who just coincidentally happens to be Chinese, and equally coincidentally also happens to be an Azul lover, who just also coincidentally happens to play Splendor, doesn’t mean there’s anything nefarious going on.

Hobbs: It was odd that he remarked on her beauty.

Royce: AbCd often remarks on Zeus beauty, no one has a go at him about it, and Zeus not only talks like Kermit the frog, but he also looks like him!

At least we can all agree, well maybe not Bengerz, that the Queen is very beautiful indeed. Hell, I’d bow down to the Dong if she’d bow down to mine afterwards.

Hobbs: OK! I think that’s a good place to bring this to an abrupt end.

[End transmission]

[Injured Pigeon]

Royce: Hello and Welcome to another edition of AAA.

Hibbs: There’s only 2 A’s in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Royce: I know, only too well actually, but this is Azul Addicts Anonymous.

Hobbs: Aren’t we doing our usual segment?

Royce: No, because AbCd beat us to it. Instead, today, we’ve invited some of our finalists along to speak about their addiction.

Hobbs: OK. Who?

Royce: Tsk, silly. It’s anonymous.

Hobbs: Right.

Royce: Studio guest one, how are you today?

Guest 1: Azul can be a cruel mistress sometimes. High highs, and low lows.

Royce: True dat.

Guest1: I was doing great. Regionals were great. I took it steady, limited my games to a manageable 50 a day, and won all 5 of them all.

Royce: That’s great, that shows real progress.

Guest1: But then when regionals finished, I felt lost. I had nothing to do. The wife doesn’t stimulate me anymore, so I turned back to the sweet, sweet nipple of my mistress. I went on a massive real-time bender. I lost 100 ELO in a day. I lost to some dirty players.

Royce: How dirty?

Guest1: Real dirty. Like, less than 500 ELO. The kind of low life that watch my videos.

Royce: Yuck.

Guest1: I felt disgusted. Even showers didn’t remove the icky feeling. And now, I’ve lost 2 of my 4 finals games. I blew an 11pt lead heading into round 3 vs China… just awful.

Royce: Yeahhhh. I think my wife beat Night Fury once.

Guest1: And now I’m starting to have dark thoughts.

Royce: You’ve got to be strong.

Guest1: I mean, real, real dark thoughts.

Royce: You don’t mean…?

Guest1: Yeah, I do. I do. My hope is that China wins by enough that my losses don’t actually matter.

Royce: Jesus.

Guest1: *sobs*

Royce: There, there, only 2 more games to go in F3. So, Guest2, have you been fairing any better?

Guest2: NEIN!

Royce: English only please. We don’t want anyone else reading this shit. So, what’s happened.

Guest2: First of all, I had planned to be ze first team in history to field a 3000 ELO team!

Royce: That would have been something.

Guest2: But Sapperlot refused to join me!

Royce: You mean, us?

Guest2: … no, me.

Royce: OK. Why?

Guest2: I don’t vant to talk about it.

Royce: Come on, this is a safe space. Your anonymity is guaranteed.

Guest2: It… it… it turns out he’z half Chineze!!!

Royce: Bugger.

Guest1: I hear you pal. I have my suspicions about Allan “Admitted” Zhao.

Royce: That’s terrible. They’ve infiltrated our manufacturing, our Azul and now their infiltrating us… it’s like invasion of the body snatchers, right Hobbs?

Hobbs: Shì de

Guest2: So then I had to take Sc…

Royce: No real names please!

Guest2 … SchengX instead.

Royce: Phew.

Guest2: And now it’s all ruined.

Royce: But you made it to the finals. That counts for something.

Guest2: Ja! And I vas going to vin! Everyone said I vould vin. I knew I vould!

Royce: But, didn’t you come second in the poll.

Guest2: Ja… the poll vas rigged!

Royce: Didn’t you and your nation just vote for you?

Guest2: … Ja. What’s your point?

Royce: So, how are the finals going?

Guest2: I have failezed! I have crumbled undzer the prezzure. *sobs*

Royce: Oh dear. You must feel like you’ve let your side down?

Guest2: Noooo. They are nothing without me. They vould not be here if not for me. I am God.

