Due to a friend from out of state visiting I was able to game all week! It was amazing but what we learned is we are awesome Absent Minded Firework manufacturer. What you ask? Well we played Hanabi.
Hanabi is a co-op card game where you are a firework manufacturer who has screwed up. How will you fix it? Can you fix it? …. we didn’t always fix it but I will say we made valiant attempts, a lot of them. This game is great for the person who isn’t into board games. We have a friend who we drag kicking and screaming into boardgames ( she’s dramatic… it doesn’t really hurt ) and she absolutely loved this game. It was a challenge to play but easy concept to grasp. Communication is sooooooo important to this game. When to communicate verses when to play. What to say, what not to say. All important stuff.
Hanabi plays 2-5 players. We found three was our favorite amount but you will have to figure out your favorite. ( Each has its +’s and -‘s, as does your personal group dynamic. ) I would never play this game with strangers. Communicating and your friends being able to read you works wonders. It says it takes 30 minutes and thats true. Turns are very quick. Its the communicating between turns that takes so long… group strategizing if you will. (What do you wanna do? I dunno what do you wanna do?)
Warning this box contains FIREWORKS… Firework cards that is.
Firework Cards…. These are what you are going to fix.. all of the Fireworks got jumbled and you need to unjumble them.. They should look like this.
You have 5 sets of fireworks…. I don’t know how only 25 fireworks makes an extravaganza, but who are we to judge. I will say if you get less than one..well thats just.. Pathetic! ( You have been Judged and found wanting.)
Do you see how you screwed up?! I sure do. Luckily you have time to fix it…. or do you?
You have two different Timers in here. One is the Info marker, this is the blue token. Every time you give info you lose one of these. They don’t make you lose the game but they hinder you, sigh…. Luckily you can earn these back.
The second marker is the actual Kaboom. These tokens count how long the fuse burns before you blow yourselves up. You have 3 before the Kaboom.
KABOOM!!!!! It goes from a big fuse to an itty bitty fuse. After the itty bitty you BLOW UP!
Their are variant options, don’t you worry. What you weren’t? Well you should have been.
You can have a 6th firework.. (oooh look at all the pretty colors!)
or
You have WILDS! ( AHHH you discarded blue 2, death, I tell you death! Oh, wild card, Nevermind )
Okay, Let me tell you how to fix what looks like the unfixable.
Each player has a hand of cards and they have three options when it is your turn. Following mw so far? Yeah its an Easy…. Oh wait, did I mention you can’t look at your own cards? I didn’t? oops. Well now you know. Don’t worry your friends will be looking at your cards.. Hence the need for communication. Your goal is to complete all the fireworks. To do that you need the cards 1-5 for each firework color. You have to play them in order 1 first and five last. You cannot play 3 if you don’t have 2 (duh lol) and You can’t play blue 3 on a red 2.
Each player gets one action a turn. They can Play a card from their hand, They can Discard a card from their hand or they can give Info to another player about their hand.
- Playing seem simple but since you don’t know whats in your hand.. well that makes things all that much more difficult. Hopefully your team has given you info about your hand… if not well you can guess. Guess wrong and you are a step closer to KABOOM! Select your card choice and turn it over, hope it can play. =) Then draw a new card.
Side note… You don’t know where it can play before you play it, Just that you believe you can play it. After you see the card you will know where it plays. If it does.
- Discard is easy… when you know what to discard. If you don’t…. It really has a feel of spray and pray. Just pick and hope you hit the right card. When you discard, you get another info token. YAY. Plus you draw another card. ( If you are pro, you can read your friends facial expressions as you are choosing. )
- Last but MOST IMPORTANT… INFO. When giving info you have two options. You can tell one person one thing. Color or number.
Number: You can tell them ” This card is a 3” though if multiple 3’s in hand you have to say all of them. Not just the 3 you want them to play. ( This is where knowing your friends helps… I like to put expression in my voice when telling them whats what. When i say ” oooh this is a 3… oh and so are these” they know that I want them to play the first 3 I pointed out. )
Color: You can point out what cards are one certain color…. This card, this card n these are blue. (I like to point out number before color if they have multiples of a single number. So if they have a hand with three threes and we need a certain 3. I would let them know, “You have these three 3 s” and next round let them know the one that i want them to play is what color ” This 3 is blue“.
– We added .. Discard: This allows us to tell them what is in their hand that they don’t need. If we hadn’t made this rule, we would of been cooked every game. “These three cards can be discarded“. This tells them that if nothing else is available they have a play. Don’t know what to say or play, thats okay… I can discard! Yay (yup that rhymed, you know you loved it.) House rule!
Lets play one…
I am playing with my buddy Felicia Fox.
We have two people (hehe people) so we are going to have a card hand of five cards ( 4-5 people get 4 cards )
She’s adorable i know!
So as you can see i can see her hand but she cannot.. I know she stuffed so she couldn’t anyway but thats beside the point. She has 1 green, 3 yellow and 5 2 1 in blue.
My hand.. 
4 yellow, 2 green, 2 3 in red and a white 3.
remember, I don’t know whats in my hand.
We have nothing played so an open canvas to start with. Now Felicia is only a day old so she’s youngest and goes first, But she’s a fox so I went first.
I gave Info, She has two 1s !
Now its her turn… She plays one of the 1s i had pointed out the turn before and drew a new card… she can’t look at it!!!!…. Its a White 4. Now she still knows that she has an additional 1.
My turn, I communicate that she has three blues. Pointing to the 1,2,5. Now this with previous info, tell her that she has a blue one and two unknown blues.
Her turn. She informs me that I have two 2s.
My turn… This is a two!
Her turn.. “THIS IS GREEN!” pointing to my two.
My turn.. Oh i think I’m gonna play this here 2! (draw card)
Now she knows that we are down to 2 Info tokens… What to do, what to do. I know she is going to play this 1 that we know is blue.. She also knows next turn she can play the blue 2. She draws a new card and i know know on my turn i have to communicate.
My turn… This card is a 1.
She can now play the 2. But we are also down to one info marker and i know nothing about my hand except that i have another 2.
Luckily i have a discard card. So she wastes an info for me to discard the white 3, even though i don’t know its a white 3, i know its discardable, and we can have another info token.
I discard said discardable card. This also tells me that i have another white 3. How do i know this you ask. Well I know that this card and this card are red (points to 2 and 3) and I know that on the board there is no white 3’s, so why is it discardable? Because i have another!!!!
We continue this
till either we KABOOM and blow up, we run out of the cards in the card pile or we achieve all of the Fireworks.
Now if you run out of cards don’t worry you don’t lose and you win but by how much? How does your show go off???
Well you add up the last card in each color pile..
- If you got 5 or less…. well, you failed miserably and possibly have blown off a hand.
- 6-10… you get pity applause.
- 11-15… Meh.
- 16-20… they are happy, that wasn’t bad at all.
- 21-24… Success all was pleased. Yay
- 25!!!.. Doesn’t happen but hey if it does…LEGENDARY!!!! Disney world of Fireworks Good!
Tell me how your FIREWORKS went !
Go out and play Hanabi, be a firework manufacturer, blow up your friends. Its worth it!
Thank You for reading and again sorry for missing last week. Suggestions and comments are always welcome. A game you want me to show? Just let me know.
Have a great Weekend
-WarBird signing off.
WarBird Gaming 