Bohnanza- To Bean or Not to Bean!

After that short little tip on photographing fireworks, I;m back again with a game review. This time an introduction into negotiation based games.

Bean planting might be the most boring/blandest theme a game could have right? Well not true, really this game is a very light negotiation game, that can generate a lot of noise!

I saw this game on the shelves of Brew Ha ha couple of years ago and thought that I should give this a try. My brother was in Singapore later that year and I asked him to get this game as this wasn't that expensive to get.

This game again is a lot of fun with a mid-sized group, say between 5-7, even though 2-7 players can play. This is a light game and is a very good game to get people into negotiation based games like Modern Art, Traders of Genoa, Ra etc.

Being a light game, everyone in the family can join in and have fun!

Bohnanza by- Uwe Rosenberg


Now this guy is another prolific game designer, some sort of a genius! He is a German game designer. He became known mainly through his card game Bohnanza, which is successful both in Germany as internationally.

He also designed Agricola, a game that dethroned Puerto Rico as the #1 game on BoardGameGeek.com. Rosenberg first began to occupy himself with the development and mechanisms of games during his school years. During that time, he published a number of play-by-mail games, some of which are now available at www.omido.de. When he was a student, Amigo published his best-known game, Bohnanza. Since finishing his statistics studies in Dortmund (the subject of his thesis was "Probability distributions in Memory"), his main occupation is the development of games. (Wikipedia)

What do you get in the Box?

Cards, Cards and Cards. You get 161 cards!

• 154 Bean Cards (the box comes with 11 different bean varieties in differing quantities)
• Seven 3rd Bean field cards

The art works looks nice and the version I have is from Rio Grande and hence quality impeccable!

How does this play?

Well, I haven't mentioned much about the game play throughout as I wanted to keep that completely in this section. Perhaps this is very different to other games that I have reviewed.

• Each player gets a hand of 5 cards- but the most important aspect of this game and in fact the factor that makes this game different is that players should not change the order of the cards that they have received or receive in the future!
• Each card has a number on the left hand side that tells players how many cards of that variety exists and at the lower part of the card a conversion table for harvest is given. i.e. if you harvest 3 bean cards of a particular variety, you get 1 gold coin.
  
• While I told you that this game has just bean cards, all the cards have a gold coin symbol on the back side and hence very neatly manufactured components
• Players try to plant bean cards (2 varieties if they don't have the 3rd bean field card, which costs 3 Gold), harvest it and make profit! That's it!

On their turn the following things happen:

• Players must plant bean cards (one or 2) from the top of their hand
• Draw 2 more cards from the pile, plant, donate or negotiate a deal (this my friends ROCKS)
• All players plant the traded/donated cards
• Finally the player draws 3 more cards from the pile and puts it at the back of the hand of cards again to maintain the order. However when you are negotiating, you can bring out the cards from your hand (but remember, you can't put it up the table, you can just call it out for negotiations and finally when someone trades, you them the cards) This is an interesting tactic that can change the order of cards to suit your convenience.
  

Well the entire fun part of the game is in the negotiation phase, where things really hot up, voices reaching the top of your roof, people screaming to close a deal and this is fun!

How long does this play?

Well typically the game suggests that you play 3 rounds (one round is when draw pile empties). After each round the size of the pile reduces as the gold that you make is the bean card turned over. So a full game should take you about an hour. But I play just one round and stop it (have reasons for this), which takes about 20-30 min.

Who would you recommend it to?

Well, here is where I have some reservations about this game. Yes, the negotiation part is fun, chaos, but becomes repetitive and soon people get into a rut to close deals faster that takes the charm out of this game. After the 1st few rounds the group more or less tends to close deals rather than extend the negotiation long and hard. Hence I play just the one round and would suggest all of you out there to try out a few rounds or a game or two and then decide to buy this. This game of course comes with tons of expansions so may have replayability. As I haven't played any, I wouldn't be able to judge that aspect.

Any Downsides?

I've actually mentioned the downside above and this to me is the greatest downside. Uwe created this game when he was at school, so lot of young people may find it very good, but if you are a serious gamer, I will surely not recommend this.

Final Thoughts!

As I mentioned before, this is a very good family entertainer, meaning parents with children can have a lot of fun. Or non-gamers/occasional gamers can play it during a party to get some excitement going. If you are a serious gamer, I would say stay away from it as Uwe has master pieces like Agricola, Le Havre that you will enjoy.

BANG! - I Shot the Sheriff!!

I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy- Bob Marley

Guess most of us have heard this song, well even if you haven't don't worry. The reason I put that line up is because this game is all about shooting people down!! Well not in the real sense, but using cards! And my word is this game fun!! I have not seen a simple pack of cards pack this much punch.

The game is like:

Sheriff: I'll kill all these outlaws and restore peace!!
Outlaws: Let's kill the sheriff whoz in our way!
Deputy Sheriff: Oh no! I can't let the outlaws harm my boss!!
Renegade: Ah haa!! Here's is my best opportunity to eliminate everyone and become the new sheriff!!

Well this is the game in a nutshell. This game is truly multi-player in nature in that it can accommodate 4-7 players. So finally I've come to multi-player games! This my friends is an absolute no brainer, so even before you read the review, just pick this one up..period.

I played this for the first time with a group of strangers at Brew haha (my friend's board game cafe') and fell in love with this and ordered it immediately.Ever since whereever I've been in mid-sized groups this has been a smash hit. So much so that I had to refrain from playing as they became addicted to this game!

This is a fighting, bluffing, little bit of mystery, classic western, role playing (some of my RPG friends may take offense to this being called a Role Playing Game, but it is in a very simple sense though)!

