Video: The Rules of Hanabi

The Rules

Slide 1 - The Rules of Hanabi:
Hello and welcome my video series on Hanabi. You can find an index of all of my videos in the description below. Hanabi is a awesome card game, and if you haven't tried it, you really should. In this video I will be focusing on the rules of the game. No strategy discussion, just simply how to play. The rules are simple and you’ll be able to learn them in just a few short minutes. But what makes the game so good is that it has so much depth - it is easy to learn, but hard to master. So let's jump right into it.

Slide 2 - The First Gimmick:
Like most card games, Hanabi is a multiplayer game, and can be played with 2 to 5 players. But unlike other card games, you are not trying to beat the other players. Everyone needs to work as a team, and you will either win or lose together. There's really not a lot of cooperative card games out there, so it makes Hanabi pretty unique.

Slide 3 - The Second Gimmick:
In most card games, you can see your own hand, but you can't see your opponent's hand. In Hanabi, it is the exact opposite. This screenshot is taken from the perspective of Alice - she can't see her own hand, but she can see Bob's hand.

Slide 4 - The Goal of the Game:
So how do you win? Well, similar to Solitaire, there are 5 stacks in the center of the table, one for each suit. The stacks start out empty, and the team must build them in order, starting at 1 and ending with 5. In this screenshot, four blue cards still need to be played on the blue stack, but the purple stack is finished.

Slide 5 - The Deck:
Hanabi is not played with a normal deck of cards. Pictured here is a Hanabi deck, which contains 50 cards with 5 suits. As you can see, each suit has three 1's, one five, and two of the other cards in between. Essentially, this means that 5's are the most important card in the deck.

Slide 6 - Number of Cards in the Hand:
Hanabi can be played with 2, 3, 4, or 5 players.
To start with, each player is dealt a number of cards, depending on the number of players. But it will always be either 4 or 5 cards.

Slide 7 - The Hand:
The online implementations of Hanabi do not allow players to reorganize the cards in their hand. Typically, cards are drawn and added to the hand on the left side. The position of each card is denoted by “slots”. For example, in this screenshot, the leftmost card is in slot 1, which is the card that was just drawn. The rightmost card is slot 5, which is the oldest card in the hand.

Slide 8 - The End of the Game:
A random player will go first, and play rotates around the table, with each player taking a turn. On some turns, players will get to draw a card. And when the final card is drawn from the deck, then every player gets 1 additional turn, and the game is over. So think of Hanabi as a race to get all of the cards played on the stacks before all of the cards are drawn!

Slide 9 - The 3 Possible Actions:
So, your next question is: what can players do on their turn? On each turn, players can perform 3 actions - giving a clue to someone else on the team, playing a card from their hand, or discarding a card from their hand. Let’s go over each in turn.

Slide 10 - #1 - Giving a Clue:
As you have probably guessed by now, since players cannot see their own hand, they will rely on their teammates to give them clues in order to tell them what to do. Cluing is the core mechanic of Hanabi. To give a clue, you choose one of the 5 number or the 5 colors. And then you choose a teammate. And then you tell teammate about ALL of the cards in their hand that match.

Slide 11 - Clue Example 1:
For example, we can pretend we are Alice and that it is the first turn of the game. The team needs to play the blue 1 and the red 1 on the stacks, so Alice tells Bob: “You have two 1s in slots 3 and 4.”

Slide 12 - Clue Example 1:
This will “light up” two cards in Bob’s hand - he knows for sure that they are 1s, but he has no idea what color they are.

Slide 13 - Clue Example 2:
Let’s do one more example before moving on. In this screenshot, Alice tells Bob: “You have three blue cards in slots 1, 2, and 3.”

Slide 14 - Clue Example 2
So, the clue “touches” slots 1, 2, and 3 “filling them in” so to speak, at least partially, because the rank of the card is still unknown. We would say that slots 1, 2, and 3 have a positive blue clue “on them”. And the other two cards in slots 4 and 5 are known to be NOT blue, so now they have a negative blue clue on them. Nearly all of the strategy in Hanabi comes from players deciding what the best clues to give to your teammates are - and also how to interpret the clues that your teammates give you.

Slide 15 - Clue Tokens:
So, by giving clues to your teammates, you can help them know which cards to play. However, Hanabi needs to have a _cost_ associated with giving a clue. Otherwise, players could give infinite clues to each other, and the game would be too easy. At the beginning of the game, the team starts with 8 clue tokens. And each clue given costs a clue token. When there are 0 clue tokens left, players are not able to give clues anymore, and they must perform one of the other two actions.

Slide 16 - #2 - Discarding a Card
Let’s move on to the second action that a player can do - discarding a card. A player can choose any card to discard in their hand that they want. Discarded cards go to a discard pile, which can be globally seen by all players. Some players also call this the trash area, or graveyard. Each time a player discards a card, it generates one new clue token for the team.

Slide 17 - #2 - Discarding a Card
There’s many different kinds of strategies in Hanabi, but in most teams, players typically discard their right-most card without any positive clues on it. This way, what they discard is predictable.

Slide 18 - #3 - Playing a Card
Of course, the third and final action that a player can do on their turn is to play a card from their hand. Most of the time, players will be playing a card that has one or more positive clues on it. In this example, it is the beginning of the game and Alice has just clued Bob about two 1’s. Bob knows that no matter what color the 1’s are, they need to be played, so he declares “I am playing slot 3”, moves the card to the stacks, and turns it over to reveal what it is.

Slide 19 - #3 - Playing a Card
In this case, the identity of his slot 3 card happens to be a green 1, so it successfully plays onto the green stack. The next green card that the team will have to play is green 2. Note that Bob does not need to know the exact identity of the card in order to play it; he can play anything he wants. This means that it is possible for players to make mistakes.

Slide 20 - Playing the Wrong Card by Accident
Let’s consider the exact the example but with one thing changed - the green 1 is _already_ played on the stacks. Here, Bob would declare “I am playing slot 3”, reveal that the card is green 1, and it would misplay - instead of going to the stacks, it would go to the discard pile instead. No clue token is awarded for this. Furthermore, it counts as a “strike” for the team. If the team gets 3 strikes, the game immediately ends and a score of 0 is given. So now we see that players have to be careful about playing cards in their hands, and players have to be careful about manipulating their teammates into playing cards with misleading-looking clues.

Slide 21 - Miscellaneous Other Rules:
So those are the 3 actions that each player can perform on their turn. And now you know nearly everything you need to know about Hanabi. But let’s finish up with some miscellaneous other rules.

First, when a 5 is played, the stack for that suit is completed. As an extra bonus, the team is granted 1 extra clue token. For this reason, playing 5’s is really good!

Second, there is a limit to the amount of clue tokens that the team can build up. And that limit is 8. When the team has 8 clue tokens, the rules forbid you from discarding - the current player must either play a card or give a clue.  In the rare case when a 5 is played with 8 clue tokens in the bank, then the extra clue token isn’t given.

Slide 22 - Conclusion:
That’s it! So, to recap, players rotate taking turns one by one, giving clues, discarding cards, and playing cards. It's a race to play all of the cards before time runs out. And don't get 3 strikes, or else the game will end and everyone will lose. Good luck.