"Dice, uh... Find A Way"

Let's not bury the lede here: this week's Dinosaur-themed game of Monopoly saw Rachel scoring her first solo victory in the three years we've been playing through Pete's ever-expanding collection of 'novelty' Monopoly sets.

Clearly the wine she has consumed earlier in the evening at an online works' leaving do helped!

Due to various issues, we haven't played Monopoly since Halloween last year, but hopefully - like the Tuesday Knights bouncing back from last year's six-plus month break from roleplaying games because of my back problems - we'll now be able to get back into the swing of regular game's nights.

As an Easter treat, Pete turned up bearing Monopoly-themed chocolates, along with his brane new, still sealed, Dinosaur game. The chocolates were a nice surprise (another 'cheat day' on my diet then).

Tasty Monopoly chocolate

As head of entertainment, Rachel was in charge of the atmospheric playlists on Spotify that mainly mixed children's songs about dinosaurs with the imagined sounds of dinosaurs and multiple repetitions of the theme tune to Jurassic Park.

For the Dinosaur-themed Monopoly, "Chance and Community Chest" card were replaced with "laboratory and dig site" cards, and the usual "house and hotel" tokens were replaced with novel "tent and jeep" plastic tokens.

The cash was still marked as Monopoly dollars, but we took to calling them "bones", as it seemed more fitting for our teams of imaginary paleontologists to be bartering with.

The movement counters were lovely little dinosaurs - although not in scale to each other as that would have been ridiculous!

Pete was the triceratops, Clare the diplodocus, Rachel the stegosaur, and I was the tyrannosaurus rex. 

If there was a fictional narrative to the set, I believe we were accumulating fossil skeletons of the various named dinosaurs from our dig sites around the world (hence the need for tents and jeeps).

But whether you considered that or not, we all set off with great gusto, buying up pretty much everything we landed on before plunging into the deal making part of the game.

There was one brief instant where I owned all the green and blue cards - the most expensive, and costly to land on, side of the board - and even had tents on them.

Short-lived moment of glory

However, our reckless spending meant that most of us were property rich and cash poor, which resulted in our dinosaur empires rearing up briefly and then folding the moment we landed on someone else's properties and had to fork out massive rents.

Conversely, by the bad luck of the dice, Rachel didn't get to spend as much as the rest of us in those early turns, meaning she remained flush with cash while everyone else was scrapping together small denomination notes to pay their bills.

This wasn't a particularly long game by our standards, but there was a point towards the end where Rachel appeared to have more money in her "personal account" than the bank!

Rachel's personal bank account

Normally there's quite a gap between players being bankrupted out of the game, but Clare went first and I went soon after, and then Pete didn't really hang on for much longer.

Even with her crushing victory, Rachel remains in fourth place in our ongoing league table (see below) but is closing the gap on Clare (who has a game in hand).

However, if we count Nick's single appearance, as Clare's surrogate, as part of his wife's tally, then Clare is actually level with me on points.

Pete, with this week's second place remains the top of the league with a commanding six-point lead.

At the end of the evening, we felt that while the Dinosaurs Monopoly set looked good - and we appreciated the little touches like the "tents" and "jeeps", which a surprising amount of themed sets don't bother with - it was, ultimately, nothing out of the ordinary.

We've really started to enjoy the variety that "special rules" (pertinent to the theme) add to the game and thus we miss them when they're not included.

The tongue-twister names of some of the dinosaurs also became a bit of a stumbling block, so, as the evening wore on we abbreviated many of them or simply gave them nicknames.

Dinosaurs Monopoly earned itself a score of eight out of ten, which places it (currently) eleventh equal with - appropriately - Jaws.

Turning The Game Up To Eleven!!!

For our Halloween special this year, Pete brought over the Stranger Things - Collector's Edition of Monopoly.

He also brought round the "horror movie icons" set he'd ordered from a store in the States that turned out to be a shockingly poor, home-made rip-off (with a flimsy cloth "board", rubbish flat counters et al).

A sad state of affairs, but Pete isn't the sort of person you want to cross so I expect he's not going to let this lie until he has some degree of restitution. 

This was the first meeting of Monopoly Club since June, due to my osteoarthritis diagnosis, and - as it was Halloween - Rachel had really pushed the boat out on seasonal decorations and snacks.

In the Stranger Things version of Monopoly 'houses' and 'hotels' were replaced by 'forts' and transparent 'hideouts', while the Chance and Community chests were replaced by a single deck of Transmissions cards.

These, however, included a number of powerful "Upside Down" cards that a player, upon drawing one, would keep secret until they wanted to deploy it - often with devastating effect!

At one point Rachel used one such card to steal a whole set of properties - with their forts - from Clare, which then became the subject of a running gag for the rest of the evening.

