Bohnanza

In Bohnanza, you are a bean farmer.  Your goal is to grow beans in order to gain coins, and have the most coins by the end of the game.  There are a different types of beans in the deck, and each bean has a different number of cards in the deck.  For example, there are 22 wax beans in the deck, but only 4 cocoa beans.  In order to make money off of your beans you need to plant a certain amount of them.  For more common beans, such as wax, you need to plant more than you would for the rare beans such as cocoa or garden beans in order to get a good pay-off.  When you are ready to plant different beans, you dig up the ones you have and earn the coins from that.

You start with a hand of cards, in which order matters.  That means that however you pick the cards up is the order in which you must play them – you can’t move them around within your hand.  You have two fields in which to plant beans.  At the start of your turn you must plant the first bean in your hand, and you may plant the second one if you want.  You then flip over two beans face up from the draw pile.  You can choose to plant these beans , or you can trade them for beans you actually need.

What this game is really about is the trading.  You can trade what you turn face up, but on your turn you can also trade from out of your hand.  There aren’t many rules about trading – almost anything goes.  The only major rule is that when you trade, you must plant the bean that you get, you can’t just put it into your hand.  Trading from your hand is a good way to get rid of beans that you don’t want that are in your way.  You go through the deck three times, and at the end of the game you count up the number of coins you have from planting beans – the player with the most coins wins!

2-7 players.  Multiple expansions available (Bohnaparte).  Approximately 45-60 minutes.  Easy-medium learning curve.

Becky says:

Bohnanza is a fun little game, and pretty easy to get the hang of quickly.  The cards and brightly colored with cute pictures.  In terms of game play, I do like it.  I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite game, but it’s fun.  It’s a very social game, as you are constantly trading or bargaining with people. 

I think the trading is fun, but it certainly depends on who you play with.  You also tend to develop certain “types” of traders, which I’ve developed names for.  There’s the “Too Nice” trader, who will give you the beans you want even if you can’t offer anything in return.  This person tends to go with the line, “just remember it for next time!”  Then there’s the “Miser,” who doesn’t want to trade anything that will help anyone else – unfortunately, that often puts them in a bad position but they’re usually too stubborn to act any other way.  And there’s also the “Bargainer,” who is constantly trying to get a better deal.  “A wax bean for a blue bean?  I could do that, but how about you throw in a stink bean too?”  This person can get very greedy and frustrating to trade with.  It is interesting to see how your friends and family act when it comes to trading beans!

On the negative side, this game can get really long and slow moving if you play with too many people.  This is especially true if the people you play with are stubborn – “But I don’t want to plant this blue bean!  Won’t anyone trade with me?  No?  Well, I’ll keep offering different trades for the next ten minutes anyway.”  The game holds up to 7 but that can often be way too long.  It’s a fun game, but most people don’t really want to be planting beans for 2 hours.  I find it works really well with 4 or 5 people, especially if they already know how to play.

In the end, it’s not a game I want to play all the time, but I enjoy it every once in awhile.  I don’t feel it’s particularly outstanding in any way, but it’s just fun with a little bit of strategy.  And sometimes, you don’t need a crazy, complex game – you just want that game that lets you have a good time without too much effort but still requires a little brain power.  Bohnanza fits that niche well.  7 out of 10.

Jason says:

Bohnanza.  Here I am, an American writing a review of a game by the German publisher Rio Grande games.  I always liked that about this game.  It has nothing to do with the review, but I thought I would share that.

Interesting game, certainly another unique one, which I say because I haven’t seen another game that does quite what Bohnanza does.  The game is simple; you plant beans, you dig up beans, you get money.  Your friends are also doing that.  The trick is that everyone wants stuff that everyone else has.  So it’s really a game about trading in a way that makes your hand work as well as it can, which can be especially difficult since the order of the cards in your hand matters.  Yes, a stink bean in the back of your hand could be just the trade leverage you need to secure your new bean farm, but a stink bean in the front of the hand could spell disaster for your hard-earned bean empire, a situation that most often just… well… stinks beans.

Alright, so what about the game?  Extremely social and interactive, that’s a plus.  And it’s easy, that’s a plus too.  I would also venture to say that winning the game isn’t nearly as fun as just playing it, which I think is a big point in its favor.  Of course, with any social game, it matters who you play with, and it’s important not to get hung up on people making strange trades that you think don’t make sense: there’s no rule that they aren’t allowed, and you have no idea what kinds of beans are cluttering up their hands or how desperately they want to trade that clutter away.

Now, having said all of that, this game is a good one, but it’s not one of my favorites.  I don’t get excited when someone says, “Let’s play Bohnanza!” but that is just my opinion.  I think of it as one of those change-of-pace games for when we’ve played tons of Pandemic and Bang! and such.  Like any game, it has its deficiencies.  It can drag a bit if people aren’t focused or if the trading gets too involved.  There may also be a person or two who simply can’t get their bean machines working because that’s the way the cards are dealt.  But I think these small deficiencies fade compared to the positive simplicity and elegance of the game.

Now, I think I will rate Bohnanza at 425.02/538, or a 7.9/10 which means that I rated it higher than Pandemic or Lord of the Rings.  But you see, when I play games, Bohnanza doesn’t really come to mind, even despite how much I like it.  I think of Bohnanza as that guy that everyone thinks deserves better, but no one really wants to throw him a bone because they think they have better things to do.  Maybe it’s just old hat for me at this point.