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Author Topic: Hanabi  (Read 31977 times)

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Axxle

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #25 on: April 04, 2014, 02:34:40 am »
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I play with allowing a player to state what they know about their own hand, but others can't say anything unless giving a clue.

And rearranging cards is totally allowed, I thought it's even in the rule book?
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eHalcyon

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #26 on: April 04, 2014, 04:13:26 am »
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I finally got a copy of Hanabi.  The box is a bit hard to open.  The lid fits very snugly.
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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #27 on: April 04, 2014, 04:14:41 am »
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I finally got a copy of Hanabi.

Me too!
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sitnaltax

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #28 on: April 04, 2014, 09:07:59 am »
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We consider reminding people what clues they have been given to be legit; I think it's in the same spirit as the Dominion point tracker. It's very unsatisfying to lose a game just because you misremembered which one of the cards was the 3 you were intending to play. Anything that could have been written on a Post-It and stuck to the back of the cards, that's fine. However, the request has to start from the person asking. (Typically it's "this card is yellow, right?")

This article is by far the best strategy guide: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/804762/the-elusive-25-point-game-tips-for-effective-han
« Last Edit: April 04, 2014, 09:09:26 am by sitnaltax »
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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #29 on: April 04, 2014, 09:09:47 am »
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We consider reminding people what clues they have been given to be legit; I think it's in the same spirit as the Dominion point tracker. It's very unsatisfying to lose a game just because you misremembered which one of the cards was the 3 you were intending to play. Anything that could have been written on a Post-It and stuck to the back of the cards, that's fine. However, the request has to start from the person asking. (Typically it's "this card is yellow, right?")

But it's so funny when we load a person up with 5 different clues about their hand and watch them squirm! And it's even more funny when we give them one clue and they can't even remember that!
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Twistedarcher

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #30 on: April 05, 2014, 11:13:18 am »
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We consider reminding people what clues they have been given to be legit; I think it's in the same spirit as the Dominion point tracker. It's very unsatisfying to lose a game just because you misremembered which one of the cards was the 3 you were intending to play. Anything that could have been written on a Post-It and stuck to the back of the cards, that's fine. However, the request has to start from the person asking. (Typically it's "this card is yellow, right?")

But it's so funny when we load a person up with 5 different clues about their hand and watch them squirm! And it's even more funny when we give them one clue and they can't even remember that!

The second part may be funny if you play with the same group, but its really frustrating if you're with newer people and I've found it can be a turn off to the game. If someone misremembers it WILL matter and that person is gonna end up feeling like crap sometimes.
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Jimmmmm

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #31 on: April 06, 2014, 09:01:58 am »
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Is anyone willing to run a game?
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AdamH

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #32 on: April 10, 2014, 11:35:39 pm »
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Our group just got our first perfect score tonight of 25! No fuses and no cheater tokens -- it didn't seem like a super-awesome draw but we went into the endgame with lots of clue tokens left and we didn't get burned by critical early cards being at the bottom of the deck.

Time to add in the rainbow cards.
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Kuildeous

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #33 on: April 12, 2014, 09:08:33 pm »
+1

Got to play with a fairly logical group, but it was still new for some people, and a few nuances got missed. Oops. The highest we scored was 19.

Even what I thought was a brilliant move didn't get picked up well. Out of curiosity, is this was others would have done?

I saw that player 2 had blue and yellow 1. Player 5 had red, green, and white 1. I told player 2 of her 1s, and player 3 told player 5 of his 1s. I had figured that was all the information that was needed, but other clues were spent to elaborate on the colors of those. I cried a little inside, but I also don't want to make a player feel bad for wasting a clue. If you were given that kind of setup, would you have done the same?
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Jimmmmm

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #34 on: April 12, 2014, 10:14:50 pm »
+3

I would have played them. My thought is if you tell 2 different people about their 1s then the onus is on everyone else to let them know if there's one they can't play.
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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #35 on: April 13, 2014, 12:06:09 pm »
+1

@Kuildeous : I'm with you on this, no need to specify. That was a very lucky setup, but if I were a player with the 1s, I would just play them until someone gave me info contradicting it.

