"Th-Th-Th-That's (Not) All, Folks"

It was another hot night in Monopoly town, meaning we had the kitchen louvre doors open all evening to let in the cool air (and flies!).

Compounding that, we were all exhausted for various reasons. However, the evening's Looney Tunes theme brought out the best in all of us and the evening's thrilling game went down to the wire.

The theming of this 26-year-old set (which Pete had purchased second-hand, via eBay, from the States but was still in pristine condition) was top class. 

The overarching idea, as I grasped it, was that you were film company executives "hiring" the stars (the individual properties) for a variety of animated features (the completed sets).

Houses and hotels became "TV sets" and "movie theatres", while cash money was replaced with "laughs". Every denomination of "laugh" featured a different famous Looney Tunes character.

A That's All Folks card I picked up during play

"Chance" and "community chest" became "What's Up, Doc?" and "That's All Folks!", and, again, these were all decorated with black and white sketches of famous cartoon characters.

An added treat that we all approved of was special abilities that could be gained from rolling doubles. These ranged from being gifted "laughs" from all the other players to removing competitor's properties from the board.

The pewter playing pieces, representing well-known faces, were gorgeous (and I kept thinking how cool they would be painted up like wargames' miniatures).

Rachel initially chose Daffy Duck, but then switched to Bugs Bunny before we started

Rachel was Bugs Bunny, Pete was Marvin The Martian, Clare was the Road Runner, and I picked Wile  E. Coyote to be my avatar.

After a slow start - getting used to the board and its idiosyncrasies - I suddenly realised I was actually doing rather well. Thus it was a huge surprise when I bankrupted Pete, who, in recent games, has been on a hot run of luck.

Then Rachel walked into one of my cunning traps and I bankrupted her as well.

Which left Clare and I in a head-to-head tussle (rather appropriate for Wile  E. Coyote and the Road Runner) with our mandated 11pm cut-off fast approaching.

Although I had the bigger bank balance and property portfolio at that point, Clare managed to hang on and force a draw (according to our club rules, which I wrote... so I can't complain!)

Clare and I share the trophy as Pete looks on 

Thus we both shared the Acme Looney Tunes trophy and got four points each on the league table (see below). This left the pair of us still tied in second place (although Clare has the advantage of having played one less game).

The trophy!

Even going out first in this week's game, Pete maintains a commanding lead that's going to take a number of similar results in coming months to stand a chance of any of us overtaking him.

When it came to judging the gorgeous board and its adherence to the Looney Tunes theme, the only genuine issue we had with it was the difficulty of discerning the actual names of the properties.

While the name of the particular cartoon (the set) was prominent on the board and relevant cards, the actual individual name (the cartoon character) was comparatively small. Yes, they featured coloured pictures of the characters, but not every one was immediately recognisable in the heat of the moment.

Check the picture at the top of this post and the one immediately below to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

Nevertheless, this was a minor glitch in an otherwise perfect set, so we rated it at 9.5 out of 10, on a par with the posh Indiana Jones set. And Looney Tunes didn't even come in a wooden box!

"Hey, Doctor Jones, No Time For Love!"

The gorgeous board for the Indiana Jones Monopoly set

Last night's Monopoly Club session saw the four of us - Pete, Clare, Rachel and I - let loose on the deluxe Indiana Jones-themed set that I had had my heart set on playing since we formed our little group a year ago.

The set (pictured above) came in a wooden crate (pictured below).

The magnificent crate!!!

The properties were grouped and themed by film location (the set covers the first four Indiana Jones films from Raiders through to Crystal Skull), the currency was "reputation points" rather than cash (which actually worked really well in my mind), Chance and Community Chest cards were - of course - Fortune and Glory, homes and hotels were Fertility Idols and Arks of the Covenant, and the player tokens were iconic objects (rather than people) from the franchise.

The Fortune and Glory cards even had film quotes and photographs on them

There were also optional rules, if you rolled doubles, with varying effects ranging from swinging to any space on the board and pulling ("whipping") other characters towards you, to fighting for control of another player's property.

As it had been my turn to pick which board theme we'd be playing, I also got to pick which token I wanted first as well, and so I chose the fedora. Rachel was the minecart, Clare the Grail diary, and Pete the bullwhip.

Our tokens

Pete was the first to go out, with Rachel following. Both had fallen foul of huge rental payments to Clare, but their bank balances had been sucked dry by my Raiders-themed trilogy of locations from the Tanis dig for the Ark (The Map Room, Cairo marketplace, and The Well of Souls).

I was then fearful that Clare would load up all her properties with Idols and Arks as she staged an impressive comeback, having scooped up all the mortgaged properties of the players she'd driven into bankruptcy. 

While I only had the set mentioned above and the first pair of ultra cheap properties past Go: The (Rope) Bridge and The Temple of Doom.

My secret weapon: Alice hopped up to give me a few pointers

After a long head-to-head battle (I'm sure we didn't finish until well after 11pm), I came out on top when Clare eventually conceded that it was unlikely she'd be able to beat me (Pete - as the Banker - checked my account and I had eleven 500 Reputation Point notes as well as a ton of other notes).