BANG! - By Emiliano Sciarra

He has been fascinated by games from when he was 12 years old, and he wrote simple board games and word games for his schoolmates and relatives. In the same time he also showed interest in computers (years later he earned a degree in Computer Science at Sapienza University of Rome).

In 1988 he published his first game: a shoot 'em up videogame for the Commodore 64 called Ciuffy (Systems Editoriale), created using the software SEUCK by Sensible Software.

Starting from 1999 he wrote several reviews, games and articles for the magazine PowerKaos and the fanzine Un'Altra Cosa, along with a brief "Little Informal Dictionary of Computer Science" (Piccolo Dizionario Informale di Informatica). His topics included logic puzzles, original games and theoretic discussions about the meaning of the game and its role in the human society.

In 2002 he published with daVinci Editrice, which was born shortly before, the card game Bang!, created two years earlier. Sciarra decided to submit the game after the members of the local Chess Club (founded by Sciarra himself in 1998) were so addicted to the game that they preferred to play Bang! instead of Chess!!

Bang! hit the shelves in July 2002: without any marketing by daVinci, the game entirely sold the first run (2400 copies) in less than three months, instead of the three years estimated by the company. According to official figures by daVinci, the game sold more than 500,000 copies and is distributed in 14 countries over the world!! (Wikipedia)

The version that I have is from Mayfair games- a publisher of board and roleplaying games in the United States and United Kingdom. They also license German-style board games and publish them in English, most notably the The Settlers of Catan series licensed from Kosmos. (Wikipedia)

What do you get in the box?

As I mentioned before this is just a small box of cards. Exactly the same sized box as any playing card deck:

• 7 role cards. The roles are- 1 Sheriff, 2 Deputies, 3 Outlaws and 1 Renegade
• 16 character cards. Each player chooses one for the game
• 80 Cards to play

Please don't get fooled by the components. I know some of you might wonder how come Madhu is harping about this game and this game comes just with some cards! You'll see that in the next section.

How does it play?

I'm not going to go through the entire rule set, but goving to give you all an overview of howthis game flows:

• Each player get a role card viz. Sheriff, Outlaw etc. and the Sheriff reveals himself/herself. Of course the number outlawsetc. change with the number of people
• Each one is then given a character card that talks about the special ability of the character and also the number of lifepoints indicated by the number of bullet. Now this character card plays the role given to you. E.g. Bart Cassidy one of the characters might play the outlaw, Willy the Red might play the Sheriff.
• Each one gets another character card, but this one he keeps it face down with the bullet seide up and coveres it using his previous charecter card to indicate the number of life points. Note: The sheriff has one extra life point as he discloses himself!
  
• Each player gets 4 cards as a starting hand.

This is the game set up and now the shooting can begin!

• The sheriff starts the play
• During any players turn, they draw 2 cards from the draw pile
• Play as many cards as they want or not play any as well! (which btw is very rare)
  
• In case they have more cards than their current life points they discard down to match the current life status

With such simple rules, you might wonder where is the fin element?

• The playing card deck comes with a variety of cards, but the most important ones are the Bang and Missed cards. Use the Bang card to shoot someone and missed card to avoid the hit!
• Apart fromthis there arespecial blue cordered cards that give you additional powers like increasing your range of shooting(each person starts with a range of one, meaning they can shoot players who are next to them, either side)
• They can put others in Jail (not the most pleasant thing to do)
• Indians attach so shoot them down
• There is a machine gun attack so avoid or get hit!
• Someone can take away your powers!
• Someone uses a dynamite!
• Oh my God! I'm hit! I'm hit! drink beer and save yourself!!

Many many more fun options to play it. There is never a dull moment in the game and it is high voltage action all along. But for the Sheriff none of the other players reveal their roles, so it is going to be a game of cat and mouse trying to guess who is on whose side!

• If the sheriff and his deputy kill all the outlaws and Renegade they win
• If the outlaws kill the sheriff they win!
• If the Renegade manages to be the only one alive- he wins (this btw is the most difficult role and fun role to play)

You don't know who's on whose side, but you keep guessing and shooting at people. There is going to be chaos, pandamonium and lots and lots of laughter.

There is limited amount of strategy, but this game was not supposed t be a strategy brain burner, but just a game of unadultrated fun and laughter for the family and friends alike.

I've seen people seeking revenge the next time around when they play completely disregarding the roles!!!!!! Absolutely hilarious this ine I say!! I have heard stories where people have almost got into fist fights!!

Enough of what I've said, just try this and I can assure you you'll find this very hard to put down.

How long does it play?

A typical game should go on for about 30 min. I would say it lasts somewhere between 30-40 min. So there you go, such a small duration and so much fun. Just that it might take a little longer in the initial games till you get used to the different cards, but once you are through, the fun really kicks in :-)

Who would you recommend it to?

You cannot not have this one..period!! Go get it everyone immediately!
Any Downsides?

Well really there are not too many things that I can complain about this game, but for some small things like the cards are not of the greatest quality and because you tend to play this so many times, may to wear out fast. There is little but of learning curve, but nothing to worry.

The only thing I would say about this game is- the more the merrier. Though you can play with 4 people, I would say 6-7 is the sweet spot. Now you may not have this number all the time, but when you have it don't miss it!

Final Thoughts!

I have played this game more than any other game with a lot of different groups- age group ranging from10-50 yrs and everyone has enjoyed htis a lot.NO EXCEPTION! I have never stopped this game at just one round, people always ask me to get it out as their first game on any game nights! I have had to tell some that my Bang copy is with someone so that I could play something else; that is how addictive this game is :-)

Though there is limited strategy/tactics purely based on the fun element this ranks as one of my top rated games!

Recently a friend of mine who did not know what board games were got this through his brother in the US!

I have no hesitation in ASKING you all to go get a copy of this game!!

For more reviews goto http://www.boardgamegeek.com/forum/63/thing/3955