Overview

• Hawaiian Hanafuda is also called Sakura.
• 2-7 players.
• 4 rounds.
• Earn points by capturing cards of the same suit.
• Reduce your opponent's points with special card combinations (yaku).

Cards

• 48 cards in 12 suits which correspond to the 12 months of the year.
• Each month is represented by a plant (Hanafuda means flower cards).
• 4 cards/suit: Brights, Banners, Animals and Junk.

Gameplay

• Begin your turn by playing one card from your hand onto the playing field.
• If your card matches suit with:
  • 1 card: capture that card and move both cards to your scoring area
  • 2 cards: pick one to capture
  • 3 cards: capture all the cards.
    • Alternatively, if you have 3 cards of the same suit in your hand and you match suit with the final card in the playing field, all cards of that suit are captured.
    • Capturing all the cards of a suit in a single turn is called a Hiki.
  • Doesn't match suit with any cards? Leave your card in the playing field.
  • If your card matches suit with 1 or more cards in the playing field, you must capture a card. It's not optional.
• Next, the top card of the draw deck is flipped up to see if it matches suit with any cards in the playing field. If so, follow the rules above.

Round end

• The round ends when all players have played all the cards in their hand.
  • If you played a hiki, you may run out of cards before the other players. In that case, on your turn you will only flip up the top card of the draw deck.
• Each player's score = total value of captured cards - (50 x total number of Yaku held by all opponents).
• Player with the highest score begins the next round.

Game end

• Most points wins!

Tiebreaks

• Dealer
• Closest to the right of the dealer.

Card values

• Brights = 20 pts (crane, curtain, moon and phoenix)
• Banners = 10 pts (yellow pawlonia also scores 10)
• Animals = 5 pts (rain, cup, bridge and butterfly cards are considered animals and score 5)
• Junk = 0 pts (lightning is a junk card)

Wildcard

• The lightning card may capture any card in the playing field when played from a player's hand or flipped up from the deck.
• The wildcard cannot be used to complete a hiki.
• Note: At end of round, all cards left in the playing field that match the suit captured by lightning are awarded to the person who played the lightning card.