Stats:
No. of players: 2-7
Amount of time to play: 45 min + (more players means longer)
Age requirements: 12+
Set-up time: 3-5 min

Description:
Bohnanza is a card game in which players are all bean farmers. You have a handful of bean cards to plant and only 2 or 3 fields to plant them in. Having more beans in a field gets you more gold at harvest time. After three times through the deck the game is over and the farmer with the most gold at the end of the game wins. Sounds easy, huh? The problem is you must plant your beans in the order they are in your hand and can only plant one type of bean in a field. To get rid of beans that you can’t (or don’t want to) plant you trade them to other players.

After trades take place everyone must plant the beans they acquired that turn. If you have more types of beans to plant than you have fields you may have to harvest sooner than you like. The more you harvest the more money you get. Money is represented on the back of the cards and harvesting allows you to keep a certain number of cards. The rest go into the discard pile. So as the game goes on there are fewer beans depending on how often they are harvested. Each type of bean has a different rarity and rarer beans harvest for more money. The other rule of the harvest is that if one of your fields has just one bean and the other has two or more the multi-bean field MUST be harvested first. This can make getting a large number of one type of bean hard. To finish your turn you pick three new cards that go in order at the back of your hand. The game ends when you cycle through the deck three times. This game is highly interactive and relies heavily on trading and trading is part art and part science.

A Quick Review:
Like The Settlers of Catan this is one of the first board games I played. Like I said above it is very interactive and trades can get the whole table talking. It is fun trying to manage your hand and your fields while helping out others and still trying to get ahead. Also since gold is kept secret it is hard to know just who is in the lead. And sometimes surprising who does!

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 3 out of 6
Luck 4 out of 6
Player Interaction 6 out of 6
Replay Value 5 out of 6
Complexity 4 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6