Hanami - How To Play

[music] [music] >> Hi and welcome to Watch It Played. My name is Rodney Smith and in this video we're going to learn the two to four player game Hanami designed by Reiner Knizia and published by Keymaster who helped sponsor this video. Based on the original game known as Samurai, here that classic title has been reimagined into a celebration of Japan's beautiful springtime [music] where players will compete to find the best spots for picnic under beautiful blossoms in the glow of lanterns all while trying to enjoy delicious food.

Sounds like a fantastic way to spend a day. So, join me at the table and let's learn how to play. To set up, flip this main board to either the Tokyo side or the Nihon Japan side found here. For your first game, they recommend using this side. On the matching spaces for them, set each of these large victory point pieces, the cherry blossom, paper lantern, and rice ball.

Now find these smaller celebration tokens and keep a certain number of each type based on your player count as shown in the rulebook and on screen. In this video, we'll assume we have three players so we keep 10 of each and return any extras back to the box. Before moving on, I should point out that you'll only use certain areas of the board based on your number of players.

Again, as shown in the rulebook and on screen. Only this middle island when you have two players, the middle and left islands in a three-player game, and all of the islands when you have four players. So, in this three-player game, we'll use these three areas. You'll find an illustration in the bottom corner of the board that reminds you of which islands to use at which player counts as well as how many celebration tokens to use as well.

The islands are divided into pink hex-shaped land spaces and also have blue water spaces surrounding them. Some will have one to three of these park symbols, making them park spaces. One of those spaces will show three park symbols, and in that space, put one of each type of celebration token. Then find any park spaces showing two trees and put two random celebration tokens there.

I do this by mixing them in my hand and then taking two without looking. The only rule is that both tokens on these spaces must be different. So, if you draw two of the same, just randomly draw again until you have two that are different. Once the three flower and two flower parks are filled, randomly put a single token on each of the remaining one flower park spaces.

It will look something like this when you're done. Now, each person collects a screen, a Tori card flipped so this side is face up, and the player tokens all in their chosen color. Your tiles will show this symbol on their back, but if this is your first time playing, go through their fronts and remove the three tiles that show this special marking to their right.

These are known as the special action tiles and can go back in the box. We'll include them in this game because I want to show you how they work. Either way, flip all of your tiles face down and give them a good mix. Then each person draws five of their own tiles at random, flipping them face up behind their screen.

This is known as your hand of tiles. You can examine your own, but keep them a secret from the other players. Your face-down tiles are kept where players can see how many you have left, and I like to stack them like this. You'll have some leftover special ability cards, which have this back. You can use these in future games, and we will discuss them later, but for now, return them and any player pieces you aren't using back to the box.

The person who last saw a flower is now chosen as the starting player, or you can just pick someone randomly. And that's the setup. In Hanami, you and the other players will be picnicking across Japan placing tiles from your hand onto the board as you try to surround and collect different types of celebration tokens that are found in various parks.

These celebration tokens you collect are not worth points, but at the end of the game, if you have the most of a type of token, then you'll collect its matching large victory point token, which is worth one point. So, really, there are only three possible points to earn, with each going to the person who has the most of its related tokens.

With only three possible points, you might have ties, and those are broken based on the other tokens you collected, as we'll see later. Hanami is played over a series of turns, starting with the first player and going clockwise around and around the table. And on your turn, you'll perform three steps, starting with placing a tile.

To do this, you pick any one tile from your hand to put into any valid empty space of the board. The tiles have various markings, but for now, just pay attention to the large symbol in their center. You'll find cherry blossoms, paper lanterns, rice balls, lucky cats, a copy effect, boats, and an airplane.

Where a tile can be placed is based on these symbols. As we saw before, there are land spaces, which are pink, water spaces, which are blue, and park spaces, which show one or more tree symbols. Tiles can never go on park spaces, but any tile, except for the boat, can go on a land space. Boats can never be put on land and must go into a water space.

And they are the only tile that can go on water. The airplane and these three tiles with special markings on their right side are known as action tiles and they have some extra rules we'll learn about later. Why you might want to put a tile into a particular space will make more sense once we know more of the rules, but for now, I'll take this tile from my hand and put it here.

I had mentioned that when placing a tile on your turn, you add only one of them to the board, but you can also place any number of tiles showing what is known as this fast icon at the top. So, if I also had these two in my hand that both show the fast icon, I could place either or both of them right now as well.

