Dawne

There is an expansion to this game called Mutabohn (limited edition of 2500 copies and very hard to find). This expansion has a new variation of planting as well as bonus cards for planting bean fields in a certain bean order.

You can use your current cards to play this expansion without having to buy it. The only thing you don’t get are the bonus cards… which honestly, I think is an unfair advantage to other players anyway. The bonus cards can give players an extra 30 – 70 thalers. Yikes!!

In summary, the new rules allow you to “mutate” the beans.

Here’s how it works:
You are allowed to plant different beans on other beans if:

a) The new bean you’re planting has a card number greater than the card you are planting on top of (the card number refers to the number of cards in the deck)

b) The card number on the new bean is the next incremental number in the series (which is usually an increment of +2). A 10 can be planted on an 8, a 20 can be planted on an 18, etc.

When harvesting a field of “mutated” beans, use the beanometer of the last bean that was planted.

Here’s an example:
You have a Red Bean already planted which is a number 8. You can plant a Black-eyed Bean over it which is number 10. (you still downwardly fan out the cards like you would normally do). You can keep going with this so long as each additional bean is either the same as what was planted last or is the next increment of bean number.

Example: you could plant a field in following order: red bean (first bean in field), black-eyed bean, black-eyed bean, soy bean, soy bean, green bean, and green bean. This would be worth 4 thalers since there are 7 cards and the last bean planted was the green bean.

The Pros and Cons:
Cons: You count the beanometer of the last planted bean so you have to collect more beans for them to be worth more.

Pros: If you don’t have the same card as what’s already in your fields, it gives you more options for planting.

I like the expansions, but Yikes!! … there are WAY too many of them to remember and way to many to explain to new players.

Rather than using the rules for the expansions, just ignore the pictures other than the cities, roads and farms (and Rivers since these are used first). If a new player asks “What is this picture for”… just say it’s for an expansion that we’re not using the special rules for them. Pictures that can be ignored are things like volcanoes, tower bases, cathedrals, shields on city pieces, etc.

Many of the expansion pieces can still be used in the main game, however some cannot, like The Count. Just keep out the ones that don’t fit onto a city, road, farm or river.

I keep a big bag off all the tiles that can be used in this fashion. I keep the other ones in their original expansion boxes.

We like to speed up play by allowing all players to simultaneously to the job action for the jobs that would effect all players (like builder, trader, etc).

For example, during “Builder” phase, all players would build at the same time rather than taking turns doing it. Obviously, you wouldn’t do this for the “Prospector” phase because drawing a card only effects 1 player.