One of my all-time favourite games!
Written: Jan 08 '07
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Pros: Brilliant game in every way...
Cons: ... but not for young kids, takes a while to set up and pack up
The Bottom Line: Monopoly is one of the best games ever invented. Well... it is when I win...
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| captaind's Full Review: Monopoly |
Monopoly is one of my all-time favourite games of any type. I am reliably informed by friends and family alike that I’m a terrible loser and an even worse winner, but hey we can’t all be perfect! :-D
Monopoly is a trading and risk-taking board game with many version (including I believe a Star Trek edition) with versions being available for various cities around the world. However I will deal here with the original, which deals with streets and places in London. The different city editions are essentially the same game, just the place names are different.
You can have up to 6 players (the more the better really, you need at least 3 for a truly interesting game), and traditionally the game starts with a good-natured argument about who is going to use what token as their playing piece (well, that’s how games start in our family, anyway!). There is a dog, a car, a ship, a boot (for some reason), and iron (always last choice!),and a top hat. You can play the game with one dice (ironically if you do the games are usually shorter, for reasons I’ll explain in a minute), but more usually it should be played with two. Whoever rolls the highest double starts – if no-one rolls a double, you all roll again.
The board is divided into forty sections around the edge of the board. There are 22 properties, 4 railway stations, 2 utility companies, a jail, free parking, some unavoidable taxes, Chance and Community Chest spots. When you land on Chance and Community Chest, you pick up the next card in the respective pile. These can be either good – getting a tax rebate or winning money in a beauty contest (really!), or bad – from an extra tax payment to the dreaded “You are assessed for street repairs”, which costs you for every building you own. Some cards are fairly innocuous most of the time but can be fatal depending where exactly on the board you are at the time "Go back three spaces" instantly springs to mind... As you progress along the board, if you land on a property, you get the opportunity to buy it – or, if it’s owned by another player, you have to pay rent to them depending if there are any buildings on it. The closer to the end of the board the more expensive properties are to buy/ build on – and the more they cost another player in rent.
There are two versions of the game for buying property – either you just buy it or not at the value shown, or an auction begins. Auctions are pretty insane but they give you the opportunity to force someone to pay over the odds for a property they want. On the other hand you might end up having to spend a lot of money on a property that’s not actually much use to you if you push it too high and they back out. The properties can make sets when all of the same colour are owned (either 2 or 3 in a set), and the rent is doubled immediately on properties in that set. Then you can start building houses or, when you’ve reached the maximum 4 houses per property, a hotel. This is expensive to build and you don’t want to get that street repairs card I mentioned earlier, but you earn the most rent from your properties. The cheapest set – brown (Old Kent Road and Whitechapel) starts at a pitiful £2 / £4 for rent up to £250/£450 with hotels, while the might navy set (Park Lane and Mayfair) can destroy your entire fortune in one visit with hotels. Each player starts the game with £1500 to invest and, if you want to play a quick game, maybe a couple of randomly chosen properties.
With one dice you travel round the board more slowly, making it easier to collect sets and also increasing the chance that someone might land on your properties more than once in a trip round the board. The advantage of having 2 dice is that you go round faster, and each time you pass “GO” normally you are given £200 by the bank (one of the players normally controls the bank – make sure you can trust them!) With two dice a double means you can have another throw after you've done whatever you want to do on that area (same if you throw a 6 with a single dice) - but do this 3 times in a row and it's off to jail with you.
There are also stations you can buy – the amount of rent you get starts at £25 but doubles for each extra station you own, so if you have all 4 then you get £200 per time. If you land on the wrong square (amidst the yellow set) you might end up going to jail, whereby you have to roll a double within 3 throws to get out, pay a £50 fine, or use a previously collected “Get Out of Jail Free” Chance or Community Chest card. There are two utilities which earn you 4 x the dice roll in rent, or 10 x the roll if you have both. You can mortgage properties or sell them back if you’re really short of readies – mortgaged properties don’t collect rent if someone lands on them and you get half the value, unmortgaging them costs that plus 10%. The advantage is that you can unmortgage them when you can afford it without the risk of anyone else buying that property.
Though what with dice rolls and random events there is enough chance in the game to make it unpredictable, it is largely a game of skill. The skill comes in knowing what to keep and get rid of, when to build and when to save, and especially your wheeling and dealing with the other players. You can trade property for money or other property (you can’t trade property with houses on), usually to try to complete a set. The trick is managing to get a good deal for yourself while making the other person think that they’ve also got a good deal. (Note – spouses will never trust a word you say so don’t even bother trying to deal with them!! :-D) Of course, no matter how skilful you are, a freak dice roll could bring all your carefully crafted plans crashing down. You lose when you go completely bust – no property, no money.
It’s a game the never fails to offer a unique game. Young children are best off playing with a parent and basically just handing money over or whatever as they won’t have a clue what’s going on. While I admit the game isn’t perhaps for everyone, I can’t even think of giving it less than 5 stars. It’s an absorbing game that may just bring out your worst side, but don’t worry, you’re not bankrupting anyone in real life! You win the game if you are the last mogul left with loads of dosh while everyone else is crying about their bankrupt state of being. There are a few other aspects to the game, but I’m not going to tell you absolutely everything about it – play the game and find out for yourself!
The one downside that even I don’t like about it is that setting up properly takes a while. You have to put everything out, put the property cards (“title deeds”) in a sorter, and deal out the starting money – 2 x £500, 4 x £100, 1 x £50, 1 x £20, 2 x £10, 1 x £5, and 5 x £1. Then again as the games tend to take quite a while, so it’s not a huge problem – just a little annoying sometimes. (Clearing it away properly also takes a little while, but normally the winner is forced to do that, which isn’t too difficult for them as they’ll be too busy gloating to care!)
The basic game costs about £10 (a little under $20). There are so many versions nowadays – based on different cities, TV programs, football clubs, etc, that the choice is rather dizzying if you go into it. I prefer the “classic” version myself, but to each his or her own. The travel version (much the same but the board and pieces are smaller, and the board folds up twice instead of once) is about half the price and is a good buy if you’re cramped for space or likely to want to take it anywhere with you.
Final verdict - not for younger kids but a fantastic game. A true classic among board games.
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iMAGiNiff
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 18
Type of Toy: Board Game
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