Bohnanza

Bohnanza is a card game designed by Uwe Rosenberg, where players are tasked with growing a variety of different kinds of beans in the hope of making the most money possible. The game’s cards are used in two different functions as they both represent the beans being produced, as well as the money being gained by the player on the reverse. At the start of the game, players are given a hand of cards, but may not organize them. This means that the cards given, must stay in the order they were handed out. On a players turn, they must plant the first bean card in order, but then may choose whether or not they want to plant the second one in order. This provides a level of complexity to the game as players have no choice in planting the first seed, which is especially taxing as it may not match the types they are currently growing! At the start of the game, the players have only two plantations/spaces/fields for bean growing, but can purchase another later in the game.

The bean side of the card features a funky image of the bean the card represents, and along the bottom has some numbers under a stack of coins. This represents how many cards of that bean there must be to make the appropriate number of coins. Rarer beans take less cards (stacked on top of each other) to make coins, but they are rarer in the deck. On the card there is also a number which represents how many of that card are in the entire deck.

Once a player has played their first, and possibly their second card, then two cards from the deck are turned over and a round of trading begins. If the cards are ones the player is already growing, then they may want to add it to their own fields/stacks. If they don’t want them however, and other players do, then players can offer a trade with the player for cards in their hand. When players trade or exchange cards however, they don’t return to their hands, but must be planted in a field immediately. Once the initial, as well as potentially any further trades are out of the way; the player picks up cards, adds them to the back of his hand, and then play moves onto the next player.

When a player has reached a satisfactory amount of cards and wants to harvest to make money, all they do is rip up the field (not literally rip the cards), and turn over a number of cards to the money side that matches how many beans they were able to grow. The ones turned over to the money side are added to the players coin stack, while the rest of the cards are discarded. Play continues until the deck has been milled (discarded cards reshuffled and turned into a new deck) three times, but as cards have been turned into money, the new deck is a lot shorter and quicker as a result. Once the deck has been milled 3 times, the game ends! All players count up their coins, and whoever has the most wins!