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Bohnanza is a German (non-collectible) card game from Amigo, which has had its rules translated and republished in the States by Rio Grande Games under the same name. Additionally, the Rio Grande version contains the 6-7 player expansion. Bohnanza sells for $16 at your friendly local game store, or from Funagain Games.
The small box contains the 8-page English rulebook, 154 bean cards, and 7 "3rd Bean Field" cards. It also contains ad cards for more Rio Grande games. The rulebook is glossy and full color; the cards are also glossy and full color, of a manufacture to withstand abuse during play.
The theme of Bohnanza is that each player takes on the role of a bean farmer competing to earn money (called talers). Each farmer initially has two fields in which to grow beans, but can later buy a third bean field. During their turn, players plant beans from their hands, and can also trade bean cards with other players. At any time, a player may harvest a bean field, collecting income based on the type and number of beans planted in the field. When the draw deck has been exhausted three times, the game ends, and the player with the most talers wins.
The Bohnanza draw deck consists of 154 bean cards of 11 types of bean. (Depending on the number of players in the game, certain types of beans may be removed during setup). The different types of bean cards come in varying quantities, from the coveted Cocoa Bean, of which there are only four, to the plentiful coffee bean, which numbers 24.
Each bean card has three values of interest to the play of the game: the name of the kind of bean the card represents, a number indicating the quantity of that bean type, and a "beanometer", which correlates number of beans planted to income when a field of those beans is harvested. Additionally, each card has silly anthropomorphic bean artwork by Björn Pertoft. These values are identical for each bean of the same kind.
A full table of beans, listing their quantity and beanometer values, follows:
--Beanometer--
Bean Type Quantity 1 2 3 4
Coffee 24 4 7 10 12
Wax 22 4 7 9 11
Blue 20 4 6 8 10
Chili 18 3 6 8 9
Stink 16 3 5 7 8
Green 14 3 5 6 7
Soy 12 2 4 6 7
Black-Eye 10 2 4 5 6
Red 8 2 3 4 5
Garden 6 - 2 3 –
Cocoa 4 - 2 3 4
During setup, the bean cards are shuffled together and five dealt to each player. The first and most important rule in Bohnanza is that you must never change the order of the cards in your hand. The first bean card dealt into a hand is hence the first bean card of that hand.
Game play begins with the dealer, and passes clockwise. On his or her turn, a player performs the following actions in order:
1 - Plant the first bean card in your hand.
2 - Optionally plant the second bean card in your hand.
3 - Draw face up on the table two bean cards from the draw deck.
4 - Trade with other players for the beans in your hand and on the table.
5 - Each player who received beans in a trade must plant them; if the active player did not trade away the two cards he drew in step 3, he or she must plant those as all.
6 - One at a time, draw 3 new bean cards into the back of your hand.
Because of steps 1, 2 and 6, it is reasonable to view your hand as a timeline - if you do not trade away the cards in your hand, the first bean card in your hand will be the very next one you plant, followed by the next, and so on.
Before I detail each step, I should note the rules for harvesting, as harvesting is the most important action in the game, as it (hopefully!) earns you talers. You may choose to harvest at any time; however, you may also be forced to harvest when you are required to plant a bean of a kind which you do not already have planted in your two (or three) bean fields. When harvesting, whether by choice or force, you must harvest a bean field which has more than 1 bean in it, unless all your bean fields have only 1 bean each in them. Other than that restriction, the choice of which bean field to harvest is up to the player. When a field is harvested, all beans are removed from it; the player takes a number of bean cards from those in the field equal to the highest tier achieved on the bean’s beanometer and places those cards face-down in his taler pile, and returns the rest to the discard pile.
For example: I have two bean fields, one of which has three coffee beans and the other having four green beans. I am forced to harvest. Since both of my fields have more than 1 bean in them, I can choose which to harvest. If I chose the harvest the coffee beans, I would return all three coffee bean cards to the discard pile and earn no talers - I have not reached the magic "1 taler" tier of 4 coffee beans, as you can tell by looking at the beanometer above. If I chose to harvest the green beans, I would take one of the four bean cards into my taler pile (as the beanometer for Green Beans tells me that I require a field of at least 3 Green Beans to earn 1 taler for it) and return the other three Green Beans to the discard pile. (I have not yet reached the "2 taler" tier for Green Beans of 5 talers. Quite a choice I have! Each of my fields only requires 1 more card to earn another taler! More on this dilemma in the Strategy section.)
Step 1 - Plant. The very first act you must take on your turn is to plant the very first bean card in your hand. If you have a bean field already containing that kind of bean, you must plant it there; if you have a free bean field, you can plant it there. Otherwise, you are forced to harvest a bean field (usually prematurely) to free one up to plant the new bean.
Step 2 - Optional Second Planting. You may now decide whether or not you wish the plant the new first bean in your hand, and if you do, plant it as per step 1.
Step 3 - Draw for trade. Draw the first two beans from the draw deck and place them face-up on the table in front of you for everyone to see. (If you run out of cards in the draw deck when required to draw, and this is not the third time the draw deck has been exhausted, immediately shuffle the discard pile to make a new draw deck. If it is the third time the draw deck has been exhausted, do not reshuffle and the game will end at the end of the current players turn.)
Step 4 - Trade. This step is where most of the tactical meat of the game lies. The active player may propose trade to any of the other players; likewise, the other players may propose trade with the active player. Non-active players may not trade amongst themselves - all trades must involve the active player. The active player may trade with the cards she just placed on the table and the cards in her hand. The other players may only trade with the cards in their hands. When trading from hand, you may trade with any card or cards from your hand, regardless of what position they are in. In this way, removing cards from your hand by trading them away is the only way to change the order of cards in your hand.
