6

I learned recently that there is a rule stating "If there is only one bean card in one of your fields, you cannot harvest it as long as you have another field containing more than one bean card."

My friends have decided to house rule this out of the game, but I was wondering how does having or not having this rule affect the mechanics of the game?

For example: Does it influence the game length? How much does this change the implicit value of a 3rd bean field?

Kora
  • 331
  • 1
  • 7

1 Answers1

9

You lose tension without this rule, since players can effectively just "burn" undesirable beans - both those in hand and those that are flipped in the second phase of each turn.

My suspicion is that players would trade less and plant more - though without necessarily scoring more points - without the rule.

The 3rd bean field could be more valuable without the rule, since you are effectively doubling your useful fields (in the case where most players, most of the time, are using their second field for trash).

The impact on the game length - at least, in terms of how many turns there are - is tied to points scored. More points scored [earlier] --> fewer cards in the deck for each shuffle --> shorter game.

The Chaz 2.0
  • 3,486
  • 1
  • 21
  • 30
  • 1
    Thanks! Just to add my perspective, our established group already trades excessively (brokering "later favors", 3rd party, etc.) and generally only 2-5 such burns are done per game, usually when a player sees that there are too many players investing in something and it was the first card in their hand, or if most of the beans of that kind had already been collected and it's one of the 2 drawn beans that must be planted but nobody wants it. Our conclusion was that the 3rd bean field was more valuable with the rule since players would have to rip up larger (suboptimal) bean piles more often. – Kora Dec 11 '17 at 15:00