I think that this is something that testifies to the genius of monopoly – how many people there are who insist that their particular crazy set of rules are THE only way to play.

My wife continues to try and enforce her “rule” whereby any fines a player receives are placed in the centre of the board and then “awarded” to the next player who lands on Free Parking. It’s madness!

Ergonomic Cat man, there’s more than a tiny bit of strategy involved, the ‘nopoly is all about the strategy. If there’s a criticism it’s the high amount of chance involved, but mechanics involving lots of luck don’t automatically equal little strategy, if anything it’s the opposite.

Funny.. My two oldest boys are fine young men. Polite, well-educated, decent human beings(just don’t tell them I said so). When we get together to play Monopoly, all bets are off. We turn into thieving, conniving, manipulative bastards. Side deals, cheating, robbery are all on the table, though there is some honor amongst the thieves.

The game is not won, until someone gets pissed and flips the board. Yeah, just a great game..

For me, the essential way to play Monopoly is TO THE LETTER. Auctions in, no silly house rules.

Now I refuse to play it without it being some sort of theme game – StarWarsOpoly or the like.

It *is* a roll and move game. There’s a tiny bit of strategy, but really, it’s sort of like blackjack. A good game of blackjack is just running a set of rules. Hell, when I played $1 blackjack in Vegas, half the time the dealer just made choices for people if they didn’t pay enough attention.

It’s just not that much fun.

But it is a gateway game – people play it, then realize they can play, say, Scrabble, or Sorry, or Parcheesi. Then, hey, this Catan game is a lot like Monopoly, kinda. And then before they know it, they’re playing 8 hour games of Twilight Imperium 3 or Diplomacy.

http://www.criticalmiss.com/issue10/CampaignRealMonopoly1.html

Gist of above article – the widely ignored auction rule prevents the game dragging on interminably forever.

I kind of get that, kind of.

But monopoly is beast. A towering juggernaut of genius striding across the board game landscape. It’s straightfoward to play, easy to pick up but with enough depth to challenge a dedicated group of players. It’s exhilerating and infuriating in equal measure. It divides players into factions in one move, and unites them in another. It teaches the young guns that Granny still has a few tricks up her brandy stained sleaves. It creates the sort of arguments that can divide family units for generations!

But most of all from a mechanical sense it sits with in a space where victory lies on just the right mix of skill and luck.