'Tis The Season For Foreclosures, Bankruptcies, and Rent Arrears...

Pete - the king of Christmas outfits - even has a Monopoly-themed jumper!

"Christmas is a very busy time for us, Mr. Cratchit. People preparing feasts, giving parties, spending the mortgage money on frivolities. One might say that December is the foreclosure season."

- Ebenezer Scrooge (Michael Caine), The Muppet Christmas Carol (1982)

What better way to truly capture the spirit of Christmas than another round of the ultimate game of capitalism?

This month's chosen Monopoly board theme was Christmas, with a glorious board marked up with various elements of the traditional Christmas holiday season.

From the selection of metal playing pieces, Pete picked the Snowman, I was the turkey, Rachel was the reindeer and Clare took the role of Christmas elf.
 

The playing pieces

The themed board

For the longest time, it felt as though none of us were buying up properties but once I got hold of the "Snowman" (The Park Lane of Christmas Monopoly) I was gripped with a determination to get its pair ("Santa" aka Mayfair) and then live off the rents I could garner from those unfortunate enough to stop in that corner of the board, just before "Go".

I eventually managed to purchase "Santa" off of Clare, but hadn't planned on my property portfolio shrinking to just those two locations and "Chimneys" (one of the "power companies").

My early property portfolio

My "cunning" trap takes shape

Reasonably quickly I then built four "grottos" (houses) on both of those locations, but didn't actually have the cash to replace them with a pair of red "workshops" (hotels), until someone actually landed on Snowman and coughed up the hefty rent.

People started setting aside "Tim cash" in their bank accounts, readying themselves for landing on either Santa or the Snowman.

Although, in all honesty, it was more a threat than a reality as the dice certainly working in my favour and tended to hop people over my two properties and past "Go".

There really was something going on with the dice last night, not only were we rolling an awful lot of doubles but there appeared to be a statistically improbable number of double sixes in that mix.

All these doubles - and a penchant for simply landing on "Go To Jail" - saw a lot of us ending up in the Big House. At one stage, after Clare had declared bankruptcy, Rachel, Pete and I all found ourselves in the pokey at the same time.

Rachel, Pete and I all end up in jail at the same time!

I actually tried to stay in jail for as long as possible every time I got sent down (no doubt on some tax fiddling charge), in the hope that people would stop on my valuable land while I was twiddling my thumbs... and thus bulk up my bank balance.

Once Pete had managed to bankrupt Rachel, that left vast tracts of land as mortgaged properties that Pete couldn't afford to develop.

He had workshops dotted around two sides of the board, while I just held on to my corner, but by this time I was sitting on a pretty hefty pot of money.

With the game now grinding on, the clock ticking past 11pm, and only Pete and I left in it, we agreed to call it a draw, taking "four points" each in the league table, instead of the standard "five" for a win.

Entente Cordiale: In the spirit of Christmas, we shake hands on a shared victory

The Monopoly Club League Table, as it stands at the end of 2023

It was agreed that this was a well-designed Monopoly set, with plenty of suitably infantile opportunities for giggling as juvenile innuendos (which prompted Rachel to enquire about the possible exitence of a "rude"-themed Monopoly).

The only thing really going against it was the difficulty of reading some of the cards and locations as they were quite "busy". I also felt the counters were on the small side, but I think I might have been spoiled by Simpson's Treehouse of Horror set which has set the bar very high.

Grading the themes of this year's Monopoly sets

Halloween Special: "Another Case of Monopoly-related Violence, Chief!"

Yes, they glowed! No, we didn't play in the dark!

After a summer hiatus, Monopoly Club resumed last night with a Halloween special, in the form of The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror-themed board, complete with glow-in-the-dark figurines.

The thought that had gone into the theming of this set was obvious, and much appreciated, from the names of the locations (all drawn from Treehouse of Horror episodes of The Simpsons) to the quirky "fate" and "trick or treat" cards.

And let's not forget that instead of houses and hotels, you're building "tombs" and "mausoleums".