When you add tiles, as long as you're following the placement rules we've discussed so far, they really can go anywhere. They do not have to be put adjacent to other tiles you had previously placed. And just remember in a three-person game like we're playing, nothing can be added to this island. If you're planning to add fast tiles to the board during your turn, you can add them first before placing one non-fast tile or you can even choose to only place fast tiles or just a single fast tile even if you had others you could place.

So, basically on your turn, you place at most one non-fast tile and any number of fast tiles and you can place them in any order. Then after it's time to award celebration tokens. To understand how this works, I'm going to pretend it's later in the game and create different examples like you might see after several tiles have been placed.

When a person has finished adding any tiles they can or wish to during their turn, they check to see if any park spaces have all of their surrounding land spaces filled with tiles. It does not matter if adjacent water spaces have tiles or not, just all of the land ones. Here we have a park surrounded by filled land spaces, so we'd resolve this park now.

Here each person looks at every adjacent tile in their color with a symbol matching the token found in that park, ignoring any tiles that do not match. This lucky cat symbol and this boat symbol are both considered wild, which means they always count as matching the token in the park. You [snorts] then total all of the pips showing on your valid tiles.

They represent your strength. So, as the blue player, here I have 1 2 3 4 strength. This green player has 1 2 3 strength. This tile doesn't match the token, so it's not counted. The player with the most strength, blue in this case, now collects the celebration token in the park and hides it behind their player screen.

Sometimes you'll surround a park with more than one token in the center. In that case, you'll check to see who has the highest strength for each type until all of the tokens have been collected, and you can resolve these in either order. Here we have a surrounded park, so let's resolve the lanterns first.

The blue player has a matching adjacent tile with 1 2 strength. Green has two matching tiles with a total of 1 2 3 4 strength. So, green wins and collects this token. Now we check for tiles matching this rice ball. Blue doesn't have any, but green's lucky cat is wild. That means it counts as having a strength of 1 2.

The yellow player also has a strength of 1 2 as well. If two or more players are tied for the most strength, the related celebration token is not collected by any player and instead is moved to the leftmost empty space of this ties area of the board. If all four of these spaces are ever filled, the game will end, which we'll learn more about later.

Now that we understand how celebration tokens are collected, you can see why water spaces are useful. Although these do not need to be filled to resolve a park, your tiles in these spaces will add to your strength when that park's adjacent land spaces are filled. Don't forget, one of the park spaces contains all three types of celebration tokens.

So, when it's surrounded, you'll check to see which player gets to collect each one of these based on who has the highest strength there in each type. Now, I should point out, if none of the surrounding tiles match a token within the park, for example, here there are no cherry blossom or wild symbols.

That means it's considered a tie of zero strength for the cherry blossom token. So, this would then be moved to one of these tied spaces. All right, to summarize a turn as we've learned it so far, you can look inside your screen where it tells you first you place one of your tiles and any number of fast tiles.

Then after you award any celebration tokens in parks where all of its adjacent land spaces are full. Then finally, you draw back up to five player tiles. So, if I had two tiles behind my screen at this time, I would draw three face down ones to put face up into my hand. If you run out of face down tiles, in that case, don't draw any extra and just play with what you have left.

Either way, then the next player in clockwise order takes their turn. And with that, we now know enough of the rules that I can explain the effects of the action tiles. This one has an airplane symbol and is known as the move tile. To place it, first pick any one of your previously placed tiles that does not have a fast icon and move it to any empty land space putting this tile in its place.

This move tile does not provide any strength when checking a park, but it can help you strategically reposition a tile you had added previously. Next, we have what are known as the three special action tiles. You can choose not to include these in your first game, but let's go through them and see how they work.

This one is known as the draw tile. You can also see it's a fast tile as shown by the symbol at its top, and when you place it, the symbol here means you immediately draw a tile from your face-down ones and add it to your hand. And this might be one you could then place this turn. Here, we have the cover tile, which is also fast, and the symbol here means that when you play this, you put it on top of any one of your previously placed tiles, which could even be on top of a boat or another action tile.

This space that it's covering is now treated as a strength three wild lucky cat tile. Finally, we have this copy tile. When you place it, rotate it so that the arrow here is pointing to any adjacent space you want. This copy tile will now count as having the same strength and type as what's showing on the tile it's pointing towards.