Any kind of trade may be proposed. Players may simply wish to give cards to another player to get rid of them. Two players who need a card from the active player may engage in a "bidding war" to acquire a card from the active player. However, trades are not transitive - that is, you may not trade with cards you have received in trade.
Step 5 - Plant traded cards. All players must now plant the bean cards they have received in trade during step 4. Likewise, the active player must plant the bean cards he drew in step 3 if he was unable or unwilling to trade them during step 4. When planting traded cards, you may be forced to harvest fields. Fortunately, during this step, each player may choose the order in which they plant the cards they have received, which may have an impact on talers received for harvesting.
Step 6 - Draw 3 to hand. Draw the first three cards of the draw pile, one at a time, into the back of your hand. For example, if I have a Coffee Bean as the first card in my hand, and a Red Bean as the second, and I draw a Coffee, Cocoa and Stinky bean, my hand, from first to last card in order, will be: Coffee, Red, Coffee, Cocoa, Stinky. There is no maximum hand size.
The game ends when the draw deck has been exhausted three times, at the end of the turn wherein it was exhausted. At this point, all players set their hands aside and harvest all their bean fields to receive any final talers they are eligible for. The winner is the player with the most talers. If two or more players tie for most talers, largest hand size breaks the tie. If players tie for largest hand size, the winner of a blindfolded knife fight breaks the tie. (Just kidding! The rules do not specify how to break hand-size ties.)
At any time during the game, even when he is not the active player, a player may return 3 talers to the discard deck and receive one of the Third Bean Field cards. This card allows him to plant a third kind of bean before mandatory harvesting. Only one Third Bean Field card can be bought in this manner during the game.
There are additional rules which change the setup based on the number of players. For example, when playing with four players, all the Coffee Beans are removed from the deck before play.
There are also rules for play with only two players. With two players, there is no trading; a player simply leaves any beans he does not want to plant from step 3 as an offer to his opponent, who may plant them on his next turn. Furthermore, with two players, the game ends when the draw deck has been exhausted for the first time.
With three players, each player begins with a Third Bean Field card (and cannot buy another), the Cocoa Beans are removed from the deck, and the game ends when the draw deck has been exhausted twice.
Bohnanza is a card game about accumulating sets of things. The fact that the game presents these things as beans is entirely incidental to the mechanics of the game. They could equally be types of cars, or jedi knights, or abstract shapes. This is common in many German games - the theme being totally incidental to the mechanics.
In this way, the game can be compared to an odd sort of Rummy, wherein there are only suits (the kinds of beans) but no ranks. More generally, the game falls under the purview of set collection games, such as Reiner Knizia’s Ra.
Bohnanza strategy is a tension between desire to harvest and earn talers, and holding back from harvesting in the hopes of earning even more talers later. As you can see by analyzing the beanometer table above, most beans (except Garden and Cocoa) have four tiers of value, from 1 taler to 4 talers. Since the number of additional bean cards required to advance from one tier to the next tends to decrease, the value of each additional bean card in a field can be calculated as one over the difference between the current tier value and the next. For example, the value of each Coffee bean planted if you have not reached the first tier is 0.25 talers each; once the first tier has been reached, the value of each new coffee bean in that field increases to .33 talers each.
You can see why Garden and Cocoa beans are special, then. First, neither has a 1-taler tier, but each bean planted has a value of 1 taler.
So if you are thinking the best tactic in this game is to plant Garden and Cocoa beans, you are about to be surprised. Because normally, they aren’t. In fact, getting a Garden or a Cocoa bean in your hand can be a plague. What you haven’t taken into consideration yet is rarity. Garden and Cocoa beans are rare. And once you have planted one, you may be forced into some undesirable trades to get the next one or two. Furthermore, once Garden and Cocoa beans have been harvested once, they become even more rare. For example, if Cocoa beans were previously harvested at the 3- taler tier, the remaining single Cocoa bean in the deck is worthless.
Nevertheless, if you are lucky enough to get several Garden or Cocoa beans without trading an arm and leg for them, it can be a nice quick flush of talers.
I just mentioned how quickly Cocoa Beans can go from valuable to worthless once 3 of them are harvested. This effect is not unique to Cocoa Beans, just made most obvious with them. Remember, as fields of beans are harvested, beans of that type are removed from the deck and placed into player’s taler piles, effectively removing them from the game.
This has two effects on the strategy one must apply. First, it means that each subsequent turn through the draw deck, the draw deck gets smaller and is thus exhausted quicker. Second, it means one must pay attention to which fields are harvested for talers - the Bohnanza version of counting cards. The combination of which bean types have already been harvested as well as what beans the other players currently have planted is one of the driving decision making factors in playing Bohnanza.
To summarize, Bohnanza is a game with a lot of choice, and those who understand Bohnanza strategy will tend to do better than those who don’t, within the limits of both luck and group- think. These strategies revolve around four pieces of knowledge: bean card value as expressed as fractional talers to the next tier, bean type frequency as written on the bean card, bean types which have already been scored, and the current bean fields of the players.
I hope I haven’t turned anyone off to Bohnanza with my discussion of strategy to the game. Bohnanza is a very easy game to learn and play, and does not require deep strategy to win. For fun factor, it scores very high as well: those interested in lighter games will be pleased with the simple mechanics and quick pace (a game can be finished in half an hour), while those looking for a game with some strategy elements have a lot to chew on.
I would compare it most favorably to Settlers of Catan: if your group plays and enjoys Settlers, than they will enjoy Bohnanza as well. It takes one of the best elements of Catan, trading, and makes it centerpiece to the game. As a card game, it travels well, and requires minimal space to play.
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