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).