Hanabi Deluxe

I have a confession to make. I love fireworks. The bright lights. The big bangs.

You may be asking yourself, "self, what do fireworks have to do with board games?"

The answer is Hanabi Deluxe, a unique, cooperative tile game. In Hanabi Deluxe you are trying to set off a Grand Fireworks Finale by playing tiles in the correct order. The trick to the game is that you can only see other players tiles, not your own.

You have the ability to tell other players if they have specific numbered tiles, or specific colored tiles, but not both, and nothing else. While you can give hints, your group only had a finite number of hints that may be given. If you are out of hints you can play a the next tile in order (again, you can't see your own tiles) or you can discard a tile to regain a hint.

There are a possible 25 points. But if you accidentally discard all of a specific color/number tile (ie Blue 2) you won't be able to play the next number tile in that color sequence, thereby losing the potential points for that sequence. If that seems too easy for you, you can add in a number of "wild" tiles that can throw off your hints.

Hanabi Deluxe has high quality plastic tiles, raising the price point a fair bit, compared to it's card based predecessor, but I personally think the quality is worth the extra coin.

While the box claims the game is for 2-5 players, ages 8 and up, I recommend playing with other players that are at a similar skill level as each other, as one player at a lower level can make the game run less smoothly and get frustrating. Or perhaps I need to remember it's just a game, and there's no reason to ruin friendships. After all, this isn't Monopoly.