Bohnanza: Let’s go farm some beans!
I swear I must’ve been a farmer in a previous life because a few of my favorite board games deal with farming. Games such as Agricola, Scoville and Bohnanza. Or maybe I’m just so head over heels over rock-star-game-designer-extraordinaire Uwe Rosenberg that if he loves farming, then so do I! Fun fact: the title of the game is a play on the word bean in German, which is bohne. And all the beans have funny little personalities from the cool artwork.
Bohnanza is Rosenberg’s first game, way back in 1997. That’s pretty ancient in the board-game world. The version I have, published by Rio Grande Games, game out in 2000. In the small print on the rule book, the Rio Grande email address is still an aol account. Hee hee, how times have changed since this was published! Bohnanza plays 2-7 players and lasts about 45 minutes. The goal of the game is for each player to plant beans in 2 or 3 bean fields and try to sell them for the most money. The player with the most money after 3 rounds wins the game.
Bohnanza actually doesn’t have a board, but instead is a card game. A highly strategic and sometimes frustrating (in the best possible way) card game. There are 11 bean varieties, some of them more rare than others. At the top left of the card shows how many of those specific bean cards are in the deck. At the bottom of the card shows how many of those bean cards you need to sell to get some gold.
At the start, players are dealt 5 cards. The most important thing is that you can never change the order of your hand. Players must plant/play cards in the order received. And each player starts with 2 bean fields. On a player’s turn, he does the following:
- Plan bean cards.
- Draw, trade & donate bean cards.
- Plant traded & donated bean cards.
- Draw new bean cards.
The player must plant the first card in his hand. If this bean matches the crop in one of his bean fields, then it can be planted in that field. Also, if you have an open field that has no bean crops, then he can plant it there. If the player is unable to plant this bean, then he has to rip up and harvest one of his fields. If the player doesn’t have enough bean crops to cash in for gold coins, then he is out of luck. A player may then also plant another bean card. The cards in bean fields are placed vertically in front of the player, so everybody can see what he or she is planting.
Next up is drawing cards. The two topmost cards in the deck are flipped over. The active player may keep these cards to plant (via Step 3) or he can trade or donate these cards for beans that will benefit his crops. This is where the wheeling and dealing happens. If the two cards that just got flipped over aren’t the crops you’re growing, then you’ll have to harvest the crops to make room for them, which may or may not benefit you gold coins. After all the trading and donating is done, the player must plant these beans. Lastly, the current player draws 3 bean cards from the deck, which are placed in his hand in the order received. Then the player to the left takes his or her turn.
Players may harvest and sell their bean fields at any time. To do this, count up the cards in the bean field and look at the bottom of that bean card to see how many gold coins you’ll receive. The player then flips over that many cards to get the gold coins and places these coins in his or her earnings stack. The rest of the bean cards are placed in the discard pile. When a player sells beans from a bean field, he may choose any field with two or more bean cards. A player can’t sell beans from a field with a single card unless all his fields have just one card. Players may also buy a third bean field for 3 gold coins. The same rules apply for this bean field in terms of planting and harvesting.
After the draw deck is exhausted, take the discard pile, shuffle it so it becomes the new draw deck. When the draw deck is exhausted a third time, that triggers the end of the game. Players then add up their gold coins, and the one with the most wins the game.
The rules of the game aren’t very complex compared with other Rosenberg games. The rule book is only 8 pages long. But there’s a lot of strategy in how to best deal with the order of your hands, as well as offering good trades to other players without giving them too much benefits. Also, you have to pay attention to see if it’s worth planting a certain crop knowing that people have already been planting that crop and received gold coins for them, resulting in fewer of those bean cards in the draw deck.