Amigo Games Bohnanza Classic Card Game – Plant & Harvest Your Beans in This Exciting Strategic Game That is Fun for the Whole Family – For Kids & Adults Ages 12 & Older

Bought Bohnanza on a recommendation from a friend a while ago and have been playing it non-stop since. My whole life I had always played the "generic" / mainstream board games such as Monopoly, Scrabble, etc. so it was a nice breath of fresh air to play a "non-mainstream" board game. Since then I have bought a LOT of other boardgames (carcassone, settlers of catan, loot, etc) but Bohnanza is still a perennial favorite amongst my family.Bohnanza's premise is fairly simple:You are a bean farmer, and by planting and harvesting beans (cards) you get gold coins (gold coins are printed on the back of each card...collect a certain number of a type of bean and you can get a certain number of coins for them). The player with the most gold coins at the end wins the game. You start with two bean fields to plant in (only one type of bean per field at a time) and the catcher is that you can NOT change the order of the cards in your hand. So if you are building two nice bean stalks in your bean fields but your next card is not either of those types, you'll have to harvest one bean field to make room for the new bean. (later on in the game you can also purchase a third bean stalk.)To alleviate this problem of harvesting when you dont want to, you can trade or donate beans to the other people playing. This makes the game very interactive and a great social game.The game says it is for 2-7 players. However, because of the trading aspect of the main game, the 2 player version is VERY different from the "main" regular way to play when you have 3+ players. While the 2-player rules were OK, it was not particularly fun and would not recommend this game if it will only be 2 people playing.Most of the time I have been playing this game was with 3-4 people, and it is great. Games take about 45 minutes, but there is constant talking and trading so you dont really feel downtime at any one point.However, I recently played this game with the max recommended 7 people and did not enjoy it! The game was very slow, and with so many people throwing out trades to the active player it takes a while on each person's turn. Worse if that if you do not have anything to trade with the active player, you may have to sit for a while and let other people hash out their trades. While it can be fun to observe others arguing over whose trade is the better deal, it can get tiring and drawn out with 7 people.Decent mix of strategy and luck, but the part I enjoy the most is just the social interaction of offering and accepting trades. Negotiations can become funny especially if two people are offering the same trade and the third person must decided whose to take (or decline both!). I highly, highly recommend this game if you plan on playing with 3-5 people.

A really great and unique card game. And while the designer of this game has designed several games that would properly be considered a "Eurogame" I'm not sure this one would. Just because a designer lives in Europe doesn't mean every game he designs is considered a "Eurogame" as commonly considered by the serious gaming community. But, whatever.This game has several unique mechanics. Ultimately, it's a set collection game but the fact that you're not allowed to "sort" the cards in your hand, and generally must play them in the order received, is certainly unique. The one exception to that rule is when trading, you can trade cards from anywhere in your hand. So this means that as you see cards coming up for play in your hand that you really don't need or want, you may be more motivated to trade them away instead. And there's a lot of trading going on in this game, it's highly interactive in that regard which is one of its good points. Also, the fact that it will play 2-7 players is a big plus, this one is one we consider a "party" game to a large extent,since it's also easy to learn. Also plays in about 45 minutes.Play consists of first, planting your next card in your bean field. but you have a limited number of "rows" you can plant in, so you may have to harvest something in order to plant. And when you harvest, you cash in on the crop, but you may not be ready to harvest because you've got more cards in your hand you'd like to plant in the row first. Be that as it may, you must plant the next card in your hand every turn, and optionally the following card can be planted. The second phase of a turn you draw two cards and show them face up. These cards you must plant too, or trade away. So at this point, trading begins, and you can trade not just the two face up cards but any cards in your hand, and you can make pretty much whatever deal you want as long as the current player who's turn it is is involved in one side of each deal. So you trade as much as you want and then everyone must plant whatever they got in trade immediately (which again, may require a harvest if the player doesn't have a row available that can take the card). The more you have of any one crop the more you get when it's harvested. You play three times through the deck, which at first looks like it will be forever because the deck is huge. However, as crops are harvested, you keep a few cards which from the harvest which essentially represent your score and it takes those cards out of the deck in the process-- so the deck gets quite a bit smaller every round, by the third time through the deck, the deck isn't nearly as big. Also, multiple cards are used from the deck each turn so they are consumed quickly. In the end, whoever has the most from their harvests wins.One great thing about it is there's pretty much no down time. On anyone's turn, trading is likely to come into play that could involve anyone or even everyone. While the current player who's turn it is has to be involved on one side of the trade, multiple trades can occur. So you don't sit getting bored waiting for someone to decide what they want to do, since the trading stage of any turn is highly interactive with the other players.The title doesn't do much for it, it's hard to remember and is often conflated with the TV western. It's usually referred to as "the bean game" because that gets the message across better, though I don't know that I would have called it that either.Also, there are expansions for it now but I haven't tried them so I can comment.The base game is an excellent game that has stood the test of time, we've played it quite a lot and still hits the table pretty often.