In fact, we had an interesting case once, with 4 players I think, where players A and D had perfect 1s, but A was playing first, so she indicated two 1s in player B's hand. Player B immediately discarded one of the 1s, which was a great play I think, making it clear to everyone that she knew these 1s weren't relevant, and would in fact mess up the whole positive dynamic if she played them. Needless to say player A was a bit confused at this initially, but it worked great and was an interesting play/situation I think.
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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #36 on: April 13, 2014, 12:19:46 pm »
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In fact, we had an interesting case once, with 4 players I think, where players A and D had perfect 1s, but A was playing first, so she indicated two 1s in player B's hand. Player B immediately discarded one of the 1s, which was a great play I think, making it clear to everyone that she knew these 1s weren't relevant, and would in fact mess up the whole positive dynamic if she played them. Needless to say player A was a bit confused at this initially, but it worked great and was an interesting play/situation I think.

It's brilliant little plays like this which make this a wonderful game.
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Kuildeous

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #37 on: April 13, 2014, 04:40:26 pm »
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I do like the looks of some players when someone plays a seemingly strange move. "I just told you that. Why'd you discard it?"

Of course, it can backfire, but it's lovely when it works.
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AdamH

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #38 on: April 18, 2014, 11:08:42 am »
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Looks like I forgot to post here. With the same group of three people we added in the rainbow cards and played the variant where the rainbow card is just a sixth color. We played three games and got another perfect score. I'm inclined to say that this variant is easier than the original game, so next up is the variant where the rainbow cards match all color clues.
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Kuildeous

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #39 on: May 07, 2014, 03:12:02 pm »
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Tonight's RPG has been canceled on account of too many no-shows, so we are defaulting to board games.

I really want to bring Hanabi, but I'm kind of afraid of one player. He doesn't grasp logic very well. He can hardly grasp rules. I can't believe how many times I've had to explain rules of a game multiple times.

But I really want to play Hanabi! Maybe I'll bring it anyway and expect some learning experiences. And maybe he's one of the cancellations. And who knows; maybe he'll surprise me.
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AdamH

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #40 on: May 07, 2014, 03:36:38 pm »
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It can be really frustrating to play with someone in the wrong mindset. In most games they can just lose and I'm fine, it's rare that they're in a position to kingmake or anything, but in Hanabi we're all on the same team.

The tendency is to do nothing but give clues the entire game, which is a really really bad thing. Even when they know that they have a playable or discardable card most people will do this, and there are some that will continue to do nothing but give clues after told that it really messes a lot of things up. I wonder if it's because they are in a mindset that they shouldn't trust the people they're playing with?

Anyways, usually the best thing I can do when playing with someone like this is to blind-discard every turn, which just isn't fun at all. For me, Hanabi is a game best played with the same group many times.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #41 on: May 07, 2014, 05:06:37 pm »
+2

It can be really frustrating to play with someone in the wrong mindset. In most games they can just lose and I'm fine, it's rare that they're in a position to kingmake or anything, but in Hanabi we're all on the same team.

The tendency is to do nothing but give clues the entire game, which is a really really bad thing. Even when they know that they have a playable or discardable card most people will do this, and there are some that will continue to do nothing but give clues after told that it really messes a lot of things up. I wonder if it's because they are in a mindset that they shouldn't trust the people they're playing with?

Anyways, usually the best thing I can do when playing with someone like this is to blind-discard every turn, which just isn't fun at all. For me, Hanabi is a game best played with the same group many times.

