Game: Bohnanza

Ive been eyeing this card game for awhile. It has lots and lots and lots of good reviews. It is the #4 best selling game of all time. I finally broke down today and bought it. It was a little steep for a card game at $20, plus, the only place you can buy it is through the interdimensional portal into the board gaming sub-culture store known as Game Night Games in SLC.

But me and Ed went there today, and were instantly entranced at the piles of games that exist that you dont even know exist. The guy at the store was as nerdy as they come, but he knew everything about every game ever. But thats a story for a whole other topic. Lets suffice it to say that I had to remind Eddie of the world beyond the portal to break his daze and get us both out of that place.

So I broke open the game tonight and first did a run-through by myself, and then a partial game with Amy - and we LOVED it. It is fantastic. Its really made for 4-7 people, although it CAN be played with 2. But you notice immediately how much more fun it would be with more people.

The gist of the game is that you are a bean farmer. There are all sorts of beans to farm, soy beans, green beans, black-eyed beans, coffee beans, even stink beans, 11 varieties in all. You have 2 or 3 fields in which to plant them. The more you can plant before the harvest, the more money you make. But with 11 varieties of beans going in the market and only 3 fields, you are constantly faced with the decision to harvest immediately and plant a more lucrative bean or hold on and keep planting more of what you already got till they are worth more. Its basic supply and demand. The funnest part though, is during each persons turn, there is a trade and donate thing that goes on, where people are trying to dump their worthless beans and trade for better ones. It actually IS to your detriment to hold on to the worthless beans, as it forces you to harvest a more lucrative bean early to make way for the new inventory of worthless beans. So there actually is alot of donating going on, not just trading.

Anyway, we are bringing it out to Mom and Dads for the Halloween weekend (which by the way we are staying Fri through Sun). With my fam, Moms fam, and Eds fam all playing, its gonna make for a wild weekend of bean farming.

Yee Haw Amigos!