It is time for Follow Up Tuesday! What is Follow Up Tuesday you ask? Well on Mondays we look at various mechanics then on the day after we follow it up with a game that I think uses that mechanic very well or has revolutionised the mechanic in some way. Yesterday we looked at the mechanic of Hand Management; today we are going to look at a game that I think uses this mechanic in a genious manner arguably changing the way I viewed the mechanic entirely, so lets take a look at Bohnanza.

The vitals
Released 1997
Designer: Uwe Rosenberg
Plays: 2-7
EPT: 45 minutes

While Bohnanza was released in 1997 I was not introduced to the game until much later; mid 2000s in fact. I had heard of the game and knew it relied heavily on hand management and thought since I played Magic: The Gathering I didn’t need to add another HM game to my repertoire (note I have since left such snobbish/elitist ways behind me, I need all the games!).

When at last I gave in and played Bohnanza it was a breath of fresh air; the game is silly, quick, and moderately simple. My first play was with a group of 4 after which I sought to try a full group of 7; I would recommend staying in the 4 to 5 player ratio.

In Bohnanza players are each planting, harvesting, and selling beans with the ultimate goal of being the most successful bean farmer by earning the most coins. Players begin the game with 2 fields in which they can plant beans and a hand of 5 cards. Players are not allowed to rearrange the cards in their hand as that is part of what makes the game a challenge! The remaining cards are placed in the center of the play area as a draw pile.
On a player’s turn they will begin by planting a bean card. This is done by taking the first card in their hand and placing it into one of their fields. The farmer can place the card in any of their empty fields or they can add it to a field that already has beans of that type, you cannot have multiple types of beans in one field.
If neither of the farmers fields hold the bean they must plant they are forced to sell all the beans in one of their fields. To sell a field the farmer counts the number of beans planted and checks the “Beanometer” at the bottom of the bean cards to see how much money they get for their beans. The rarer the bean the higher the payout. When selling the farmer uses the sold beans as currency by flipping the cards over and using the back of the card to represent coins; any excess beans after the sell are placed in the discard pile.
Once the player has finished planting they draw the top two cards from the draw pile and place them face up in the center of the play area where all players can see them. The player drawing the card can set either or both aside for themself then attempt to trade the remaining card(s) with the other players as well as cards from hands. Trading cards from your hand is essentially the only way to rearrange your hand.
All cards given in trades and taken from the center are set aside and not placed in the players hand.
Once all trading and donating of cards is completed the players must all plant any beans they received this turn; the beans can be planted in any order they choose, but all must be planted before the next step. Again if a player has a bean type that does not match what they previously planted and they have beans that remain set aside they must sell one of their fields contents before starting a new field.
Once all set aside beans have been planted the active player draws three cards from the top of the deck one by one placing them in the back of the players hand. If the draw deck is ever depleted the discard pile is shuffled and placed face down to refresh the draw deck.
Play then passes to the left
At any time a player can spend three coins to buy a third bean field; players can never have more than 3 fields.
The game ends after the draw deck has been exhausted three times. When the game ends players will count up their coins and whoever has the most money is deemed the best bean farmer!

Bohnanza’s use of hand management is amazing in that you cannot rearrange your hand outside of trading and you are forced to play the top card of your hand each turn before you can do anything else. Players are thus forced to attempt to trade away beans they don’t want to play before the bean shows up at the front of their hand of cards and thus manage their hand via aid of the other players.

Other engenius aspects of the game include the use of the card backs to act as the game’s currency. The rarer the beans the higher the payout; but as you add the harvested beans to your bank each bean will become more and more rare as the game progresses while the draw deck gets smaller and smaller. This variance in bean rarity fascinated me from the start; the rarer breeds (cacao, garden, and red) are hot commodities and once spent likely won’t return to circulation. This can be used as great trade leverage or as a great means to wealth based on how the farmer’s choose to play it as well as how greedy the opposition may be. By limiting the field counts players are often forced to sell their field before the optimum value on the “Beanometer” merely out of necessity.

After my first play, in which I was crushed by more experienced players, I was eager to try again with my newly developed strategies. There is a fair amount of luck in the draw but plenty of strategy in the trades. The art is silly as the beans are depicted as caricatures, and the information easy to see at a glance; my only complaint is I wish the numbers denoting how many beans of each variety existed were located in a unified location as opposed to randomly somewhere on the card (the stink bean’s variety count is located at the middle of the top of the card while the garden bean’s number is located on the middle of the right side while other beans will have the number located somewhere else)

Bohnanza is still a game I enjoy and a game I love to play from time to time as it uses the mechanics at hand so differently than many other games. The game’s design and lack of hand control I have found to infuriate some of my friends who prefer order and can’t tolerate their hand being out of order and so I thus don’t get to play it as often as I may like.

The Way I rate games; Bohnanza has received a 7 out of 10
Visuals – 1.25 // 2
Skill/Luck – .5 // 1
Pacing – 1.5 // 2
Theme/Immersion – 1.25 // 2
Mechanics – 1 // 1
Fun Factor 1.5 // 2

Visit again Tomorrow as I take a look at a newer Uwe Rosenberg design; Caverna! Until then you can find us on social media!
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