• Version française ici.

    Apart from discard order, all the advice in the following "basics" articles come with all due "in general", "most of the time", "unless..." disclaimers. They should not be followed blindly, since specific situations will sometimes encourage you to depart from them. The most important thing is that you understand the reasons behind them, in order to use them wisely.*

    Remember: situation is everything and always comes first.

    *"Science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul." F. Rabelais

     

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  • Version française

    There are various levels of risk when playing a partially clued card.

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  • The reason why I reject conventions and want to play by logic only is my philosophy, how I see this amazing game, i.e. as a logic game. And also self reward.

    I suppose we all (or most of us do) play cooperative games for how rewarding it is to beat the game. Once you have beaten the easy mode, you want to switch to medium, then hard mode. How fun and rewarding would it be to win in easy mode all the time? Not much.

    In Hanabi, I find pleasure in thinking, analysing a situation and figuring out the logic in the clues that my teammates give.

    For me, using conventions in hanabi is by-passing the amazing richness of the game, by-passing the great challenge it displays, playing in easy mode. Conventions like leftism, anyone could use them, even beginners. Conventions get you a good score, ok, you may feel glad, but what was your actual personal contribution to that good score, except for applying in a soulless way the get-rich-quick scheme that was "written in the book"?

    In opposition, playing a game where you try and find the twisted meanings for your teammates' clues by yourself,  with no other artifice than your experience and logical mind, getting a good score and being able to think to yourself "damn, we've been good and we only owe it to our analysis of every situation!", that is freaking awesome.

    The logical way does takes much more thinking effort and time to master, but it makes the game immensely more challenging and interesting (for who likes challenges).

    Also, it turns out that logical leftism can make you work around some situations conventional leftism can't handle.

    Hanabi is not about "solving" the game with computers or artificial conventions, it is about challenge.

    Situation is everything.


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  • A few days ago, I had an interesting conversation with a player used, like 99% "good players or more" on BGA, to the "play left discard right" technique. I invited him and another such player on a table where I wanted to play with no conventions and no finesses, only logic and basics (see Definitions).

    During the game, there was a situation where I (player A) had no clue tokens left and player B's chop card was critical. I had just been clued a card to play. I discarded to let B know that he should save his chop.

    In the end game conversation, that player told me "ok you want to play with no conventions, but discarding to tip the next player not to discard his chop is a convention".

    I found this very interesting, since it shows that playing with coded conventions (which are derived from an initial logical trick and then go astray) distorts how one perceives logic.

    Playing newest card of several clued with one clue (leftism) is logical only in some situations and most players on BGA play so in situations where it is not. And they get so used to it, so blinded by how easy this convention is, that they forget it is not always logical.

    And they end up seeing convention in purely logical moves. To make myself clearer, here is why intentional discarding is logical.

    Player D > player A, this is yellow, play it (there are no clue tokens left).

    Player A > I discard.

    Player B > What the--?? He knows he has to play it and he chooses to discard instead, man, what was that?!. Why is he doing this? Is he stoopid? Oh, wait a minute, there were no clues left. If he played, I would have to discard. Eureka, perhaps he didn't want me to discard. Ok, I have to save my chop.

    This is a logical reflexion that even a smart newbie could have.

     

    I will be happy to teach anyone a logical game with no conventions on BGA. Just send me a PM on Boardgamearena.

    For more basics, also see "Over-assuming -- do you have what it takes for finesse?".


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