Bean trader is based in the ficticious North European region of Hanse, which comprises of 10 cities.
Bean trader is for 3-5 players and takes 60-90 minutes to play. It is a complete, highly interactive board game based on the classic card game: Bohnanza, and is played on a map of 10 cities.
You and your fellow players take the roles of the famous Bohn Hanse, a trade union of cities and merchants in the middle ages. As you drive your wagon from town to town filling orders on your way to Edinburgh, you will be able to trade with other players who are in the same town allowing you to acquire needed beans and get rid of unwanted ones. It sounds simple enough but the roads through Bremen or Groningen lead to high tolls and you still need a red bean to complete the order and collect your thalers! With luck, your business will soon start to run itself and at the end the player with the most bean thalers wins!
Bean Trader looks great. The board and all components are well illustrated, with very much the same look as Bohnanza. There are 8 types of beans in the game, and my only real quibble with the artwork is that the name of the bean, and the color of the bean chips are often at odds with each other: the Green bean is on a Green background, but the soy bean is on a purple background. The solution to this would seem to be to ignore the names of the beans and just refer to them by their colors. (This is a very small quibble -- trust me, it won't matter once you start playing.)
Bean Trader adds new levels and mechanics, and never pretends to be exactly like Bohnanza