So here, this copy tile would now be treated as a strength four paper lantern. If [snorts] I had placed it this way, then it would count as a strength four rice ball. If you point at an empty space, it will count as the type and strength of tile that is placed there later. If no tile was placed there, then it would just count as nothing.

A copy tile only copies the celebration symbol and strength of the tile it's pointing at. It does not become fast or copy any actions on a tile that it's pointing to. For example, placing this here means this tile is a strength one wild lucky cat tile. But, I do not get to resolve its draw action and it's not considered fast.

Now, if I was pointing at this copy tile, this doesn't gain anything. So, while this is a strength two rice ball, this tile does not count as any strength or any type. You'll find a reminder of all the different action tiles and how they work here on your player screen. Also on your player screen is a reminder that once per game, at the start of one of your turns, you can flip and activate your ability card.

In this case, we have the Tory ability. To resolve it, you would swap the position of any two celebration tokens on the board. So, I could flip this ability to swap these two tokens. Just know you cannot swap tokens if it would cause more than one of the same type to be within the same park. So, a player could not swap the position of these two tokens as that would put two rice balls here.

And remember, if you're going to resolve a card ability, it must be done at the very start of your turn and then you will not be able to use that ability again during the game. All right, we now know everything you can do on a turn. And turns will continue until the game ends in one of two possible ways.

Either when all of the tie spaces have been filled or when all of the celebration tokens of any one type have been removed from the board. In either case, you complete the current player's turn and then the game ends and you move to final scoring. Here, each player removes their screen and reveals how many of each type of celebration token they have.

So, we'll say these are blues, these are yellows, and these are the green players. The person with the most of a type collects the matching large victory point token from the board. For example, this player has the most paper lanterns compared to each of these players, so they gain the large lantern victory point.

They also have the most rice balls compared to two and two here, so they gain this victory point as well. The yellow player here has the most cherry blossoms, so they would gain this victory point. Now, the person with the most victory points wins. Blue in this case. When checking to see who has the most of a type of celebration token, if there's a tie, then no one gains the related victory point.

For example, now blue and yellow are tied for having the most rice balls, so then this victory point tile would not be collected. If the game ends and you have a tie for players with the most large victory point tokens, then each of those tied players count all of the celebration tokens that do not match their large victory point and then the person with the most wins.

So, here, this blue player has 1 2 3 4 other celebration tokens that do not match their large victory point. While the yellow player has 1 2 3 4 5 celebration tokens that do not match their large victory point. So, in this case, the yellow player wins. If there had still been a tie in this case, then the tied player with the most overall celebration tokens would win.

But after checking that, if there was still a tie, then the tied players would share the victory. Now, you could have an incredibly rare case where none of the players are able to gain enough celebration tokens to win any of the victory points. And in that case, you would check to see who has the most celebration tokens overall.

And then that player would win. But if there was still a tie, then those tied players would share the victory. Before wrapping up, I want to remind you that when playing, instead of using the standard Tory ability cards, you can keep those in the box and use these special ability cards instead. Each are unique and you shuffle them, dealing two randomly to each player.

Each player will examine their two abilities and pick one to keep, putting it face up in front of themself, returning the other one back to the box. We won't go through all of these as how they work is printed on them, but you can pause if you'd like to read their effects. I will clarify, if an effect refers to any player tile, that includes tiles that belong to other players.

You can also flip the board over to play on this Tokyo side using just the center island in a two-player game, all of these in a three-player game, and the whole board when you have four players. You'll also find advanced setup variants on the back of the rulebook. "Start strong" allows each person to pick which five tiles they want to start with in their hand, and then they flip the rest face down, shuffling them afterwards.

This token draft hard mode variant allows players to take turns adding celebration tokens to the board, rather than placing them randomly during setup. But that option I'll leave for you to discover on your own. Otherwise, that's everything you need to know to play Hanabi. If you have any questions about anything you saw here, feel free to put them in the comments below and I'll gladly answer them as soon as I get a chance.

You'll also find forums for discussion, pictures, other videos, and lots more over on the game's page at BoardGameGeek and I'll put a link to that in the description below. And if you found this video helpful, please consider giving it a like, subscribing, and clicking that little bell icon so you get notification anytime [music] I post a new video.

And if you'd like to support me directly, you can join the Patreon team, which I'll have linked below. But until next time, thanks for a watching.