The Bean & O Railroad (he he he...)

a few short thoughts about one of the most brilliant game designs ever...

last update: November 15, 2004

As kids, we all loved to play with rubber bands. (Well, as long as we weren't the people being winged by them.) Stretch Armstrong dolls and that foul-smelling green goo (whose brand name escapes me right now) had the same kind of elastic qualities.

One of the interesting things about Bohnanza is that the basic game mechanism is so strong that it works with a truckload of variations/mistakes/whatever on the rules... the darn thing is the Stretch Armstrong of German card games. Bohnanza is incredibly elastic. It stretches and stretches and it's nearly impossible to break.

Phillip Fayers noted that his gaming group had made all kinds of mistakes in learning the game, yet it still worked... mistakes both from misreading the rules and from dealing with the early "translations". (For those of you with the benefit of the current Rio Grande edition in English, you can not begin to appreciate how screwed up the early homegrown translations of the rules were... count yourself lucky.) Here's some of the different ways folks have played:

Bean Planting

EITHER play one card from hand and an optional second (correct rules)
OR you have to plant the first two from your hand

Field Burning

EITHER you can burn a field with 1 bean only if all of your other fields have exactly one bean (correct rules)
OR there is no restriction on burning

Bean Trading

EITHER you can offer cards from your hand to trade in addition to the two you have turned face over on your turn (correct rules)
OR the only beans for trade are those which are turned face over, you cannot add beans from your hand

Other groups have their own peculiar spins on basic Bohnanza:

Trading Traded Beans

EITHER you can not trade beans that have already been traded (correct rules)
OR you can retrade traded beans, thus creating some very interesting 3 & 4 way deals [yep, this was the way I was taught]

Like for Like Trades

EITHER you can trade, say, a blue bean for a blue bean (correct rules)
OR you can not trade the same bean [this is still an ongoing argument on rec.games.board]

Planting Beans

EITHER you may plant beans in any order (correct rules)
OR you must plant beans in the order you receive them [this, thank goodness, is not a common mistake]

Overplanting a Field

EITHER you are allowed to plant more beans in a field than can possibly pay off (correct rules)
OR you can not plant more beans in a field than the highest payoff number

Forced Selling Off

EITHER you may sell off any multiple field (or any single bean field, if you only have single bean fields) (correct rules)
OR you must sell off the largest field

Game End

EITHER the game ends when the last card is drawn from the deck and the current player finishes their turn (correct rules)
OR the game ends immediately when the last card is drawn from the deck

Dave, whose last name escapes me right now, suggests what he calls a less "elegant" way to explain the way Bohnanza ends: "When the card deck is depleted - that is to say when you *need* a card but there isn't one to draw - the game ends. It's slightly counter intuitive, but what do you expect from a card game where you're not allowed to sort your hand :) This is how I usually explain the rules when the job falls to me."

Donations

It's a hot topic... but you can always give away beans from your hand or from the two you turned up from the pile... and the non-active players can give you beans as well. Nobody has to get anything in return. (Note: often, what you're "getting" is clearing your hand of a pesky bean that will screw up your next turn... which is good.) It's important to remember that the person receiving the donation must agree to it... you can't force people to accept charity!

Thank you's are in order here... first, to Doug Adams and the Billabong Gamers, who published the most user-friendly and "correct" translation on the 'Net prior to Rio Grande Games publishing Bohnanza in English. Second, to Kevin Maroney, Mik Svellov, and others who helped check this pile of clarifications for errors. Finally, thanks to Uwe Rosenberg... without his incredible creativity, there wouldn't be this wonderful little card game.<P>

The Bohnanza Family Tree

There are now 4 official expansion sets for Bohnanza, 2 games which are "siblings" in the bean game family, and 2 unofficial expansion sets that is approved/worked on by the designer, Uwe Rosenberg. Hard to believe a game about bean farming could spawn this many offspring. Anyway, here's my very biased rundown of the extras available.

CHILDREN

Bohnanza Expansion Set (included in the Rio Grande original game)
This set of cards adds three new suits (Cocoa Beans, Wine Candy Beans, and Coffee Beans) which enable you to play the game with up to 7 players. If you have a German edition of the original game, this is an excellent addition, even if you still play with 3-5 players.