Before the game, Pete had revealed that the latest addition to hiss fast-expanding Monopoly collection was a novelty silver, stuffed toy "top hat", which will now be handed to the winner of each game to hold until the next session.

While it isn't actually a hat, I still wore it with pride...

To The Winner: the silver top hat!

In retrospect, I realised the moment I "accidentally" sabotaged both Rachel and Pete: early in the game Pete had secured the high value, blue property right by Go (Akator Temple), then a little while later Rachel landed on the other square of the pair (Chauchilla Cemetery).

She was hesitant about buying it, but I pointed out it would be a great "spoiler" for Pete's progress and so she splashed the cash and took that property.

This resulted in those two squares being an on-going source of tension between Pete and Rachel (including several fruitless "dice-off battles", from the set's optional rules), with neither able to get hold of the other's property and secure a profitable and dangerous corner of the board.

Luckily, my wife is quite easy-going when it comes to boardgames as this wasn't the only time I risked marital ructions.

Later in the game I used the "whipping" optional rule to pull Rachel's token towards mine, depositing her on one of my EXTREMELY high rent properties (by this late stage in the game, both my sets of properties were loaded up with Arks), severely draining her resources.

Tallying up our on-going points total, this victory puts me tied with Pete at the top of the league (although, he has more second placings than I, so technically he's still the leading player).

As to our feelings on the Indiana Jones set itself: it could so easily have been a "10 out of 10", being so beautiful, well illustrated, and thematically on-point, except for the fact that more than a few of the property cards had the wrong details printed on the back for mortgage purposes. This meant things got a bit confusing when you were looking at the card backs for whatever reason.

Such a production blunder is a real disappointment when clearly a lot of love and attention has gone into the development of this deluxe set. 

"Where's The Bloody Tea Room?"

The National Trust-themed Monopoly board

Dressed in metaphorical cagoules and wellington boots, the first Monopoly Club meeting of the year saw us visiting (and purchasing and developing) National Trust properties around the British Isles.

After our last game at Christmas, Rachel had chosen the National Trust-themed board from Pete's extensive catalogue of quirky Monopoly iterations.

This also meant she got to pick first when it came to choosing game tokens and Rachel plumped for the iron, which turned out to be a right bugger to spot when it was being moved around the photographically-illustrated playing surface.

Our Tokens: the only one unique to this set was a wheelbarrow and none of us chose that one

Clare was the thimble, Pete was the race car and I was the dog.

At first, I felt I was doing quite well, accumulating a small portfolio of linked properties that allowed me to build the first Visitor Centres (this game's take on hotels), but alas my hubris was my downfall.

The start of my property empire... and, pretty soon, the end also!

I was focused on my standard tactic of trying to buy up the sets on either side of the "Go" square, but this meant I wasn't focussed on the bigger picture.

Property rich and cash poor is never a great state to be in, and employing Pete's "speed die" to keep the game moving, meant I was soon facing bills I just couldn't afford to pay. My property empire crumbled and I was out.

And I'm out of the picture, leaving Pete, Clare and Rachel to fight over the board

A little while later Pete went bankrupt as well, leaving a stalemate between Clare and Rachel.

The board was awash with the red "Visitor Centres", with only a few of the green "Holiday Homes" still in play.

Cash was flowing across the table in both directions for a long time with neither player really gaining much ground, although Clare seemingly holding the largest number of properties we have yet witnessed in our games.

By the time we called it a night, Clare owned a substantial chunk of the board

Eventually as the clock struck 11pm, it was agreed to call it a draw and let the ladies share the points for first place (four points each, as we did last month when Pete and I called it a draw, instead of the usual five points for the overall winner).

You can see on the table below that Clare has jumped over me into second place and Rachel, while still in fourth place, is closing the gap on me from the other direction.

As Pete would later point out, Clare is now in a very strong position as she has a game in hand.

The general consensus was that the National Trust board was "okay", but except for some wordage changes on the "chance" and "community chest" cards, the addition of the wheelbarrow, and, of course, the properties themselves there wasn't that much difference from the standard, vanilla Monopoly.

It was felt that if the game had really wanted to emulate the National Trust experience it should have featured "tea rooms" at some point, as these are often the highlight for many a British person visiting these locales in reality. 

In fact, it's a bit of a cliché but many people - especially season ticket holders - will pop in to National Trust properties just for a cream tea in the Tea Room!

While the final conflict was being fought around the board, Pete and I were researching other Monopoly variants on Amazon, with a Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory iteration catching my eye.

The trouble with that one was that players were purchasing a mixture of "people" and "places" (locations around The Chocolate Factory, as seen in the classic 1971 Gene Wilder version of the story).

Generally, we're quite old school and prefer versions where you are buying locations, but can sometimes justify the switch to putting together a team of people. However, on superficial inspection this mixing of both styles didn't sit right with us.

Next month's board theme was my choice and we're going globe trotting and treasure hunting with the Indiana Jones Monopoly set.

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).