Bohnanza

 Bohnanza is originally a German game which uses cards, involving trading and the planting of beans.  The name is apparently a pun in the language, since ‘bohne’ is the German word for bean. Nobody quite knows why it was not changed to ‘Beananza’ in the English language edition - the way it’s pronounced make it sound more as if it should involve bones than beans. 

The game comes in a bright yellow box with a cartoon of a wild bean on the front. Inside are 161 cards about the size of normal playing cards. 154 of them are ‘bean’ cards, in eleven different varieties. They depict cartoons of different kinds of bean, in varying frequencies. There are, for instance, 24 coffee bean cards, and 18 chili bean cards, but only 4 cocoa bean cards.  The remaining seven cards are bean field cards, which are not often used.

And that’s it, other than the instruction booklet, which is a little confusing but very logical. Happily, we were taught to play this by our son and daughter-in-law, so did not have to learn from the booklet, which I think would most likely have put us off entirely. 

BOHNANZA AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

The aim of the game is to plant fields with beans, and then sell them. Each player starts with two fields (which must be imagined on the table in front of him or her), although a third can be bought during the course of the game, represented by one of the seven bean field cards. Each field can have only one kind of bean at a time, and when sufficient beans have been collected and planted, the player can choose to sell them for coins. The rarer the beans, the more valuable they are.

So if someone manages to collect cocoa beans, just two of them are worth two gold coins. By contrast, the common coffee bean requires four just to gain one coin, or as many as seven to get two coins. Each card has its worth depicted at the bottom, on a ‘beanometer’.

‘Where,’ you might ask, ‘do the coins come from ’

It would be a good question, given that the box contains no coins or tokens. The answer is that each card, when turned over, becomes a coin.  So, if selling seven coffee beans for two coins, the player retains two of them, coin side up, and returns the other five to the discard pile. 

BOHNANZA - HOW TO PLAY

Each player is dealt five cards. 

Then - and I have not come across this in any other game - they must not be sorted in any way. The player should pick them up, and look at them, but most NOT change the order. The beans have to be planted in the order given. As the game progresses, players draw more cards from the stack, and may have any number in their hands... but if and when they are planted, they must be in the order in which they were dealt. Newly drawn cards go to the bottom of the player’s hand.

On each player’s turn, he must:

1) Plant bean cards

2) Draw, trade and/or donate bean cards

3) Plant any traded or donated bean cards

4) Draw new cards to go at the bottom of his hand

The first thing that must be done on any round is that the top - that is, the oldest - card in his hand must be planted. Which is fine if he already has a field containing that particular type of bean, or an empty field. If he does not have anywhere to plant it, he must harvest and sell one of the crops in his current field. If there are not sufficient to earn a coin, then he must get rid of them anyway, thus losing that crop.

So, ideally, a player will trade away his cards during other player’s turns if he knows that he does not want to plant his top card.

Next, the active player picks the two top cards from the draw pile, and places them bean side up on the table for all to see. If he wants one of them - for instance, if it matches the beans in one of his fields - he can put it aside to do so. If not, he can offer to trade it for something he does want.  At this point, all the non-active players can trade any of their cards, if they wish - they don't have to be traded in the correct order. This is a good opportunity to get rid of their top cards if they don’t want to be forced to plant them when their turn comes around. 

Trading can be negotiated, and flexible; but since the rarer cards are worth more than the more common ones, it’s usual to offer (or ask for) two cards in exchange for a cocoa bean, or the almost-as-rare garden bean. The active player may also offer to trade other cards in his hand if he does not want them, hoping to gain more for his current fields. 

If nobody is willing to trade for either of the two face-up cards, then the active player may offer to donate them to anyone he wishes, if another player’s field contains that kind of beans. When a card is traded or donated, it may NOT be put into anyone’s hand - it must be planted immediately. 

