A Bohn to Pick

Bohnanza is a fairly quick card game I've played many times over the years, but I've neglected to talk about it here. Time to remedy that. It's a fairly simple "collection" game where you're trying to gather as many beans of the same type as you can before harvesting them for points. Each time you take a turn, you have free reign to make trades with other players, trying to get cards that match the bean fields you have currently planted.

Two unusual twists make the game memorable. First, you are forced to reveal two cards from the top of the deck every turn. If you can't trade them away somehow, then you must plant them yourself. And with a limited number of bean fields (each field taking only one type at a time), you might be forced to harvest early to make room for beans you couldn't offload.

The second twist is the most unusual. The game is played with an ordered hand. You do not sort your cards; you must play them from in the order you drew them, one or two cards per turn. It's so alien a concept to card games that the game -- though otherwise rather simple -- becomes a bit difficult to teach to more casual gamers. But it is the diabolical grease that makes the whole machine go. See, you can trade any card out of your hand that another player is willing to accept. So knowing what "trouble cards" you have coming up, and in exactly what order, you can try to plan ahead accordingly.

It's a fairly enjoyable game, certainly for the short amount of time it takes to play. But at the same time, it can run a bit hot and cold. It can be easy for one or two players to fall behind. It's also quite easy for players to act the "kingmaker" by making trades to help one player in particular. It's a classic "try to stay in second place right until the very end" kind of game. In short, while there is some interesting innovation here, there are also a few very familiar problems that have plagued many other games before.

In all, I'd call it a decent "once in a while" game. It's particularly good to keep handy if the size of your group varies wildly -- by adding or removing certain cards to the deck, it can accommodate anywhere from three to seven players. Probably also a good "bridging" game to coax someone into the world of crazy-complicated German board games.