How Hanabi Works

How Hanabi Works
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Hanabi is a cooperative card game based on logic and deduction. There is a deck of 50 cards
comprising of 5 colors and numbers 1 through 5. The goal is to play out 1 through 5 for each
color in order. The twist is that each player can see everyone else's cards but not their own.

On each player's turn, they can choose to do one of three things:

1) Play a card

A player can pick a card from their hand and attempt to play it. They do not need to know
exactly what the card is. If it's the next card for any of the five colors, it gets
played onto that pile. If the card is not playable, then it goes to the discard pile as
if it were discarded, but the team does not get a clue and gets a strike. If the team
gets 3 strikes, they immediately lose and score 0 points. Additionally, successfully
playing a 5 gives the team an additional clue.

2) Discard a card

A player can pick a card from their hand and discard it. The card goes to the discard pile
and the team gets an additional clue. You cannot discard if the team is at 8 clues.

3) Give a clue

A player can spend a clue to give information to another player. They choose a player and
either a number or a color, and then tell that player about all cards of that number or color.
A clue that matches no cards is not allowed.

For example, if a player's hand is Red 1, Red 3, Blue 3, Green 4, then the valid clues are
* The first two cards are red.
* The third card is blue.
* The fourth card is green.
* The first card is a 1.
* The middle two cards are 3s.
* The fourth card is a 4.

The team starts with 8 clues.

The Deck
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The basic deck consists of 50 cards. There are 5 colors, and each color has three 1s, two 2s,
two 3s, two 4s, and one 5. Notice that if you discard all of the copies of a card then you
can no longer score the perfect 25.

The End of the Game
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The end of the game is triggered when the last card of the deck is drawn. Once that occurs,
each player including the player who drew the last card gets one more turn. So the bottom
card of the deck is able to be played, but nothing is able to be played on top of it.

If the team gets to the end of the game successfully, they get one point for each card
that they successfully played. Generally newer players will take some time before they
reach the top scores, while experienced players will be aiming for the perfect score.

Variations
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There are a few variations that change the difficulty of the game.
* A 60 card deck with 6 colors instead of 5. This generally makes the game a bit easier.
* A 55 card deck with 6 colors where the new color has only one copy of each card. This
  is a quite difficult variation and more luck dependent as well.
* A 60 card deck with a sixth "rainbow" suit that is played separately but clued as all
  colors. This is harder than the base game, but not any more luck dependent.