About Us | Terms & Conditions | FAQs | Log in Call us now on +44 (0) 20 8346 2327

Items: -

 

All categories Roleplaying Games Board Games & Card Games   Gale Force 9 Collectable & Living Card Games Other Collectable Games Historical Wargames Miniatures Wargames & Rules Miniatures, Paints etc. Magazines & Comics Accessories Events

 

HOME New Releases 21 May New Releases Archives Pre-Orders Suggested Games Roleplaying Games Board Games & Card Games Collectable & Living Card Games Other Collectable Games Historical Wargames Miniatures Wargames & Rules Miniatures, Paints etc. Magazines & Comics Accessories Calendar Events   SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER       CONNECT WITH US   WE'RE WITH BITS & MORTAR   SHOP WITH CONFIDENCE

Main Catalogue |  Board Games & Card Games |  Rio Grande Games |  Bean Trader Bean Trader Price: £30.99 Boardgame, 3-5 players. The players take the roles of bean traders and are members of the famous Bohn Hanse, the union of northern European cities and merchants involved in the bean trade in the middle ages. The players travel from Hanse city to Hanse city in wagons filled with valuable beans to deliver bean orders and to buy more beans. When a player is in a city and has an order card and the necessary beans to fulfil the order, he may deliver the beans and collect the value of the order from the bank. When two or more players are together in a city, they may trade beans among themselves. After eight new harvests, the game begins its last round. After this last round, the game ends and the player with the most bean thalers (money) is the winner. +++++++++++++++++++++ Counter Magazine review. +++++++++++++++++++++ -5 players, 90 minutes designed by Uwe Rosenberg reviewed by Alan How Franchise push out? Another new development in gaming? Where will the Bean game lead us to? The answer is that the Bean trade mark is following the Siedler franchise and moving beyond its initial boundary. When Bohnanza first popped its head out of the fertile mind of Uwe Rosenberg, we could little have imagined that five and a half years later there would be seven expansion sets and another, Bohnaparte, on the way. And now the germ has leaped species into a board game. Perhaps the best feature of the original game was the way your cards had to be kept in order. No shuffling, no sorting, just take them as they were dealt and then make the best of it. The main way that you improved your gaming situation was by trading and it is these two elements that have made their way into the boardgame version. The object of the game is to deliver sets of beans to specified cities. This involves travelling round the board - using the cards from the front of your hand as payment - and then acquiring new beans and trading in order to meet the demand requirements. The order cards are similar to those in Empire Builder -- you get beans (goods) from several cities and then travel somewhere where there is demand and hand in the card. The big differences between Bean Trader and Empire Builder games are that the routes are fixed in Bean Trader and that you can invite other players to trade with you. They will do so for two reasons: to get a better collection of beans (goods) and to get to areas on the board more quickly and possibly more cheaply. The large, attractive board displays ten cities connected by roadways. Each city is seeded with raw materials (different types of bean) with a pricing mechanism that means more beans equate to cheaper prices (not Heinz). Players receive near identical hands of cards, which they arrange in a predetermined sequence. Each set of cards consists of a toll card, a production card and five others of less importance. In addition each player\'s wagon is filled with one each of the eight bean types. The rotation of the cards is cleverly done - one card is handed in for each city on your route. If one of these is the toll card, you pay the duty (bad news), while play of a production card means that more beans become available in some of the cities. Which cities depends on the draw from a small deck of harvest cards and it is the depletion of these that will end the game, when cash in hand plus the value of the goods in your wagon will determine the winner. At the end of your turn the cards you have played in order to move are returned to the back of your hand. The rules for putting back the cards state that the toll and production cards are replaced first, which means that these will circulate faster. When you get to a city (often with more goods to buy) you can invite other players to trade with you. To do so, they play a single card and move to the same city. This is less than they would have to play to travel in their own turn, which has the effect of making travel cheaper, because it means that the toll card appears less often. The economics of the demand cards are such that the 2 or 3 beans required to meet the order card will yield a profit, providing you don\'t have to pay too highly for the beans. So generally you will try to satisfy as many order cards as possible. Bean Trader is an odd sort of game. You think it is something like Fische Fluppen Frikadellen (FFF), because of the fact that there are several modes of travel and the object is to deliver specific goods to demand areas. But FFF has some extra quality (not the multi board aspect), because of the range of options at each trading point. The other game it reminds me of is the Empire Rails series, but the crayon aspects make that one a more distant cousin. There isn\'t a great deal of planning involved in the game, but this is offset by the opportunities offered by other players\' requests to trade, and this I have found is the secret of the game. You must trade, for only that way will you acquire the beans and move round the board fast enough to be able to deliver the number of contracts that you need if you are to have a chance of winning. In terms of number of rounds, the game is over surprisingly quickly and this can catch out the player who doesn\'t get involved in the deal making. The game is pleasant, rather than exciting; well put together rather than inspiring. It uses some of the mechanisms in the bean card games, but doesn\'t offer anything special. More ...     Main Catalogue |  Board Games & Card Games |  Rio Grande Games |  Bean Trader **sRecentPrefix** <!-- Prefix to Horizontal recent item list HTML --> <br/><br/> <div class="recenththeader"> <input class="recenthtbuttonright" id="scrollbackrecent" type="button" value=" Next >>" onclick="ScrollBackRecent();"> <input class="recenthtbuttonleft" id="scrollforwardrecent" type="button" value="<< Previous" onclick="ScrollForwardRecent();"> <div style="text-align:center">Recently Viewed</div> </div> <br clear="all"/> <table id="recenthtitem"> **sRecentImageRowPrefix** <!-- Prefix to image row --> <tr><td class="recenthtitemspacer" rowspan=4> </td> **sRecentImageItem** <!-- Image item --> <td class="recenthtitemimage"> <a rel="nofollow" _HREF_="_SSURL_?PRODREF=_PID_&NOLOGIN=1" > <img border="0" width="75" src="_THUMB_" alt="_NAME_" title="_NAME_"  /> </a> </td> <td class="recenthtitemspacer" rowspan=4> </td> **sRecentImageRowSuffix** <!-- Suffix to image row --> </tr> **sRecentDescRowPrefix** <!-- Prefix to Description row --> <tr> **sRecentDescItem** <!-- Description item --> <td class="recenthtitemdesc"><a rel="nofollow" _HREF_="_SSURL_?PRODREF=_PID_&NOLOGIN=1" >_NAME_</a></td> **sRecentDescRowSuffix** <!-- Suffix to Description row --> **sRecentPriceRowPrefix** <!-- Prefix to Price row --> **sRecentPriceItem** <!-- Price item --> **sRecentPriceRowSuffix** <!-- Suffix to Price row --> **sRecentDeleteRowPrefix** <!-- Prefix to Delete row --> <tr> **sRecentDeleteItem** <!-- Delete button --> <td class="recenthtitemdelete"> <a href="javascript:DeleteRecent('_PID_', true);"> <img src="xit.jpg" border="0" /> </a> </td> **sRecentDeleteRowSuffix** <!-- Suffix to Delete row --> </tr> **sRecentSuffix** <!-- Suffix to Horizontal recent item list HTML --> </table> **sRecentEmptyList** <!-- Code for empty list -->

---

Events Calendar, both In-store & Conventions

Contact Us Travel Directions

About Us Site Map

Terms & Conditions FAQs

New Releases Notice Board

---

Leisure Games, 100 Ballards Lane, Finchley, London, N3 2DN
Site maintained by ITQ Solutions Ltd.