Bohnanza
Verdict: Beans!
In a Nutshell: An agrarian card game that encourages a lot of wheeling and dealing.
(from the publisher’s website)
“This great card game is about planting, trading, and selling beans – 11 kinds of beans (this English version includes all the cards from the original game and the first expansion). Players try to collect large sets of beans to sell for gold. There is limited growing space and always new beans to plant. To avoid planting unwanted beans, players trade them to other players who want them for their bean fields.”
- Fun Rating: Fun
- ESRB: n/a
- Players/Mode: pvp
- Game Duration: 45-75 minutes
- System: Table
- Developer: Uwe Rosenberg
- Website: http://www.riograndegames.com/games.html?id=36
- Cost: $14.95 at Cardhaus Games
| Would I play this again? | Absolutely |
| Would I recommend this game? | Yes |
| Was the story good? | n/a |
| Was the music good? | n/a |
| Were the graphics good? | Yes |
| Was this game difficult? | no |
| Was this game frustrating? | No |
| Was this game offensive? | No |
| Was this game worth your time/money? | Yes |
Playing the game
Each player is a bean farmer and is trying to earn the most gold before the end of the game. Players start with two fields in which to plant the beans and earn gold for planting enough beans of a particular variety. The more rare the bean card is, the fewer beans it takes to earn gold.
On a player’s turn, they must plant the first bean card in their hand (and cards in a player’s hand cannot be rearranged). Without a good strategy
or effective trading, a player may have to rip up a field and start over with the new card. Players can buy a third field to plant in which helps
keep the number of replanted fields to a minimum. The game ends after three times through the deck.
What the game gets right
To start, there are multiple levels of strategy involved with this game, which I really enjoy. Trying to get the right beans at the right time and knowing when to cash in a crop or rip up a low yield bean for one of higher value, or one that multiple opponents have planted, keeps the gaming moving and interesting. The trading phase of each turn is probably my favorite as that’s when you find out what your opponents are willing to give for a particular bean and what they have coming up in their hands.
In addition to all of this scheming, the card art is very colorful and amusing and there are variations of the game rules depending on the number of people involved (which I still haven’t tried).
What the game gets wrong
Currently, I can’t really find anything wrong with this game. I’ll update this if something shows up in the variations based on the number of people.
Sum it up
Yes, this game has been around for a while but this is definitely one of those games that you need to have on your shelf as a standard for any get together or for taking with you on a trip.
Other games you might like to read about:
Rate this Game
(1 votes, average: 2.00 out of 4)
Loading ...
May 14th, 2010 at 10:28 am
Personally, the game play relies too heavily on random chance for my liking. Since you are forced to play your cards in the order in which you are dealt them, you have to trade to really employ any strategy. But if nobody happens to want the cards that you want to trade in order to get to the cards deeper in your hand, then you’re out of luck.