It's Christmas soon, and the chances are it's going to snow heavily taking out all power to the neighbourhood and leaving you cooped up inside the house with nothing to do but play boardgames all day. If you only have Monopoly in your house, here is why you'd probably be better off opening the doors and the windows and accepting the cold embrace of mother winter.
Everyone who has ever played monopoly can probably tell you the main flaw in the game. They can all identify the horrible sinking feeling that occurs about halfway around the board the third time. They all know what it's like to realise that you're stuck playing a game for another two hours that they're never going to win. And so you start getting silly and steal money from the bank and hide houses from their owners and punch your brother repeatedly in the leg. Part of what's wrong with Monopoly is that you can only rarely come back from being down, but ultimately what's wrong with it is that everyone knows who is going to win from the early stages of the game. That's a challenge for any game that keeps score as you go along, but Monopoly compounds this by only letting the game end by the winner bankrupting every other player. If you want to keep people playing a game you need to give them the chance (or failing that, give them the impression that they have the chance) to win even on the last turn. It's a bit like if a boxing match was always decided after the second round but wasn't allowed to finish until the winner had turned the loser into an evenly spread layer covering the boxing ring. And the thing is, everyone knows this about Monopoly, yet they still chose to play it.
From something everyone can tell you to something no-one can; the rules. If only the last paragraph was true then Monopoly would merely sap your soul of all life and joy. Given that no-one knows the rules, it possesses the ability to tear apart families. Here's a quiz, which of these rules are found in the original rules of Monopoly?
Finally, give yourselves ten bonus points if you can correctly explain how to mortgage property. The correct answers were; I DON'T KNOW, and neither does the rest of your family, so next time you're playing with it and they do something against the rules, don't try and correct them, because chances are you'll get into a fight. Instead just steal their large notes while they're in the toilet. I sometimes wonder if Monopoly would be a good game if you played it according to the rule book. But then again, I sometimes wonder how strong I'd have to be to punch through the wall with my head.
On top of these two glaring flaws, you also have the quite fundamental problem of not having anything to do. Okay, so you get to role two dice (TWO! See what a great game this is!), but really that's where your interactivity ends. Hooray for setting into motion a random process! Then, if you're lucky, you can choose whether to buy a property or not. You also might get the opportunity to auction a property, build houses, haggle with other family members, or invade Russia, but nobody really knows where in the turn you're meant to do this, so chances are you'll miss it.1
Defenders of Monopoly make a big deal about the skill involving in haggling for property and selling at the right time. Maybe everyone I've played it with enjoys haggling over the rules too much, because I've never noticed anyone really haggling over the property before. Begging perhaps, emotionally black-mailing maybe, but never haggling.
Theoretically, I think monopoly maybe redeemable. If you said the game ended after five times around the board, and perhaps was played with an 8 sided die (to slow the game down and ensure everyone progressed at a more similar speed), had forced auctions of any empty property that's landed on and actually had a defined order of play (role, move, buy/pay rent, auction, mortgage, build houses) you might be able to play the game through without wondering how much fun it would be to gouge your eyeballs out with the little green houses. But it would still probably provide more fun by being set alight.
1 Risk, the second worst board game in the world ever, is the second worst board game in the world ever because it allows you to make the decisions that Monopoly does not. It does have one extra critical flaw that Monopoly does not, but at least it's possible to make your own decisions in it, and sometimes it's nice to be able to go and cook a full roast dinner in between your turns.
I really don't understand how such rubbish games sell so well. Go play Settlers of Catan, or for an even easier game, Ticket To Ride (pref. the Europe edition). Both play in under 90 minutes, can be really difficult to tell who is winning, and rarely is someone completely out of the running from early on.
But then, my parents & sister don't enjoy board games at all :(
Answer to your question - 1, 3 & 4, mortgaging means you get half of the value but you get no income from it (the group must be devoid of houses/hotels), and to unmortgage it you must pay 60% of the value of the property. I think. I haven't played it for at least 6 years.
Settlers is fantastic. As is Ticket to Ride - although surely the original edition is better?
But 90 minutes for a game of settlers!?! You must be playing on some secret super fast rules.
Catan is only a short game if you're ever played Risk.
Oh and also, I've heard mixed things about Ticket to Ride: Europe, by all accounts it's great, but is it better? I think people with more experience of board games prefer Europe (board game geek has it as .02 points better than the original).
Everyone has their favourites, there's no definitive answer really. The only one I have is Europe - played the original online and much prefer Europe.
Almost never had a settlers game lasting longer than 2 hours. Had a 6-player game at the weekend which I'm pretty sure was 1 hour 45 at the most. Ticket To Ride - can do in 45 minutes quite easily 3 players. 4 players - about an hour, 75 minutes max. Practice makes perfect!
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Kaz Darzinskis
The only thing a Monopoly player knows after going around the board 5 times is which players will probably own more than their share of properties. While skilled players keep that fact in mind, it certainly is not correct to say that the player with the most properties will win.
The only way to win Monopoly is to gain ownership of one of 7 killer monopolies at the "right" time during the game. This requires analytical skill in knowing what is the best monopoly at any particular time and requires "people skills" to convince an opponent to give you that monopoly. Many or most players have no idea (I mean no accurate idea) of how to determine what is the strongest available monopoly, so skilled players have a big advantage. It's not a just a game of luck. People have done computer analysis and written entire books about winning Monopoly. For examples, see my website, www.winning-monopoly.com .
Regarding home-made rules, they are usually not important. Most players knows what are the real rules and which are made up. If a group of players wants to play by a made-up rule, I can go along with it. I'll usually win anyway. If some strange home-made rule would ruin the playability of the game, there's no need to haggle about it endlessly. Just pull out the rules from the bottom of the game box, and read to your errant opponent the actual rule. There is nothing too complicated about the real rules. 5-year-old kids usually have no problem learning how to play Monopoly.