Royce: So, Guest 3.

Guest3: Oh… Hi buddy, have fun and good luck in your other games.

Royce: … what?

Guest3: Sorry. Habit.

Royce: Well, that’s why we’re here. Hello.

Guest3: I’m pleased someone is polite. Not everyone says hello back you know.

Royce: Is it the Chinese?

Guest3: How did you guess?

Royce: Well, they’ve been a reoccurring theme tonight. So, you must really emphasise with these two?

Guest3: No, not really. I lost to Reish £#%&ing Galuta in the regionals.

Guest1: Damn!

Guest2: Scheiße!

Royce: Yeah, there’s no coming back from that.

[End transmission]

[Injured Pigeon]

Hobbs: Hello, and welcome to the Azul Cup Roundup.

Royce: You’ve given up on coming up with new names then?

Hobbs: You did your segment, now it’s time for my mine and some serious analysis of the results so far. Let’s get to it.

In F1, Hong Kong’s Sunny sits atop the table after delivering Germany a devasting blow by defeating the German captain, Zeus. Zeus did lose one game against Phosphate in last season’s finals, so this could be his blip, meaning Zeus can’t afford another one and will need to defeat China’s CN_Azul to be in with a shot of the title.

CN_Azul has now completed one of her games, delivering a decisive win over Admitted who suffers his second loss. Looking at the stats, it was decided by tiles that made their way to the floor.

Only Micalis is yet to complete a game, and could still be this groups Dark Horse, with only himself and CN_Azul yet to lose a game. Micalis seems to be doing well in all games and could have made a very clever play in his game with CN_Azul…

Royce: Not that you are at all qualified to make that judgment.

Hobbs: … So, in F2 there’s one outstanding player to emerge so far in the group, and that’s tournament leader and Germany’s AbCd with 3 wins in 3 games. AbCd has defeated KevinWise and Inj…

Royce: Raven Returns!

Hobbs: What?

Royce: Didn’t you see the memo?

rustle of papers

Hobbs: Oh, right. So, as I was saying, AbCd has defeated KevinWise, Raven Returns and Rampatit. He’s still to complete his game against Phosphate, and in that game he’s opted to play column 4. Phosphate has completed one game, defeating KevinWise convincingly 42 to 28.

Kevin has now played all of his games and completes with 3 wins.

At the other end of the table both CTCTCT and Raven Returns are yet to win a game and are fighting it out, but CTCTCT looks like he’s in the lead.

Royce: Raven Returns sucks!

Hobbs: Yes, yes he does.
Hobbs: And that brings us to F3. Priptonite managed to redeem himself in his last 2 games, and finishes his games with 3 wins over Andrew_AD, Helic and more crucially, SchengW, and currently sits at the top of the table. NightFury and J2Wheels are the only players yet to suffer defeat and both still need to face one another and SchengW. This one remains fairly open.

Royce: So, what’s the overall situation look like?

Hobbs: USA currently tops the table with 8 wins, but only have a single game to play. I’d be very surprised if they stay there though. Germany is already on 6 points with still 7 games to play, albeit, Germany has not completed any games against China who presently sit in 3rd with 3 wins in 3 games. Unfortunately, it seems that Russia is not really in contention, and based on current results it looks like Hong Kong won’t make the podium either, but both have played valiantly in their first finals.

Royce: Surely, you don’t think the UK still have a shot?

Hobbs: It’s a long shot, and they were counted out in the regionals, but yes. Despite Raven Return’s best efforts to tank them, Micalis and J2Wheels could pull out 10 wins between them. Decisive wins over Germany or China could tip the odds in their favour, or at worst in China’s or Germany’s.

One thing is for sure, the tournament is far from over yet! Good luck to those still to play.

[End transmission]

[Injured Pigeon]

Hobbs: Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Azul Roundup.

Royce: When does the nightmare end?

Hobbs: It ends when Micalis says so, and not a minute sooner. Let’s review the action since Saturday. In F1 USA’s Admitted is the first to complete all his games with 2 wins.

Royce: Priptonite will be pleased that he didn’t finish with the lowest points.

