Bohnaparte

[avram]

Went in for comics today, only thing I got was New X-Men #149 (part four of the “Planet X” arc). Have I mentioned how very much I like the new student characters Morrison has introduced over the course of his run on the title?

I stopped in at the uptown branch of Pearl Paint first, to get more pens. My old Pitt S fineline was drying out, and my black Pitt brushpen has a frayed tip. I was also intending to get some gray Tria markers, but the uptown Pearl doesn’t seem to carry those.

Met bugsybanana, womzilla, and drcpunk at Cosmic. (Man, having an LJ client that auto-formats user tags kicks ass.) We went out for Indian food (and were joined by mnemex), then headed over to Neutral Ground to get some boardgaming in. Bugsy played her first game of Puerto Rico.

Then we played Bohnaparte, a very odd and hard-to-find expansion for Bohnanza that turns it into a wargame. Seriously. You play a regular game of Bohnanza (though everyone starts out with a third beanfield), and there’s a board of cards (representing territories) in the middle of the table. As you accumulate money, you can spend it to launch attacks on neighboring territories, using bean cards out of your hand to indicate attack strength. I won, narrowly beating out Womzilla; Bugsy and Mnemex were handicapped by unlucky draws early in the game that quashed their first few attacks. One odd quirk: The number on the card, the one indicating frequency, is used for attack strength, so the most powerful cards (the blue beans, of which there are 20) are the most common. Strategic tip, in the unlikely event you find yourself playing: Get a munitions depot early in the game, and dump blue beans and chili beans into it.

Comments

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Chris finally played Puerto Rico. Whoo hoo!

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I definitely have to say, the "always be one thing short of whatever you need" strategy that I pursued needs improvement.

[bugsybanana.livejournal.com]

Re: Bohnaparte, I also was rusty on the rules for Bohnanza and labored some of the time under a misconception that certain Bohnanza rules applied in the attack phase of Bohnaparte which don't. I know better now.

[mneme]

Yes. They don't apply to trading, either, you know.
(actually, they do apply to bohnaparte, but only when bonaparte's stuff is "like planing" (ie, dropping things into your munitions dump); attacking is "like trading" in some of the same ways).

I'd like to try that again -- note that one thing I might have done is play very differently with the 20's -- I think it's very important to count cards for the second and later rounds (much moreso than in a regular Bohnanza game), since how many 20s entered the discard pile is a determinant in how hard it is going to be to attack the field, and how likely you are to draw a 20 (which is, after all, the kiss of death).

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

Card counting is at best a very rough guide, though, because there are many hidden cards in the game, in people's hands and in munitions dumps.

[mneme]

It may be rough, like any odds determinant....but in this case, it should be pretty useful.

The thing is, while what comes out of the draw pile is a closed deal, what goes into it is always open. This means that you can calculate the important odds in the second and third draw (ie, those of any given drawn card being a 20, or even an 18) with a high degree of precision if you just keep track of those three numbers and how many cards are reshuffled to begin with.

[phrotus.livejournal.com]

I *love* Beak, Angel, and the Cuckoos. Just thought I'd give a little shout-out. :P