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!