Bohnanza Review - There's Nothing Else Like It

want to tell you about a card game that is so good that it hasn't been improved upon in 20 years bonanza it's about trading beans [Music] in bonanza you play as bean farmers born is german for bean and they mash that with the english word bonanza which means a large amount of something valuable and so you end up with a name that is weird in two languages the goal is to make the most money and you do that by planting beans in your field and harvesting them to sell for coins the bigger your crop the more coins you'll get to get the beans you need you trade them with the other players like in catan you swap cards for other cards it's such an instinctive thing i've got what you want you've got what i want let's trade everyone just gets it it's like swapping football stickers at school or baseball cards or collectible spice girls photos what's incredible is that in the 24 years since bonanza was released there hasn't been a single other notable card game that does trading bonanza was published in 1997 so just two years after katan and three years before carcassonne in that first wave of great modern board games that came out of germany it was designed by uber rosenberg who has since become one of the biggest board game designers in the world famous for his heavy strategy games like agricola but he started out designing simple card games whilst he was at college studying statistics in fact his thesis was on probability in the game memory he was only 27 when bonanza was released and it was his first real success so you could say he's been farming since day one but you wouldn't you wouldn't say that it was so successful that he decided to turn down a doctoral position to focus on game design and he's been designing games ever since bonanza is by far his best-selling game having sold over 3 million copies he was inspired by the 1980 game civilization a game that can take eight hours to play and he wanted to take his favorite part of it the trading phase and make it into a game of its own but he found the free-for-all trade in that game to be too much so he simplified it in bonanza you can only trade with the person whose turn it is bonanza did something revolutionary for a card game it fixes your hand in every card game you've ever played you can arrange your hand however you want put them in numerical order order them by suit it doesn't matter the whole point of a hand of cards usually is that you can choose which card to play not in bonanza you can't ever move them around it's a production line they come in one end and they go out the other and at the start of your turn you have to plant the first card in your hand you don't have a choice and the dilemma you face all bean farmers go through it is you've only got two fields each field can only hold one type of bean so if you haven't got a free field you have to harvest one of them to make space for the new card and the only way to avoid that problem is to trade the cards you don't want for cards you do want the fixed hand makes you want to negotiate that's why it's brilliant and it's not the only incentive beans will only score you coins if you collect enough of them so if you've got three blue beans they're currently worth nothing and you're desperate to get one more so you can get a coin and the other players know that so they'll be driving a hard bargain every turn the player flips over two cards that they can either keep or trade with the other players if you want that garden bean of theirs you'll be jumping in to offer a chili bean that you know they want but they decide to play hardball chili beans aren't worth as much so they demand a stink bean as well but you don't have that unfortunately someone else does the back and forth bargaining with each other is the heart of the game and it's just so much fun when a friend won't give you what you want even though the deal is better for them i love how much room there is to maneuver you can convince players to harvest now and change tack by offering them two beans of a different type just so you can get the one you need and how long do you wait before harvesting the game tempts you into hanging on once you have eight chili beans you only need one more to get another coin but waiting for a card to appear keeping that field occupied will mean you'll miss out on planting other beans the most special thing about bonanza is there's nothing else like it if you want a modern card game where you get to trade cards this is your only option if there have been attempts to do something similar they've not succeeded it's a testament to how good bonanza is that it's been plagiarized twice both were kickstarter campaigns trying to raise funds for games with suspiciously similar rules unfortunately you can't copyright a board game design so bonanza's publisher amigo spieler couldn't stop them they just had to appeal to the board game community not to give them money i do wish they'd give bonanza an updated look it hasn't changed since the first version in 1997 and apparently we had very different tastes back then imagine how good it would be if it looked like sushi go i worry that the art holds the game back from reaching new audiences who would love it i'm like a proud mother who says if you just take out that horrible nose ring the girls would see what a lovely young man you are some of the artwork is based on german puns that don't make sense in english the reason blue beans are holding a gun is because blau bonnen is german slang for bullets and the green beans are throwing up because in german they're called breck bonnen and it's a play on the word bracken which means to vomit the only real downside to bonanza is that it can go on a bit but this is a problem with all negotiation games the more you get into it the longer it will last my tip is if you have the version with the wax and coffee beans don't play with them the original german game didn't have them so you don't need them and the game will go much quicker without them in terms of who this game is for i'd recommend it to anyone who likes the trading in catan or monopoly or wants to try trading for the first time it would work for ages eight and up just don't play it with anyone who might get upset if no one will trade with them and i like it best with four or five players if you did want to buy it there's a link below there are 12 expansions to bonanza and six spin-offs let me tell you about them all okay i haven't played any of them but the general consensus seems to be that none of them are essential and they complicate a game which is great on its own if you would recommend one of them let everyone know in the comments if you already love bonanza and you want something more involved i'd recommend chinatown or lords of vegas as a good next step where the negotiation is a bit more free-for-all and there's other stuff going on as well if you'd like me to make a video on them let me know in the comments but if you'd rather stick to simple card games then there are a few others that have also really stood the test of time check out my recent top 5 pub games video especially high society and no thanks as for other games by uber rosenberg it's quite a leap to his heavy games like agricola and feast for odin and they're a very different style so i wouldn't go straight there but for something more on bonanza's level i would recommend his tetris games patchwork and spring meadow i've linked to my videos for them to see the next video in this series please subscribe to this channel and i'd like to thank all of my patrons without whom this video wouldn't exist to become a patron go to patreon.com forward slash actualol where you get my monthly newsletter i'm john perkias see you next time [Music] foreign

Channel: Actualol

Views: 27,804

Keywords: Jon Purkis, Board games, family board games, board games for couples, popular board games, top board games, best board games, new board games, new games, tabletop gaming, Essen, Spiel, shut up and sit down, Dice Tower, Family Games, board games for 2 people, board games for 3 people, new board games 2021, modern classics, classic board games, classic card games, Bohnanza, bean farming, trading card game, Uwe Rosenberg, board game history, masterpiece, bohnanza review, review

Id: tIlvwAGh3jI

Length: 8min 11sec (491 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 17 2021