I’ve said it before…we LOVE card games! They’re great for lots of players of all ages and they ALWAYS use math and logic skills.
Ohanami is a lovely set collection game illustrated with Japanese garden features. There are 4 suits/colors (water, vegetation, stones, and Sakura trees) and numbered cards from 1-120 with no repeated numbers.
Each set of 10 cards in each color has a different design, I pulled them all out to look at them side by side…they are beautifully designed aren’t they?!?
Game play is simple but not easy and is played over 3 rounds.
Players are each dealt a hand of 10 cards per round. Each player chooses 2 cards from their hand to play or discard and then passes the remaining 8 cards to the player on their left.
Cards can be played in 3 “gardens” or piles but each new card played can only be the highest or lowest card in the pile.
Players repeat this process of choosing 2 cards from their current hand, passing the remaining cards to the player on their left, and playing or discarding their two selected cards.
When all 10 cards from each hand have been selected, the round ends and points are scored.
Scoring is the tricky part and goes like this:
- Round 1: Score blue cards ONLY for 3 points each
- Round 2: Score blue (3 points each) AND green cards (4 points each)
- Round 3: Score blue (3 points each), green (4 points each), grey (7 points each), and pink (variable scale shown on score sheet. More pinks = more points per card)
Because the scoring is different every round, players have to pick a strategy and hope for the best! Start choosing and playing gray cards to maximize points in round 3?? Play as many blue cards as possible in every round to score points right away? Focus completely on pink cards???
I have a pretty good strategy…but I’m not telling what it is!
Besides being a fun, versatile, portable family card game, it really is lovely. Such a peaceful vibe…
Ohanami is also an excellent gameschool math game, especially for elementary kids. These boys are playing just for fun…they already have number fluency down. But my younger boys benefit from playing this game and working on “more than”/”less than,” identifying 10s, and arithmetic.
Thanks to Pandasaurus Games for a bright and cheerful math card game to get us through these winter months learning at home!