The production values of this Monopoly set were top-notch, with easily readable cards and large, chunky miniatures that meant even I couldn't mistake which character was which once we were mid-game.

Winning the dice-off to see who'd go first, I chose Comic Book Guy In Superhero Costume as my character, Rachel was Alien Maggie, Clare picked Count Dracula Mr Burns, and Pete was Bart-Fly.

The beginning of the end of my property empire

I got off to a thundering start, accumulating a broad spread of property, but that was also, ultimately, my undoing. Having blown my wad on all those locations, I ended up with little cash to pay rent when I landed on other people's properties.

Hence the early departure of Comic Book Guy.

WORST. GAME. EVER.

Conversely, Pete had an incredible turnaround after a slow start, developing with his Mausoleum Empire that systemically picked everyone else off, one after another.

Rachel followed me into oblivion, a poor showing from the Knight household, having seemingly spent a disproportionate amount of time in jail again (as is her wont).

Clare hung on into second place, but eventually couldn't cope with the crippling cost of landing on a series of Mausoleum plots established by Pete.

This means in the group leader board (see below), Pete is now the indisputable leader of the pack and Clare has slipped past me into second place.

Rachel's 1:12 scale dolls house Monopoly set made a cameo appearance as we were wrapping up for the evening and debating the choice of themes for future evenings.

Clearly too small to actually play, but the dolls house Monopoly is still very cute

At Pete's suggestion, we have also started logging ratings (out of 10) for each of the themes, inspired by the universal love for the care and attention (and playability) of the Treehouse of Horror set.

The current proposals for future games are the Indiana Jones set next month (my choice as it's my birthday month) and then the Christmas-themed set in December (naturally).

MONOPOLIES ARE GO!!!

Special Edition board marking the 50th Anniversary of Thunderbirds

It was a warm, muggy night as we gathered yesterday for the latest meeting of the Monopoly Club. 

The theme of the board was Thunderbirds (chosen by Clare), and Rachel found a suitable Thunderbirds playlist on Spotify to add a music bed to the game via the kitchen's Alexa speaker.

The theming of the board was nicely done, with the properties being actual locations from the 1960's Gerry Anderson "Supermarionation" show. 

Our only quibble was the design choice to make the printing of the board's outer ring seemingly low-res, meaning the the tiny white type under the name of each location, which told you the episode where it was featured, was often barely legible.

Picking from the pool of available metal tokens, I took the role of Lady Penelope's Rolls Royce, Pete was Thunderbird 5 (the space station), Rachel was Thunderbird 1 (the rocket), and Clare chose the submersible Thunderbird 4.

The oppressive atmosphere meant that none of us were exactly bringing our A-game to the table, but we still had a blast.

From the get-go, Pete and Clare were off like gangbusters, while I lagged behind as usual.

However, Rachel's "you don't have to buy everything" approach - and her prolonged, early stay in jail - had the unusual outcome that by the time she finished her first lap there were only three properties left available and she owned none.

And soon after that those were snapped up... just not by Rachel!

Of course, this did mean she was financially very well off and soon gathering properties from the rest of us when we started to experience money troubles or simply wanted to do a deal.

Rachel's ingenious 'cash rich/property poor' approach almost won the day for her

Very quickly though it became clear that Pete's property portfolio was becoming the dominant force on the board, with rows of houses and then hotels popping up in annoyingly inconvenient (and expensive) places.

Pete's Atalante Café in Paris - with a hotel on - did for both Clare and I, with Clare going out first soon followed by me.

The same locale almost finished Rachel off as well, but she hung in for a while longer before being finally forced into bankruptcy, leaving Pete with a very definitive victory.

Alice was Pete's lucky mascot for the evening

This saw him leap to the top of the leaderboard (see below), just nudging me off the top spot due to the fact that he has more second placings.

Clare has slipped to third place, but is nipping at my heels and has the technical advantage in "ties" of having played less games (as Nick subbed in for her one week).

Now with a second place on her docket, Rachel is gaining momentum but still sitting in fourth place, ahead of Nick, who has only played once.