With a single card, the Starcourt Mall and Fairgrounds - each with two forts on - switched
from Clare's possession to Rachel's

Stations were replaced by tunnels and landing on them gave you a roll of a d4 to show where you popped up. With a 25% chance of not moving (which we seemed to roll a lot), this extra rule felt like a bit of a gimmick that didn't add anything to our game.

As an aside, we felt the designers missed a trick by not including a special rule of some kind that would be triggered by rolling an 11.

For this week's game, my counter was the d20, Rachel was a cassette tape, Clare was Hopper's hat and Pete chose the camera.

Our counters

For the majority of the evening the game pretty much ran as usual (even though Pete had removed the 'speed dice' option and I, sitting in a different seat to usual so I could freely stand up and move around with my mobility aid, was nominated banker - a position I was ill-qualified for).

That said, I like to blame my discomfort and the distraction of being banker for my poor luck and weak tactical choices. By the time the time I was bankrupted I only had one complete set of properties.

Clare was out a short time later, never really having recovered from Rachel stealing her two "big money" properties from her.

It then came down to a race against the clock for Pete and Rachel (cut-off time was 11pm), which eventually ended in a draw, neither managing to financially destroy the other.

This means Pete is tearing away from me at the top of the league table (see below) and Clare is nipping at my heels. It turns out I'm developing a bit of a habit of coming last. 

Rachel still has a way to go, but a few more wins or first place draws should see her gaining on the main pack.

The Stranger Things - Collector's Edition looked great, branding-wise, and it's always rewarding to see a game in a slip case, but there were several minor niggles that led to it being marked down in our on-going assessment of the various themed Monopoly sets (see below). 

For instance, while it was nice to have the choice of about a dozen player tokens, they appeared smaller than typical meeples and some (such as Rachel's audio cassette) were particularly difficult to spot on the busy board.

Conversely, the forts were squatter than traditional Monopoly houses and thus it was impossible to get four lined up on the colour bar of a property.

Rachel's elusive token (left) and an overflowing line of forts

"Winning Makes Me Feel Good!"

For our second annual Halloween Monopoly Club outing, Pete - the Master of The Boards - busted out his untouched Ghostbusters-themed set.

A lot of love and care had clearly gone into adapting your standard Monopoly to this theme: for one thing, players aren't collecting properties, rather contracts; and houses and hotels were reshaped as "ghost traps" and "containment units".

There were also several nice new rules to shake things up: for instance, some squares let you (and the person to your left) battle a ghost, if you won you got the fee, if you lost you paid the city for damages caused; and the Ecto-1 square (in lieu of railway stations) allowed you to move to any square in that quarter of the board... for a fee.

Chance and Community Chest had been merged into "roaming vapour" cards (all suitably themed to the first and best - Ghostbusters movie), but the real gimmick here is that the cards were on the cool plastic ghost trap in the middle of the board, and each time you took one you pressed a button on the side of the box and the opening bars of the Ghostbusters tune played.

I though this might get a bit irritating, but after a while it was almost comforting!

One of the few gripes we had about the set was the movement counters. They were all modelled after 'iconic' objects from the movie, but, at a distance, looked quite similar and certainly didn't stand out on the board.

We all agreed there were better things these could have been shaped as: such as the movie's ghosts, an Ecto-1, an actual Ghostbuster etc

Having fired up a Ghostbusters/Halloween mix on Spotify, Rachel chose Dana's violin, Pete was the backpack and wand, Clare the walkie-talkie and I picked the ecto-goggles... and battle commenced!

I think I must have been channelling Monty Burns this week, because I played my most ruthless game yet. It was pointed out - more than once - that I was (subconsciously)  steepling my fingers and cackling in an evil manner.

To be honest, I don't know what came over me, but I was in a "take no prisoners" and "show no charity" mood (which, ultimately, I guess, is how Monopoly is supposed to be played).

There was a lot of (good natured, but quite sweary) haggling between Rachel and I, trying to acquire key contracts from each other, much to the amusement of Pete and Clare.

My property portfolio started off modestly and, as usual, I was slow off the starting block, getting lapped by everyone else.

However, my usual ambition (which everyone knows by now), is to try and purchase the two most expensive, royal blue, squares just before you get back to "Go", and then sit on these collecting increasing meaty rents.

Bizarrely, even knowing what I was aiming to do, Pete sold me one of the contracts for three (lower value) of mine and then - almost the next round - Clare traded me the other in a similarly beneficial deal.

And - with Spook Central and Temple of Gozer - under my command, the cackling began, and I started investing in ghost traps, then containment units.

The dice were also in my favour as player after player bankrupted themselves on my properties, and victory was - surprisingly quickly - mine.

Not until I was updating the league table (see below) did I realise actually how many games I have won over the past months, but there was something rather satisfying about this trouncing of my dear friends.

I rather suspect our next game (which I believe is themed on "Round The World") will see Rachel, Pete, and Clare ganging up on me because of my gloating this week.

In my defence, all I can say is: "Well, this is Monopoly!"

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).