High Bohn is the latest expansion for Bohnanza. It was available originally only in a limited edition of 2500 copies from Uwe Rosenberg's Lookout Games; then later republished in an Amigo edition.

The theme behind this expansion is an Old West town. Players use the profits from their harvests of beans to buy buildings which may have an effect on how much you earn when harvesting beans.

There are eight buildings, each with four different levels costing one, two, three, and four bean-coins. Each different type of building must be bought with coins earned from harvesting specific beans. The Bank must be purchased from Red Bean profits, the Blacksmith with Fire Bean profits, the Farm with Garden Bean profits, the General Store with Stink Bean profits, the Goldmine with Soy Bean profits, the Hotel with Black-eyed Bean profits, the Saloon with Green Bean profits, and the Sheriff's Office with Blue Bean profits. Each player may only purchase one of each building type.

The buildings which cost one coin do not have special abilities, but are important because of scoring. At the end of the game, each building scores its value. Bonus points are awarded to a player for building four or more different building types in his city: eight points for eight building types, five points for seven building types, three for six, two for five, and one point for four buildings. The final score at the end of the game consists of three components: the cash you have at the end of the game, the value of the buildings, and the bonus points for having four, or more, different buildings.

Some of the special abilities are:

Bank: the two-, three-, and four-coin Banks let you store money in them. At the end of the game you get bonus coins based on how many coins are in the Bank.

The four-coin Farm is a free additional bean field and you can still buy a third bean field, for a total of four bean fields!

The two-coin Hotel allows you look at the top card of the draw pile at the start of your turn, and if you don't like the card, you may put it at the bottom the draw pile.

The Saloon's three- and four-coin ability allows bean fields to be planted that can have different beans, but no duplicates are allowed in the field.

These are just a sampling of the different abilities which add strategy to the game without making it drag on too long.

The only drawback to the expansion is it designed for the orignal Bohnanza set without the expansion cards. For those of you with the Rio Grande version, this means taking out the Coffee beans, the Wax Beans, and the Cocoa Beans. (Still, I can't see how including them would sabotage using High Bohn.)

When all is said and done, High Bohn is a home run for Lookout Games' first release.

(Home run? Bohn Ruth? Randy 'The Bohn Unit' Johnson? Nawww....)