Hobbs: That means the USA complete all their games and finish with 8 points and won’t be retaining the title this season.

Royce: Should have brought Bengerz.

Hobbs: Meanwhile, CN_Azul picks up her second win, defeating ac1dd. Micalis wins his first game against Admitted. Along with Zeus, this looks to still be a 3-horse race, and entering into round 3 in the game between CN_Azul and Zeus, the scores are tied 0 - 0.

Royce: Wow. Just when you thought Azul couldn’t get any duller. What is this, Soccer?

Hobbs: It’s actually a very interesting game, as both players execute turn compression and deny one another top rows.

Over in F2 Injured Pigeon finally won a game!

Royce: … yaaay…

Hobbs: CTCTCT really tried his best to deny Pigeon the win. Take a look at how long he studied over this one move.






Royce: Whoa. That’s longer than most of our scripts.

Hobbs: At 7.19PM he decided to take 2 blue, but then cancelled. A minute later he decided to take them again, and cancelled, a minute after that he took them again and cancelled. He then decided to take a cigarette break and came back 30 minutes later. He then took the same 2 blue again, and cancelled. He then spotted 1 blue was also an option, whereupon he alternated between 2 blue and 1 blue 8 times before he suddenly introduced 1 white…

Royce: Crazy bastard!

Hobbs: This was all too much, and fatigued after a day of hard work, he went to bed, only to wake the next day and cancelled 1 blue, followed by four tries at 2 blues before making his final decision…

Royce: Let me guess, 2 Blue?

Hobbs: You got it.

Royce: Wow. That just goes to show the mental rigours these players put themselves through, most men would have gone insane. At what stage in the game was this 1st turn of round four?

Hobbs: … his second move of round 1.

Royce: … … he was @&#king with Pigeon right? Trying to psych him out.

Hobbs: Well, whatever it was, it almost worked. It came down to the tie breaker in the end.

So, Rampatit and Pigeon finish the tournament with 1 win each. But the real story in this group continues to be Phosphate and AbCd. Neither have lost a game yet, Phosphate has won 3 and AbCd has won 4.

CTCTCT’s game with Phosphate looks close as CTCTCT has the first turn in round 5 and is only four points behind.

AbCd has a 6-point advantage over Phosphate in their game but is 2 tiles behind. This has some way to go but looks like it’s going to be another close one, so Phosphate is walking a fine line.

In F3, China suffers their first defeated as NightFury loses to Andrew_AD, who comfortable wins by a 17-point margin. This is Andrew’s only win of the final. So I guess Zues and the German’s all owe him a bier.

Royce: Wow. Those German night classes are really paying off.

Hobbs: This means Germany closes the gap on China. Meanwhile, SchengW notches up a third win to sit atop the table and has a 5-point advantage against NightFury and has just made a very cunning round 4 move to force NightFury to make a tough decision.

J2Wheels also looks set to give NightFury a hard time, and if my math is good.

Royce: And I think we have established it isn’t.

Hobbs: That game is set to be a tie.

So, this very much looks like it’s now a 2-horse race between China and Germany. None of the China vs Germany games are completed. Zeus and CN is too tough for any mere mortal to call. AbCd is a canny player and looks to have a slight advantage, and my money is on SchengW to beat NightFury which will tip the advantage in Germany’s favour.

It’s still all to play for…

[End transmission]

[Injured Pigeon]

It’s official, China is our Azul Cup season 2 champions – Congratulations to Phosphate, NightFury, CN_Azul and Leo for a well-executed victory. Well done also to our runners up Germany who fought very hard and did not make it easy for China or any of their opponents. They have raised the bar for next season.

Phosphate also walks away as the winner of the Golden tile, with 9 victories over 10 games, a feat shared also by AbCd who marginally loses out due to Phosphate’s head-to-head victory over him. Well done.

A big thanks to all our competitors and teams for giving up their time to compete in the Azul Cup’s second season. It was great to see the chatter, interaction, and interest, even from those not competing. I enjoy the banter as much as the competition.

I appreciate the new teams who joined us and I hope that we’ll get more teams joining us for season 3 in just 6 short months.

Thanks everyone, and GG.