As we've all chosen a board theme now, it's back to Pete to pick what flavour of Monopoly we play next.

We await his announcement with bated breath...

SCORING: Win: 5pts; Second: 3pts; Third: 2pts; Fourth: 1pt

When You Wish Upon A Die Roll...

While real life continues to scupper our roleplaying sessions (The Tuesday Knights have been on hiatus since March), that hasn't stopped Monopoly Club.

Clare, Pete, Rachel and I gathered last night to test drive another of Pete's extensive collection of "themed" Monopoly sets, with Rachel having chosen Disney from the list of available options.

Clearly a lot of thought (and money) has been put into this design, with large, gorgeous pewter avatars; a lovely shiny board; Disney Dollars (featuring Scrooge McDuck); and well-branded properties (you were buying classic animated films from the Disney archive, but each property card then listed them as a specific place within the world of that movie).

"Houses" were cottages and "hotels" were castles, and the set came with chunkier, more legible dice, making up for the slight debacle with my almost unreadable Scooby dice last time.

We all gather on the starting line

Everybody picked their pawn: I chose Alice as my character for obvious reasons, Rachel was Dumbo, Clare picked Peter Pan, and Pete was Mowgli (from The Jungle Book). 

I had such hopes for my property empire

With a mix of Disney music playing on Alexa, the game started quite light-heartedly, with plenty of discussion of "favourite Disney movies", animation versus live-action, memorable tunes etc but eventually it became clear that no matter how well we thought we were doing Clare was doing better.

Stealthily and without great fanfare she was building up an imposing property portfolio, while the rest of us were skating along, often cash poor and terrified of landing on high rent space. 

Pete scrapes together the Disney Dollars to pay rent to Clare for 'visiting' one of her castles

Rachel was the first to go bankrupt and I soon followed. Then, to no one's great surprise, Pete's luck ran out and Clare was declared victor for the second time.

"That's mine and that's mine; oh, and that's mine... and so is that!"

As we've now played three games of Monopoly in recent months, Pete suggested I compile some statistics. So here we go:

I created an arbitrary points rating system, where a win gets you five points; second place, three points; third place, two points; and fourth place, one point.

Clare gets to pick what Monopoly theme we play next time.

Meddling In Monopoly's Property Market...

Pete's Scooby-Doo-themed Monopoly board

I'm not going to beat about the bush here: I won our Monopoly game last night, quite comprehensively I like to think.

I'm not bragging though because it was way more luck than judgement. I could lie and say my bumbling, dice-misreading, rule-forgetting persona was some deep level Keyser Söze-style Machiavellian misdirection to keep my "foes" off balance... but the honest truth is that's just me.

For the second gathering of The Monopoly Club, a spin-off from The Tuesday Knights, we plumped for the Scooby-Doo-themed iteration of Monopoly, from Pete's huge archive of 'novelty' Monopoly variants.

It was my choice and everyone agreed.

We were originally supposed to have played this last month, but my bout of food poisoning put paid to that.

In lieu of Clare (who was off skiing), Nick joined Pete, Rachel, and I for the evening.

I selected the Velma token (because why wouldn't I? She is the best), Rachel played Scooby-Doo, Nick was Shaggy, and Pete was The Mystery Machine.

My contribution to the game was the donation of a pair of my Scooby-Doo dice, which while thematically appropriate were a bugger to read (especially for someone with dodgy eyesight like myself) because of the tiny numbers on each face.

Unlike a lot of these "branded" Monopoly sets I've checked out over the years, clearly a lot of thought had gone into the design of the Scooby-Doo set, ensuring that not only were the properties "properties" (and not people, monsters, bits of equipment etc) but they were also grouped like 'real' Monopoly locations. 

Unfortunately, the font chosen for the location names on the cards made them often quite difficult to read, especially where they overlapped with the graphic below.

This, and the dice, thus - while accenting the Scooby-Doo mood (along with Rachel's Scooby-Doo playlist on Spotify) - contributed to my bumbling style of play, and almost certainly helped prolong the game.

