My wife and I love playing board games and card games and a few months ago we bought Bohnanza (aka: Beans) and its become one of our favorite games to play together or in groups.
This article is a brief review of the game. I hope you enjoy.
About the Game
The game is produced by the Rio Grande Games company. It is the first in the Bohnanza series, though several expansions have since been developed. It can be played with 2 to 7 players and takes approximately 20 - 45 minutes to play depending on the number of people.
Game Play
The object of the game is like any other, to gain the most points. Points come in the form of gold coins which are located on the back of the cards.
Each card contains several pertinent pieces of information. The number at the top of the card tells the player how rare the card is. For instance, as shown in the picture above, there are 8 "Red Beans" in the entire deck which means that this particular card is quite rare.
The numbers at the bottom of card tells the player how many of the beans must be planted in order to receive gold coins. Again in the case of the "Red Bean," 2 must be planted in order to receive one gold coin, 3 to receive two coins, 4 to receive three coins and so on.
In comparing the "Red Bean" to other cards in the deck you can see the difference in rarity of some of the beans. For instance the "Coffee Bean" is the most common card in the deck with 24 of them in total. On the other hand, the "Cocoa Bean" is the most rare with only 4 in the deck.
As you can also see from the cards in the picture, rare cards like the "Cocoa Bean" require less to be planted in order to receive gold coins because they rarely come up during the game. However, common cards like the "Coffee Bean" need several to be planted in order to receive gold because they come up fairly often.
Planting, Harvesting and Trading
Each player starts off with 5 cards in their hand and at the beginning of their turn they must plant one Bean or a maximum of two Beans. When playing with 3 or more players each person can only have two planting fields but when playing with 2 players each person can have up to three fields (as shown in the picture above).
After planting their Bean(s), the player turns over two cards from the deck which they can either plant in their own field(s) or try to trade with another player. One of the aspects of the game that is the most interesting is trading. The game relies extensively on trading and deal making with other players.
Once the players turn is complete, they pick up 3 additional cards from the deck and place them into their hand.
One last thing to mention that makes the game interesting is the fact that cards must be played in the order that they are drawn into the players hand. At the beginning of the game, each player has to decide which direction of their hand they will draw cards from to plant. After that decision is made the player must continue to plant from that side of their hand for the rest of the game. Similarly, any cards picked up from the deck go into the back of their hand.
As an example, a player may plant from the right of their hand and put cards picked up from the deck in the left of their hand.
And that's it. That's pretty much the game. If you have any questions please feel free ask in the comment section or if you have other games that you enjoy please feel free to share them with me. I'm always looking for new games to try :)