The third step - and we find this often gets merged with the second - is that all traded and donated cards must be planted, including the two that were turned face up at the start of the second step. If the active player is unable to find anyone willing to trade for them, or to accept them as a donation, he must harvest and sell (if possible) one or more of his fields and plant the cards there. Alternatively, he can decide to buy a third field, which costs three gold coins. So he must already have harvested some beans before he can buy a third field. 

At any point in the game, any player can harvest and sell beans, whether or not it is their turn. If a player has collected the maximum set possible to earn coins, it is worth doing as soon as he wants to plant a different kind of bean. When harvesting, all beans in that field must be pulled up, even if there are more than can earn coins. 

The final part of a turn involves the active player drawing three new cards from the pile, one at a time placing them in order at the bottom of his hand.  Play then passes to the person on his left. 

When the draw pile is empty, the discard pile must be shuffled and turned bean-side-down again to provide a new draw pile. This happens twice - in other words, play continues until the pile is exhausted for the third time. In the later parts of the game, there is skill in remembering which kinds of beans remain, and which have been converted to gold, sitting in each player’s increasing stash. 

BOHNANZA VARIATIONS

Theoretically, the game can be played by two to seven players. There are instructions in the rule booklet about removing different kinds of bean from the deck, depending on numbers; for three players, the rare cocoa beans are taken out, and each person starts with three fields (so may not buy another). For four to five players, the common coffee beans are taken out. For six to seven players, cocoa beans and garden beans are supposed to be removed, and different numbers of starting cards are dealt. 

There’s a two-person variation, called ‘Bohnanza Duel’, where two types of bean are removed from the deck, and there are rather different rules of play, involving cards from the discard pile and the possibility of discarding rather than trading or planting unwanted cards.

BOHNANZA - OUR EXPERIENCE

My husband really doesn’t like card games.  At least not games that involve ONLY cards. I’m not keen on trading games - I don’t mind trading as part of a game, but the concept of trading and planting beans sounded rather dull to me. 

But our son and daughter-in-law like this game very much. Moreover, we know that German games are usually very good, so we finally said we would try it. Once, at least. It took a while to explain the rules, and I found them very confusing; this is one of those games where it’s best just to start, and have it explained as you play.  I didn’t do very well in our first game, although I followed advice and instructions.

Our other son liked it very much, so he now has his own version which is at our house. We’ve played it with friendS, and amongst ourselves, and are slowly beginning to see that there’s a strategy - or set of strategies - although there’s obviously quite an element of luck with the cards drawn. 

I’m interested to note that the game is recommended only for people of age 13 and up. We’ve only actually played it with adults and older teens, but I would expect that a child of nine or ten would find this easy enough to play.  

What I particularly like is that it’s not really competitive. Each player is trying to collect beans, and occasionally two players may have planted the same kind; in that case they may compete somewhat to trade with the active player, if he is offering this kind of bean. But in general, certainly with three or four players, there is very little overlap. So it’s in everyone’s interests to be generous, to offer beans to those who are growing that particular type.

I like cooperative games, and the game-play is simple enough, once we get going, that it’s easy to chat and socialise in general while playing. As far as I’m concerned, the main point of board games is to enjoy other people’s company with a focus; winning is nice, occasionally, and in some games can be an interesting challenge.  But in this game, it hardly matters.

Which makes me realise that I didn’t even mention how the game is won. Or perhaps it’s obvious. At the end of the third round, when the draw pile is finally empty for the last time, all players have the opportunity to harvest and sell all remaining beans in their fields.  Then coins are counted.. and, surprise, surprise, the player with the most coins is the winner.

2022 UPDATE

We still have our son's game, despite him having moved to the UK some years ago. It's not one we tend to play with adult friends, but I do play it regularly with younger friends, from the ages of about eight or. nine and upwards. It's not a difficult game, and takes about half an hour at most. Worth having as part of a game collection if you play games regularly, and a useful one when you have just thirty or forty minutes and want something relatively light and quick to learn.