Bean to Bar

Bean to Bar is not your typical Japanese game. When I hear Japanese game, by default I imagine a short, minimalistic and clever card game with few components. Bean to Bar is a complex and heavy Euro style game with many more stuff than just cards. It is a game about making and selling chocolate. You build and run an artisan chocolate empire. 

In the game you need to do many things to complete the process of producing and selling chocolate. You will source cocoa beans, turn them into chocolate, submit your chocolate for competitions, recruit specialists to your company and open stalls to build your brand.

The core mechanism is this board with nine action tiles randomly arranged into a 3 x 3 grid. At the start of a round, you must advance your chef along the perimeter of this grid. Where it stops determines the three possible actions you can take that round, the ones your chef is facing. To take an action you must place one of your player tokens. The more actions you take this round, the more expensive it will be, in terms of time. Time is one precious resource you have to manage in the game. Taking an action does not block other players. In fact, if you take an action someone else has already taken, you get a discount.

Making chocolate is a mini polyomino game. You can turn the cocoa beans you have collected into dark chocolate, medium dark, or milk chocolate. Dark chocolate is more valuable and requires more cocoa beans. You take polyomino tiles from a limited supply to place on your own player board. For a chocolate product to be valid for sale or entering competitions, you need to have complete rows. That is a little puzzle you need to figure out.

Making money is very difficult. That means spending money, for example to buy time or to recruit a specialist, is painful. Another resource which is difficult to manage is your player tokens. Many actions require using one, sometimes committing it permanently. When you are the largest buyer in a region, you can score points from the region regularly, but you need to commit a player token. Points are hard to earn, so this is tempting. But player tokens are highly valuable too. Can you afford to lock down one player token?

Every few rounds there will be a competition. You probably want to enter as many competitions as you can.  Even if your product or products don’t win, you might still score some points. You do have to spend an action to sign up. Also when a chocolate product is entered into a competition, you cannot modify this product until after the competition. You will not be able to improve it for the time being, and your opponents might be able to develop an even better chocolate before the competition registration closing date. In case of ties, the earlier entry wins. So signing up early can be a strong advantage.

You can recruit specialists and promote them. At Levels 1 and 2, they give you special powers. At Level 3, they have no power but they can score more points. 

Two separate bags for cocoa and fruits

You can have at most four chocolate products

Bean to Bar is a tight game. There are many things you want to do, but your resources are limited. You must plan your actions carefully to do as much as you can with the limited resources you have. For me this is just okay. I found it a little fiddly. I don't think it is necessary to streamline this game. Simplifying it may not make it better. It is what it is, and players who like this type and weight of game will understand the charm. I appreciate how strategic the game is. It is an open information game. It's just that I am less attracted to this genre now. This is certainly a challenging game and if you like a challenge, go for it!