How to Play

Goal of Bohnanza to grow a bunch of beans, then harvest them, they give you money! Most money wins.

So you have a hand of cards, but you can’t change the order! Every one of your turns you must play the card closest to you, then optionally play the one after! Playing means you’re planting in your fields, you can only have 2 types of beans growing at once.

After planting from hand, then flip over 2 cards… THESE WILL HAVE to be planted! So then you might want to trade these away, with other people who want those beans! Trade from this area, or from your hand, and non-turn players trade from their hand!

BUT. The #1 rule of Bohnanza trading is: traded beans ALWAYS HAVE to be planted.

After trading shenanigans, ensure those 2 cards that were flipped are planted if they’re still out, then just draw 3 cards, that’s it! Also you can harvest beans at anytime, if you don’t meat the bean number requirement, woe is you you don’t get anything. Harvested cards get discarded, if you got some good harvest, flip some of those beans over and they’re money!

Whoever has the most money after the deck runs out 3 times wins the bean game.

Pros

Bohnanza is really endearing to look at with cartoony art, from Soy Beans to Chili Beans… to even Red Beans that look like they need to go to the bathroom.

And the bean type is shown on the top corners of cards which is really helpful in the hand. Plus, there’s a nice indicator of how many types of beans there are, along with the very self-explanatory ‘BEANOMETER’ (rulebook dubbed) payouts on the bottom of cards.

Back of the cards is also a genius way to remove cards from the game as they count as money! Mats also make you feel like you’re actually planting on dirt, but these mats are for our 25th Anniversary edition.

Card quality is great, including the great player reference. Our version has a cool book-styled box, with a felt covered plastic insert. Then there’s even some bonus portraits of designer Uwe Rosenberg, and artist Bjorn Pertoft!

The rulebook is also great with tons of examples & good color coding.

Trading is the name of the game here though, where Bohnanza FORCES you to trade with your friends, and gives plenty of opportunities. Everyone’s turn becomes everyone’s turn with the trading.

You have to trade from your hand because you’ll HAVE to plant the first card in your hand every turn… but only have 2 fields! So planting the wrong bean ruins your current marinations, so sometimes, you HAVE to trade before your next turn! Or other times you’ll be trading to set up other parts of your hand: “let me trade you this soy bean, I can give it to you as a nice discount…” (which really gets my 2 chili beans in my handplanted faster). The hand restriction DRIVES the trading, and too much hoarding of cards slows down drawn cards that go in the back, from getting planted, so ease up that hand by trading!

Also all the stuff that trades gets planted right away, so why the heck not trade?

Like, you’ll quickly catch on that OHHH, its actually simple and good to trade the same bean for the same bean: hooray for interactive bean laundering!

Bohnanza had the hidden bean knowledge with the order of them in your fixed hand, but you also have 2 card flips every turn that’s open information! There’s a rush to trade these away NOW, which puts on this asymmetric pressure on as you combine it with your fixed hand to get proper deals.

Offers can be tough because they know you have to plant… a Stink bean for your Garden Bean… look at these numbers pictured to the side, that’s a stinky trade. Is there any other deal I can make with some crazy combination of flipped beans and beans in hand, let me survey everyone’s fields again? Or maybe you say screw it, I’m pivoting, I’m actually planting this garden bean, and pulling out this bean creation early, I didn’t want to right now, but at least I don’t have to make your terrible bean deal.

Other times, you’ll HAVE to ask to give flipped beans away for free so they don’t plant, to allow for your increasing bean returns to go off… which always allows for a nice type of patient trading from other farmers, who know they COULD sometimes get the bean for free without even offering anything if no one else wants it!

The trading NEVER lets up, because every turn forces players to keep planting, making sure fields don’t stay empty for long and with constant signaling what they’re going for. Like, oh, Blue Beans sucked before… OH NOW THEYRE GOOD LETS TRADE I HAVE BLUE BEANS BLUE BEANS. Moment that gets harvested, market value for Blue Beans drops… its the changing bean seasons… or… the BEAN SUPPLY AND DEMAND.

You gotta know when’s the right time to go in on green beans to know when or IF you can even make the jump from 3 to 5 beans. And then you gotta figure out when’s the right time to abandon beans and jump on the opportunity of someone just begging and pleading to give away both of their 2 bean flip… and sure you can take it off their hands. (There’s a ‘Bean Protection Rule’ to prevent abuse of this, I’m serious.)

And you won’t ever be a long-deflated bean farmer, because you’ll always get fresh ingredients to trade with every turn, with the 2 card flips, and 3 draws.

Then there’s some nice progression in Bohnanza, where every time you score beans, you remove some of those from the game, so you need to play around what beans have been heavily farmed. If you’re in the lead early, you can even try to quickly end the game by harvesting certain beans to remove more cards from the deck asap. And there’s this field bean variant lets you upgrade to 3 fields from 2 to make you a better bean farmer… but do you even want that 3rd field every game? Because it does take time to make.

Then the central deck will get smaller as everyone gets more money, making the game barrel to a nice ending at about 45 minutes- you’ll never drag on because everyone always takes 5 cards from the deck every turn.

CONS

Our field mats are looking like they might wear out at some point, even though this copy has only been played twice? They also do stick up quite a bit where the crease is.

2 NITPICKS: RNG & Replayability

You can totally RNG into a strong 2 card bean flip that exactly match your fields which can give all too convenient extra money on final turns… but whatever eeehhh this 2 or so extra cash isn’t gonna consistently override good trading practices.

Then the replayability isn’t the most fantastic because all beans do pretty much the same thing with different numbers. BUT Bohnanza has a lot of variants, and your box might come with 2 or 3, which will make the game a bit longer. New beans mostly just add some more numbers to play around with, but we got the Magpie bean which, if played at the start of your turn from the top of your hand, lets you steal from others’ fields. While this adds more trade counter-play, stealing from other people’s fields every once in a while can upset those who don’t want their beans touched in a trading game, though we haven’t tried it.

Note that the “Magpie Bean” also introduces a ‘lose-lose’ scenario in the game: where you have to remove beans, for beans you didn’t want that are being taken away from someone else.

We also got a coin variant which seems the most legit with letting you draw an extra card if you hold it, so this one seems better as you compete over it, but we also haven’t tried it.