La Isla Bohnita
This set of cards adds two new suits (Wax Beans and Mocha Beans) as well as a rather convoluted system of trading ships and pirates, albeit with the same delightful bean humor. We've never actually finished a full game of La Isla Bohnita, so I'm probably not the best person to comment on it. As far as I'm concerned, the couple of extra suits will help make 7 player games "work" better but I probably won't take another shot at the trading/pirate ship mechanism. Mik Svellov said it beautifully: "It slows down a perfect game."

Bohnanza Expansion Set #2
This is a re-release of the original expansion set (already included in the Amercian edition) which adds a new bean type (Field Beans), a set of beanfield cards for each player, and a set of Job cards, which pay off if your fields are configured in certain ways. Mik likes it! The English rules for the expansion are on the Brett & Board website, run by the ever helpful Mik Svellov.

High Bohn
Once a semi-official expansion from Lookout Games

Dschingis Bohn

SIBLINGS

Spacebeans (available from Rio Grande Games)
A slightly different take on the collecting mechanism is crossbred with some very cute bean/sci-fi art... and what emerges is a very random but mildly enjoyable game. I'm not sure you have a lot of control, but it's fun for families and there are a few (rather obvious) strategic considerations. Note: it's easy to miss a key rule that play passes to the left but your hand is passed to the right.

Al Cabohne
Just like Settlers of Catan, people have been trying to come up with two-player variants for Bohnanza. (Both are trading games, which means these variants were pretty much doomed to failure.) The newest "official" member of the Bohnanza family is made for two players (or one playing solitaire), who struggle against each other and the Bean Mafia (Al Cabohne, Don Corlebohn, and Joe Bohnanos) for domination of the bean market. After some major hassling over the correct rules, I think it's a pretty good little two-player game in the Bohnanza universe - retaining the set-collecting elements of the original game while adding a very nice hosage mechanism with the Bean Mafia.

The first translation of the rules contained one major error, as follows. Thanks to Stefanie Kethers for finding the problem... "I have read the English sentence in question, "A bean card on the discard pile of a type which is collected by the Bean Mafia, must be given to the relevant Bean-Mafia boss", and it is simply a translation error.

The German rules say: "A bean card that is of the same sort as both the top card of the discard pile and a Bean Mafioso's collection is given to the Bean Mafia". But "a bean card" in this case refers to a bean card that has just been flipped over (which could have been expressed more clearly, I agree). If such a card fulfils both conditions, it is given to the appropriate Bean Mafioso (and does not result in removing cards from the discard pile).

This probably explains why none of the German rec.games.board readers could tell you when to move beans from the discard pile to the Mafia ;-)

As an added bonus, Mik Svellov has put together a 5 turn illustrated sample game of the solitaire version of Al Cabohne to help straighten out any other questions.

Included in the Amigo version of High Bohn (see below) is the Prohibohn expansion for Al Cabohne, which adds High Bohn-like buildings to Al Cabohne. My translation of the rules is right here.

High Bohn
Once an "unofficial" expansion published by Lookout Games, High Bohn is now published by Amigo (and packaged with a similar expansion for Al Cabohne, entitled Prohibohn.) This takes the beans Out West, where selling fields offers player opportunities to buy buildings in a frontier town. Each building grants the player special powers, such as moving cards in your hand or planting a "stew" field (where beans can't match). I've played this 4 times and I'd have to say this is the strongest of the Bohnanza expansions. It adds some nice twists to the original game without interfering with it's basic "goodness".

DISTANT RELATIVES

Mutabohn
Another simple "unofficial" expansion from the guys who brought you High Bohn... this time around, the beans can mutate into other strains of beans. It increases trading possibilities in some very interesting ways.

Ladybohn
Yet another simple "unofficial" expansion from the guys who brought you High Bohn... I haven't seen this one yet but it's on my wish list.<P>

Bohnissima
I don't know who this guy is... but Mik Svellov pointed out this website which contains action cards for Bohnanza - included James Bohnd! Check it out... unfortunately it's in German. (Gotta fire up the Babelfish!)</P>

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<B>Departures</B><BR>

Here's a trio of resources for Bohnanza & family...<P>

<A HREF="http://www.riograndegames.com/games/rules/Bohneng.pdf">Rio Grande Games rules</A><BR>

This is the English version of the rules to use... it also includes a 2 player variant.<P>

<A HREF="http://www.gamereport.com/tgr16/bohnanza.html">The Game Report Online</A> with a review from Peter Sarrett<P>

<A HREF="http://www.gamingdumpster.com/index.htm">The Gaming Dumpster</A><BR>

This is the best place to find translations of the rules for La Isla Bohnita, Al Cabohne & High Bohn.<P>