Hanabi Review

   I introduce to you Hanabi Card Game, the 2013 Essen Spiel des Jares winner. Hanabi is a fun co-op card game with a little twist. You can not look at your own cards!  The story is: you are absent minded firework manufacturers that messed up the fire works. You have to work together to put your fireworks back together. 

   Inside, there are colored number cards. There are green, yellow, red, white and blue cards. They are numbered one through five with three one's, two two's, three's, and fours and one five.

   There are rainbow cards that can be used for some different variations.

   To begin, shuffle the cards and deal out five cards in a two or three player game and five cards in a four or five player game. Each person holds their cards so everyone else can see them.

   On your turn, you can give a hint, play a card or discard and draw a card. There are eight hint tokens. If you give a hint you take one and put it in the box (or flip it over) and give one person a hint. You can point to their cards and say things such as "These cards are blue" or "This card is a five". You then move your cards around, without looking at them, so that you can remember the hints you were given. Once the hint tokens are gone, you either play a card or discard and draw another card. If you discard and draw, you get a hint token back.

   If you make a mistake by playing a card that doesn't begin, add to, or complete a firework, you remove one of the fuse tokens. You have three mistakes before the fireworks go off and the game is over.

   When discarding, if you discard the last number available in a certain color, such as the second red four or the blue five, that row can no longer go past that number.

   The game ends in a couple ways. It's over when the fuse tokens are gone or if you run out of the draw pile. Once the draw pile is gone, each player gets one more turn. You add up the points which is the highest number in each row and see how your fireworks show did.

   This game is a lot of fun! It's really hard not to look at your cards, especially when drawing a new card. It takes a lot of concentration, memory and deduction. We have played this with our seven year old, and he did pretty well. He needed a little bit of help, but not much. The age on the game is 8+ so it's a great addition to your family games!