It may be because they want to contribute, and clue-giving feels like a much more significant contribution than playing a card.  I've experienced this.  I think, "I really want to give this clue, it will be so helpful!" but then someone else gives me a clue before my turn.  Now I feel as though my turn has been dictated.  I no longer have the choice to give my awesome helpful clue.  Instead, I have to react to the clue I was given and play this card.  The other player who gave me the clue is the one who made a choice.  I'm just following through.

This is ridiculous, of course, and playing my card is as important as any clue giving.  But you feel much less clever when you are sort of just doing what somebody else told you to do.
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Kuildeous

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #42 on: May 08, 2014, 12:23:58 pm »
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It can be really frustrating to play with someone in the wrong mindset. In most games they can just lose and I'm fine, it's rare that they're in a position to kingmake or anything, but in Hanabi we're all on the same team.

The tendency is to do nothing but give clues the entire game, which is a really really bad thing. Even when they know that they have a playable or discardable card most people will do this, and there are some that will continue to do nothing but give clues after told that it really messes a lot of things up. I wonder if it's because they are in a mindset that they shouldn't trust the people they're playing with?

Anyways, usually the best thing I can do when playing with someone like this is to blind-discard every turn, which just isn't fun at all. For me, Hanabi is a game best played with the same group many times.

It may be because they want to contribute, and clue-giving feels like a much more significant contribution than playing a card.  I've experienced this.  I think, "I really want to give this clue, it will be so helpful!" but then someone else gives me a clue before my turn.  Now I feel as though my turn has been dictated.  I no longer have the choice to give my awesome helpful clue.  Instead, I have to react to the clue I was given and play this card.  The other player who gave me the clue is the one who made a choice.  I'm just following through.

This is ridiculous, of course, and playing my card is as important as any clue giving.  But you feel much less clever when you are sort of just doing what somebody else told you to do.

You're probably right.

I also suspect that it may be a fear of doing the wrong thing. Why did that player tell me that card is a 3? Should I play it? Should I discard it? I don't want to screw up the game, so I'll take the safe route and give a clue. That's always a good play!

I'm speculating like hell here, but I could definitely see it happening.

Anyway, too many people canceled entirely, so even board/card games didn't happen. Too bad because the player I was worried about was one of the cancellations. I was actually looking forward to introducing the game to this group.
« Last Edit: May 08, 2014, 12:25:52 pm by Kuildeous »
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Awaclus

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #43 on: May 26, 2014, 10:36:23 am »
+1

I bought Hanabi and just played it for the first time yesterday. Man, this game is awesome on so many levels.
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AdamH

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #44 on: August 12, 2014, 11:23:51 am »
+3

I played a game of Hanabi with my fiance this weekend, I recently got her hooked on the game (which is surprising because she's usually not into board games, but the full-cooperative aspect is something that really appeals to her so I'm looking to Pandemic and the like) and we played some 3P and 4P games and wanted to try out 2P (I had tried it before and it seemed awkward). To my surprise we played one game and got a perfect score *very* comfortably. I mean, we're both pretty good players, but it didn't feel like we were really using clues very efficiently so we were both pretty surprised. So I tried thinking about Hanabi in a certain way to see if I could make sense of this.

IN A 3-PLAYER GAME (EXAMPLE)

There are 50 cards in the deck, and 15 of those cards start in hand, so when the deck runs out we've made 35 plays/discards and ideally you can get 3 more after that so that means you can have at most 38 plays/discards before time runs out. If 25 of those are plays, that means you can discard 13 cards at most over the course of the game and still have a shot at the perfect score.

You start with 8 clue tokens, let's say you get 13 from discards and (we'll be generous) 4 more from playing fives. This means you 25 clues to give in order to play 25 cards in the best case.

APPLYING TO THE GENERAL CASE

Using similar calculations for other numbers of players (which changes the number of cards that start in players' hands and also the number of plays after the deck is drawn) we have:

2 players: 29 clues
3 players: 25 clues
4 players: 25 clues
5 players: 22 clues


Now there are are ways to burn clues other than take the clue action -- explosions, not playing a 5 early enough (or at all), initiative issues at the end of the game that cause people to not effectively use all of their actions, so you can just count those as using this limited "clue" resource. But in the best case you get this number of clues to pass along enough information to play 25 cards.

