Azul

You are a tile artist decorating a palace wall, a five-by-five grid where each row needs one tile of each colour. The game ends once someone completes a row. Tiles score by their neighbours on the wall, plus end bonuses for rows, columns and colour sets. On your turn you take every tile of one colour from a factory display, pushing the rest to the centre, or take one colour from the centre. They fill a pattern line, and only a full line moves one tile onto the wall at round end. Overflow lands on your floor and costs points. This is our answer when someone asks for a first real board game after Catan: it looks beautiful, the rules fit on one card, and the decisions bite. It is excellent at two. Expect the person who came to watch to ask for a turn.