ひきどき Hikidoki

What kind of game is it? A push-and-pull card game about diving a shore and carrying the catch home

It is a card game about diving a tide pool at low tide and carrying the catch home. You flip the deck one card at a time and put the shore cards you want into your basket, but if too many wave cards come out you lose everything in the basket. In most games of this kind the limit on risk is the same for everyone; Hikidoki lets you choose your own signal to turn back before you dive. A game is three dives and runs three to four minutes.

The cards are 60 shore cards (five colours - sea lettuce, sea urchin, sea anemone, hermit crab and octopus - of 12 each) and 12 wave cards. From these, 12 shore cards and 2 wave cards per player are taken at random and shuffled together to make the day's deck, which is Today's Tide. There is one deck for everyone, so the cards the previous player flipped are visible to all.

What are the rules? From the dive to the score

1. Place one marker. Before you dive, choose one marker. There are only three - Offshore, Mid Shoal and Shore Pool - and each may be used once per game.
2. Flip the deck one card at a time. Flip the top card of the deck and lay it in a row in front of you. A single dive allows six flips, and cards returned to the sea and wave cards both count towards those six.
3. Keep it, or return it to the sea. If the flipped card is a shore card, choose whether to put it in your basket or return it to the sea. The basket holds four shore cards. A returned card scores nothing, but the row still grows by one, so it brings the six-card limit closer. Wave cards cannot be chosen and simply stay in the row.
4. Four ways a dive ends. You succeed when the basket reaches four shore cards, when the row reaches six cards, or when you call it and surface. You bust when the wave cards in the row exceed what your marker allows.
5. You cannot come home empty-handed. You may only surface once the row has reached your marker's minimum flip count (three for Offshore, two for Mid Shoal, one for Shore Pool), and your basket holds at least one shore card.
6. On success, to the beach. The contents of the basket are laid out on your beach, where they can never be lost. You also score the number of cards carried home multiplied by the marker's value.
7. A bust costs you everything. Everything in the basket goes to the discards, and the marker scores nothing. What is already on your beach is not lost. The marker counts as used.
8. When the deck runs out, the tide returns. Shuffle the discards well to make a new deck. The same is true in the middle of a dive.
9. From the second round, the highest score dives first. On a tie, whoever went earlier in the previous round goes first. The game ends once everyone has dived three times.

How do the three markers differ? Offshore, Mid Shoal, Shore Pool

It reads in one line. The stricter the marker, the deeper you must go, and the more it pays. Offshore allows no waves at all, so the first three cards must all be shore cards (a success rate of about 53% in a four-player game). Mid Shoal allows one wave, which makes it the only marker that lets you chase a colour while returning cards. Shore Pool almost never busts, but it pays nothing per card carried home, so every point comes from the beach.

All three may be used only once per game. That is why Hikidoki is not a bet made one dive at a time, but a plan for spreading three markers across three dives.

How to win (how the score is counted)

The score is the beach score plus the marker score plus Beach Master. Solo Today's Tide has no opponent, so Beach Master is not used, and only the beach score and the marker score are counted.

• Beach score: count the cards of each colour and convert them with the table above (triangular numbers). The more of one colour you gather, the more each card is worth.
• Marker score: on each successful dive, the number of cards carried home multiplied by the marker's value. Four cards carried home on Offshore is 4 x 3 = 12 points.
• Beach Master: +1 point to whoever holds the most of a colour (all of them, on a tie). It only exists in games of two or more players.

The highest total wins. On a tie, the player with fewer cards on the beach wins.

Any tips? How to judge when to stop

1. Count the waves left. There is one deck for everyone, and every flipped card is visible to all. The longer the waves stay away, the denser the waves left in the deck.
2. Play Offshore while the waves are thin. Right after someone draws a wave is the moment. The same Offshore succeeds about 49 to 53% of the time early on, and falls into the low 20s late, in a deck dense with waves. Saving it until last is usually too late.
3. Returning cards belongs to Shore Pool. Returning a card on Offshore is the same as going to draw one more wave, which is close to suicide. The number of cards you can return while still filling the basket to four is two, for Mid Shoal and Shore Pool alike. The difference lies in the room you have for waves. Mid Shoal is pinned to its limit the moment one wave appears, while Shore Pool allows three, so returning cards to hunt a colour rarely ends in disaster.
4. Grow one colour instead of spreading. The fourth card of a colour is worth 4 more than the third, the sixth 6 more than the fifth. The further one colour has grown, the stronger Shore Pool becomes, even though it pays nothing per card.
5. Decide how to spread the three before you start. The markers are one-use. Which dive you spend Offshore on very nearly decides the day's score on its own.

Frequently asked questions

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