Buffy ,'Potential'
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Oh my god! I have been playing monopoly wrong my whole life! We all have!
Us too! Now I want to drag out the old board and give it a try. Monopoly was the traditional New Year's Eve game, since it took so damn long, and NYE was all about the idle waiting anyway. We stuffed ourselves on oil fondue and then played Monopoly until we could watch the ball drop. But I loved it! I was always trying to get people to play.
Railroads and utilities, man. I pwnd the infrastructure.
I haaated Monopoly. I never won and my sister always stormed off.
The scorn for Monopoly is large on boardgamegeek. Part of it's the luck factor, but I think the biggest problem is that it takes a long time to get from the winner being decided to the game actually ending. (Made all the worse with many house variants, such as money on Free Parking.)
Incidentally, When I was younger I had a board game strategy book (put out by Playboy, of all things). It had a cost-benefit analysis of all the properties. Cliff notes: Mayfair et al is well worth it, indeed if one player gets both of them early in the game it's probably all over, but the Greens are overpriced. The Oranges are probably the best properties on the board; they're not too expensive to develop and thanks to the Jail space they get hit up to twice as often as other properties. Red's good for that too, but not quite s good and significantly more expensive.
Cliff notes: Mayfair et al is well worth it, indeed if one player gets both of them early in te game it's probably all over
...Mayfair?
Googles
Oooh, you mean Boardwalk! And Park Place!
Oooh, you mean Boardwalk! And Park Place!
Ah, right. I grew up with the London version. (There's an Australian version too.) Anyway, yes, the big blues.
There are all sorts of versions! I kind of want Clinical Trial Monopoly.
Yeah, the Oranges are great. I always seem to find Pacific to be one of the most-landed-on properties in the game, though (green, first property after Go To Jail).
I also hated Monopoly, which is a shame because I love all the wacky variants you can buy: I saw one with lighthouses on this trip, which I would love.
I don't think auctions came up when we played since pretty much everyone would buy what they landed on. I think we played that you could trade properties, but definitely not the aberration that is $$ for Free Parking.
I had never heard of the Free Parking thing before playing as an adult, it makes for a very different game. The few times I managed to win were probably due to big Free Parking scores, so I can't come down as too much of a purist about it.
Other contentious rules: not being allowed to buy property on the first lap around the board nor collect rent while in Jail.
Is anyone else shamefully addicted to iPad game "Rock Vegas"?