Minhwatu (민화투)
Minhwatu is the older, plainer ancestor of Go-Stop — "min" (민) means bland.
It is played with the same 48-card hwatu (화투) flower deck of twelve months
with four cards each, and it uses the same fishing turn: play a card, capture a
card of the same month.
What it does not have is the drama. There is no Go/Stop gamble, no bonus cards
and no special rules. Every card is simply worth what it is worth, the deck is
played out to the very last card, and the player who finishes furthest above the
par score wins.
That makes it the game to learn hwatu on. Everything here transfers directly to
Go-Stop.
Objective
Finish with the highest point total once every card has been played.
The deck
Twelve months of four cards. Every card is one of four types:
months 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12
Ribbons come in three sets: hongdan (홍단, red poetry — months 1, 2, 3),
cheongdan (청단, blue poetry — 6, 9, 10) and chodan (초단, plain — 4, 5,
7). December's ribbon belongs to no set.
The September sake cup can stand as an animal or as a double junk in some
hwatu games. In Minhwatu it is always an animal, worth 10 — a double junk
would be worth nothing, so there is no version of the question worth asking and
you are never prompted.
Setup
The deal changes with the number of players:
The rest of the deck becomes a face-down draw pile. Every deal is sized so that
the draw pile holds exactly one card per card in the players' hands — so the
whole deck is played out and every hand empties on the same turn.
Taking a turn
1.
Play a card from your hand onto the field. If it matches the month of
a card already on the field, you capture both. If the field holds more than
one card of that month, you choose which one to take. If nothing matches,
your card simply stays on the field.
2.
Flip the top card of the draw pile onto the field. If it matches a field
card by month, you capture both.
Captured cards go into your four piles — brights, animals, ribbons and junk —
which is how you read your score.
Minhwatu has no ppeok: if your hand card has just taken the field's only
card of that month and the card you then flip is the same month again, the
flipped card simply stays on the field and you keep the two you already took.
Scoring
Flat values, so the whole deck is worth exactly 240 points:
On top of that, each completed ribbon set is worth 30 points:
•
hongdan (홍단) — the January, February and March red ribbons
•
cheongdan (청단) — the June, September and October blue ribbons
•
chodan (초단) — the April, May and July plain ribbons
Who wins
Once every card is played, each player subtracts the par score — an even
share of the deck's 240 points — from their captured total:
What is left is your remainder, which may be positive or negative. Players
are ranked by remainder, highest first, and the highest remainder wins. If two
or more players tie on the top remainder, the hand is a draw between them.
Traditionally the differences were settled between players in money; this
version simply reports each player's total, the par score and their remainder,
and ranks them. Nothing is transferred between players.
How a hand ends
The hand ends when every card has been played out of every hand — which,
because the deal is sized to the draw pile, is also the moment the last card is
turned from the draw pile. Then the totals are compared.
Card art
The hwatu card faces are used under
CC BY-SA 4.0 — by Spenĉjo
(Wikimedia Commons), from work by Marcus Richert, based on hanafuda graphics by
Louie Mantia, Jr. Full credits are in the
hwatu-deck package README.
The card back is original Gameweave artwork.