It seems that as the number of players increases, you're expected to get the same information across using less clues, which means the game probably gets harder. Now there are mitigating factors, like the fact that it's probably easier to give better clues when people have less cards in hand and more cards are visible to more people. Also, initiative and sequencing can be awkward in 2P games sometimes. On the other hand, I've never played a 5P game of Hanabi without at least one person in the group who will never do anything except give a clue, no matter what happens, and endgame sequencing only gets harder with more people.

So the conclusion is that Hanabi gets more difficult to "win" the more players you add to the mix.

Also, the intuition that one clue -> play one card is kind of like the "Copper" of Hanabi; you need to use it to get things done, but a hand of all Copper is not going to get you a Province in the same way that this will not get you a perfect score in Hanabi -- you have to do better. You have to get more value out of your clues. (with the possible exception of 2P games).

Another interesting calculation to make has to do with one of the variants using the "Rainbow Cards" -- where it just acts as a sixth color and nothing else. This adds 10 more cards to the deck and 5 more plays to make, so it's 5 extra clues you get to make 5 extra plays, plus the possibility of playing another five to squeak out one more clue token. I've found that this variant makes the perfect score easier to get and in the context of this calculation that makes sense, since it seems to act as a "buffering" effect at the very worst.

2P: 29/25 -> 35/30 : 1.16 -> 1.17
3P: 25/25 -> 31/30 : 1.00 -> 1.03
4P: 25/25 -> 31/30 : 1.00 -> 1.03
5P: 22/25 -> 28/30 : 0.88 -> 0.93


You can look at it a lot of different ways, but even in 2P you get more wiggle room with this variant.
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yed

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #45 on: August 12, 2014, 11:31:14 am »
+1

so I'm looking to Pandemic and the like
I recommend Space Alert!
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Voltaire

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #46 on: August 12, 2014, 11:41:58 am »
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And rearranging cards is totally allowed, I thought it's even in the rule book?

It definitely is both allowed and in the rule book.

EDIT: And to specify, I mean something like holding cards at different levels, upside down, etc. is in the rules.
« Last Edit: August 12, 2014, 11:47:16 am by Voltaire »
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Awaclus

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #47 on: August 12, 2014, 11:49:27 am »
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And rearranging cards is totally allowed, I thought it's even in the rule book?

It definitely is both allowed and in the rule book.

I've found that it's not recommended though. When you keep the cards in the order you draw them, it's easy to tell which ones have been there for a while and which ones are new. When you rearrange the cards, it's easy to get confused and discard/play wrong cards by accident. Turning the cards 90, 180 or 270 degrees and placing them slightly higher or slightly lower than the other cards has always been enough to contain all of the information in my games so far.
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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #48 on: August 12, 2014, 12:34:25 pm »
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So the conclusion is that Hanabi gets more difficult to "win" the more players you add to the mix.


But you aren't accounting for the fact that you see more cards with more players. That gives you more information to start, allows you to be more efficient with clues and also mitigates bad luck like stalling due to key cards not being drawn early enough.
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AdamH

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Re: Hanabi
« Reply #49 on: August 12, 2014, 03:15:05 pm »
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So the conclusion is that Hanabi gets more difficult to "win" the more players you add to the mix.


But you aren't accounting for the fact that you see more cards with more players. That gives you more information to start, allows you to be more efficient with clues and also mitigates bad luck like stalling due to key cards not being drawn early enough.

You're correct. This is not taking that information into account. On the other hand, I think it's still beneficial to keep this comparison in mind while playing 5P games, knowing that the value you get out of clues has to be higher and you need to use those 5P-only tools to make that happen.
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