2015年2月18日水曜日

Hana-awase, or Flower pairings, a basic game of hanafuda (flower cards)



Preliminaries


Number of players: 3
Equipment: a pack of 48 hanafuda (flower cards)
Eldest hand is chosen by lot. A player who makes a combination or captures highest points becomes eldest in next hand (one closer to the eldest in case of a tie).

Deal


Youngest hand, who is at left of the eldest, shuffles the cards and hands them to the eldest, who passes them to second hand, who is at his right. The second hand either acknowledges the shuffling by just touching the pack with his/her finger, or cut them in half. The eldest completes the cut and deals seven cards to each player face down and six to the table face up. An often mentioned way is to deal them in packets of four and three cards. Remaining cards are placed face down near the cards on the table. If there are four cards of same flower/plant on the table, the cards are shuffled, cut and dealt again without changing the eldest hand. Some disadvantageous hands like four cards of a flower can be treated similarly. If there are three cards of same flower/plant on the table, they are grouped together. They can be captured all at once by playing the remaining card of the flower.

Play of cards


The eldest hand plays first and turn moves counter-clockwise. A player plays a card from his/her hand by placing it face up on the table. If there is a card of same flower on the table, it must be placed on it -- the pair of cards is captured by the player; it is left alone on the table otherwise to become a new table card. Then he/she flips a top card of the stock and play it just like a card from his/her hand. Captured cards are placed face up in from of the player arranged in bright, animal, ribbon and junk.

Scoring


A hand ends when players finish playing all cards in their hands and the stock.
Each player calculates points in his/her capture, 20 points for a bright card, 10 for an animal, 5 for a ribbon and 0 for a junk card, and subtract 80 from total. Or, one can count 1 point for each junk card and subtract 88 from total.

Games with combinations


The game can be played with some scoring combinations. When a player has captured all cards that form a combination, current hand ends immediately and each of the other two players pay its score, ignoring points in captured cards. Combinations and their scores vary from a player to another. Old (late 19th century) descriptions tend to have just a few of them, like:

  • Red ribbons, 40 points. Three cards with red ribbons with letters, of pine, plum and cherry.
  • Blue ribbons, 40 points. Three cards with blue ribbons of peony, chrysanthemum and maple.
  • Four bright, 60 points. Pine with a crane, cherry with a curtain, grass with the moon and paulownia with a phoenix.

Some combination can be added for worst situations:

  • Fourteen junk, 60 points. Fourteen junk cards. Rain cards count as junk for the purpose of this combination.
  • Misery, 40 points. When a player manages to take 15 points or less in his/her capture. This is not exactly a combination, but is scored just like three ribbons.


Some play with more combinations, like:

  • seven ribbons, 60 points. seven ribbon card, without counting rain with a ribbon.
  • five bright, 100 points. four bright plus rain with an umbrella man.

Inclusion of these kind of combinations calls for additional rules to keep a game going when one completes a combination, because four bright is a subset of five bright, and seven ribbons highly likely to contain one or two three ribbons combo.

The Korean game of Minhwatu is very similar, but always played until all cards in hands and the stock are exhausted. After each player receive points for combinations he/she has from each of the other two players in captured cards, he/she calculates points in cards, counting no points for junk cards. The combinations and their scores are:

  • Quartet of iris: 20 points
  • Quartet of maple: 20 points
  • Quartet of rain: 20 points
  • Red ribbons: 30 points
  • Blue ribbons: 30 points
  • Plain ribbons: 30 points (the three ribbon cards of wisteria, iris and clover)

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