Velma, Shaggy, Scooby, and The Mystery Machine ready for an adventure

As last time, we used Pete's "house rules" to speed things up (such as the official bonus Monopoly die) and, once again I got off to slow start with everyone else scooping up properties all round the board in their opening few turns.

The modest start of my property empire

My not-so-secret weapons: two restaurants on the most valuable sites

However, I concentrated on the two most valuable sites on the board - rather than initially spreading my portfolio - and then used what money I had left to quickly build-up "snack shacks" (ie. 'houses'), then restaurants (ie. 'hotels'), on those squares.

Somehow, I think from Rachel's mocking of my cookery skills, these became "up-market fish-finger sandwich" restaurants.

My fellow players may have laughed... but it was these that bankrupted first Rachel and finally Peter, with Nick crumbling under the costs of stopping at another of sea food restaurants on a different edge of the board.

Nick plotting strategy

For the longest time, I'd really thought I was going to be the first to go out and that Nick was on course to trounce us all (as he has a real head for boardgames and rules minutiae).

Therefore, I was as genuinely surprised as anyone to realise, in the closing stages of the game, that I was in with a very good chance of winning.

Given that I still don't quite grok a good proportion of the game's mechanics (there's a reason I never 'mortgaged' any of my properties) and was basically winging it according to the dice rolls and "roleplaying out" events in my head.

Much merriment, for example, was made of the moment when Rachel asked how much I wanted for a property I owned and she needed to complete a set, and - without hesitation - I replied: "A thousand dollars."

That then became a running gag for the rest of the evening.

I think Alfred Pennyworth summarised my approach to Monopoly best in 2008's The Dark Knight:

" ...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

I'm certainly not arrogant enough to think I will ever win another game of Monopoly with this crowd, but I was delighted that the one I did win was my choice, Scooby-Doo.

For our next meeting, Pete's going to send over a spreadsheet (or just a list) of his Monopoly collection and Rachel will be picking what board theme we will be tackling.

Pete utterly bamboozled by my random play style

Alice wasn't happy that we were still gaming way past her bedtime and made sure we knew it!

The First Rule of Monopoly Club...

The Dungeons & Dragons-themed board

It turns out that another geeky hobby of Pete's (besides roleplaying games) is collecting variant sets of Monopoly, but from the sound of it his family aren't as keen about playing as he is.

And so, yesterday, he and Clare joined Rachel and I for the inaugural meeting of our "Monopoly Club", utilising the new games table.

We then proceeded to play a lengthy game of Dungeons & Dragons Monopoly (the properties are monsters, the stations are classic dungeons etc), sped up with the addition of the official Monopoly die (a bonus six-sider that either adds to your movement score or has other special effects for your turn).

Straight out the gate, Pete stormed ahead collecting a ton of property, while Rachel seemed to have an uncanny ability to end up in jail, and Clare stealthily plotted her eventual victory.

After it became obvious the dice gods were against me as I plodded slowly behind everyone else (including getting lapped), I hatched a cunning plan to become a "kingmaker", and try to hold on to key properties that would prove to be powerful bargaining chips.

Unfortunately, I dithered on an early deal with Clare, missing out on a game-changing property, and before we knew it Clare was controlling huge tracts of land in the most expensive corner of the board.

Pete ended up going out first, followed some time later by Rachel, then me almost immediately afterwards, leaving Clare the worthy winner of our first game.

Great fun was had by all and there was immediate talk of future meet-ups (I'm keen to play Pete's Scooby-Doo Monopoly and Clare mentioned Carcassonne - which I'd conflated, in my head, with Settlers of Catan).

Following my games of Labyrinth with Nick and Alec the other week, it's brilliant to see our new table being used for other games as well as the monthly RPG meetings of the Tuesday Knights.

Pete begins to suspect that just because it's his game doesn't mean he'll automatically win

My meagre property portfolio early in the game

Clare celebrates her victory with wads of cash and a massive collection of properties