Game: Bohnanza
Number of players: 4 Me, Robert, Greg and Leroy
Duration of play: ~45 minutes
Notes: The Coffee beans were removed according to the 4 player variant in the rule book.
Robert and i coined this as the most complex simple game you will play. Here is an overview of the game.
You are a farmer and you start off with two bean fields that you need to "plant", the deck is composed of bean cards that are worth money with certian amounts of them are turned in or "harvested/sold". Cards may be harvested/sold at any time. The turn order is like this:
- You must plant one card with the option to plant a second, cards must be planted in the order that they are in you hand.
- You must turn over two cards face up, these are offer/trade cards. These must be planted by someone before you can move on. The active character may trade or plant those two cards as well as trade any of the cards in his hand to another player.
- You then draw three cards.
The game continues like this until the deck is exausted for the third time and the winner is the player with the most gold.
This is a pretty cool little game once everyone understands the rules, I ended up winning with 20 gold, Greg took second with 19 gold. Everyone seemed to have fun with the trading mechanic.
Robert
Point of order - at first glance going through the deck three times seems reaaally intimidating (it's a huge deck), but each time through the deck is smaller b/c more money/beans have been removed.
The cheat card per player that says: "Mandatory Planting, Optional Planting, Flip 2 Beans, Plant or Trade those Beans, Draw 3 Cards"
That and two initial bean-field markers would go a long way towards overcoming the conceptual hurdle of "what the heck is going on here" that you have at first glance. At second glance you realize you don't need any of that crap in the first place. :^)
--Robert
2009-11-25 3:35 pm