"When You're Playing Monopoly, It's Life"

After an unscheduled three-month break, we were back to Monopoly this week, playing Pete's recently purchased Le Mans-themed set.

Pete has been attending the world-famous endurance racing event for donkey's years and actually acquired this slick-looking Monopoly set at the race track earlier this year.

The properties for sale around the board were key locations on and off the track, from the fun fair and media centre via the Dunlop bridge and certain turns on the track through to the finish line and podium.

House and hotels were renamed "garages" and "lounges" (even though the little plastic buildings remained the classic Monopoly design and colour), but "chance" and "community chest" remained unaltered. Although the names stayed the same, the cards were nicely reframed as racing-related occurrences to reward or penalise you.  

Everything was labelled in both French and English, which was a really cool touch, but as the warm evening wore on I have to confess that I started to get them muddled up - but that was all on dopey me.

In fact, the warmth - even though we had the rear louvre doors of the house open - meant I was quite befuddled for most of the evening!

Pete was the race car; I was the running driver; Clare was the flags; and Rachel the helmet

The game started quickly... for most of us.

Pete, due to a succession of unfortunate dice rolls ended up plodding along behind the rest of us as we scooped up property after property, and he kept missing out.

Once we completed buying up everything that was available it looked at first as though Pete was actually the most 'cash rich' out of all of us, but that got whittled down quickly by parking fines until he went bankrupt.

Rachel only had a small property portfolio, but it included the two most costly locations on the board - the podium and the finish line - and she secured her hold on them with a couple of lounges.

I thought I was doing well with the biggest collection of properties I think I've ever owned in the three years of Monopoly Club.

Through some horse trading I ended up with three complete sets, but my downfall came because I'd carelessly splashed my cash indiscriminately and had little left to pay the cost of landing on anyone else's properties.

That's why I was the next to go out.

Clare, as ever, built up a solid collection of properties while maintaining a good bank balance, but it still wasn't enough to defeat Rachel - who was on fire last night. 

With Clare out, Rachel was declared the victor... again.

However, even with back-to-back victories Rachel remains at the bottom of the league, due to an earlier propensity for finishing in third or fourth place.

Nevertheless, the gap between us all is closing up. Even Pete's previously unassailable lead at the top of the table is starting to look less daunting.

It you want to do the maths: it's five points for a win; three for second; two for third; and one for fourth. If two people tie for first then they get four points each.

This means it's still going to take several more games of Monopoly to topple our current champion, but with every game we play it's looking more and more feasible.

Next time we're looking at playing a second Le Mans themed board, but this was designed by our Monopoly expert Pete himself, years before he purchased the set we played this week. 

When it came to rating the quality of this week's set, we settled on a 7.5, putting it on a par with James Bond and Disney. The general feeling was that it was good, but nothing special.

For instance, there were no special rules and no effort to remould the houses and hotels in garages and lounges. The dual language on the cards was good, but it did mean the writing got very small in a lot of places and, also, there was no room for pictures on them.

"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

"The Chamber of Commerce Has Been Opened"

Because this month's roleplaying game session had to be cancelled, Pete suggested we sneak in an extra meeting of Monopoly Club instead - which we did last week.

Then, for our 'regular' game of Monopoly, Pete conjured up a surprise themed set that I don't think any of us could have predicted: Harry Potter. 

Game elements even came with their own little suitcases

Based on the successful movie franchise, this set turned out to be not only very attractive but also a rather innovative hack of the original game.

In my excitement I forgot to take a picture of the board, but here's a publicity picture

The game's main financial resource was rebranded as "house points", and all the property costs were different, for example everything on the first side of the board was "10 house points", on the second side was "20 house points" and so on. Rents on single properties were equal to the purchase price, and increased if you had a full colour set, or planted a "house crest" on your properties.

There are no 'houses' and 'hotels' in this game, instead you can buy - once you own a complete colour set of properties - a "house crest".

Once you've purchased a property it is considered "explored" and the game ends the moment the final property is "explored". Then everyone, who is still in the game, adds up the value of their properties and loose house points. The person with the highest number of points is declared the winner.

Our tokens

As well as picking your transport token at the start of the game (I was Harry's broomstick, Pete was Hagrid's motorbike and sidecar, Clare was the night bus, and Rachel the Hogwarts' Express), you also got to choose your house: I was Gryffindor, Rachel was Hufflepuff, Clare was Slytherin, and Pete was Ravenclaw. 

My House card

Your house granted you certain bonuses (such as not paying rent when you landed on your own 'common room' - this edition's version of train stations), but could also make you susceptible to certain Owl Posts (this game's brilliant spin on Chance and Community Chest).

Some cards you drew that might land you in trouble could be redirected at other players if they were of certain, named houses. I remember at one point I managed to send Clare to jail because she was a Slytherin.

The Owl Post cards came with their own little owl stand

Some of the cards, though, were clearly marked as Howlers... and they were always bad news for the person whose turn it was to take the next Owl Post.

As this iteration came with its own, unique finishing conditions, we opted not to use Pete's official 'speed die' this week (something we haven't entertained since last November's Wonders of The World game).

And while Pete remained arbiter of the rules, for the first time ever he passed the mantle of 'banker' to someone else. Rachel took up the position of Prefect, which meant not only did she get a badge (see below), but she was in charge of doling out - and collecting - the house points as properties (locations in and around Hogwarts) were brought and sold.

We'd already guessed that this would play quicker than our usual games and, in fact, the session lasted around 90 minutes, which still felt like a reasonable duration.

The start of my property empire

I won't bury the lede: I won, which moves me within touching distance of Pete at the top of the league table (see below). But what surprised us was that Pete went out comparatively early in the game.

In fact, he was the only person not to make to final House Point tally. 

The general consensus was that he had been unlucky in his early trips around the board, not being able to purchase any property, while the rest of us were hoovering up whatever we could. 

Gryffindor House crests on display

This isn't a version of Monopoly to be taken cautiously. I just went on a spending spree, then as we got down to the final available properties I indulged in some horse-trading, got myself a couple of complete colour sets, slammed house crests on them, and waited for the rents to roll in.

Bizarrely, I think a lot of my own good fortune came from the fact that, compared to everyone else, I hardly ever landed on the Owl Posts, instead those turns were spent making purchases when possible.

While I ended up with the most House Points, Clare was second, and Rachel third, which means I managed to glide ahead of Clare in the club's league table and am now just two points shy of Pete.

With its emphasise on the accumulation of House Points rather than properties per se, the Harry Potter Monopoly plays quite differently to the more traditional iterations of the game.

However, once we got our heads around its particular quirks it turned out to be as challenging and exciting as any version we've played in the last two-and-half years.

When it came to grading the actual theme, there was no denying that a lot of thought and love had clearly gone into the various elements and reworking of the old school rules.

There were some gaps in the rules mechanics though (e.g. how do you count 'mortgaged properties' in the final tally?) and a lack of baggies for the House Point tokens - which we'd popped out the cardboard sheet they arrived in - shaved half a point off of perfection.

"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!

"No, Mr Bond, I Expect You To (Roll The) Die!"

With the iconic music from the movies playing out of our smart speaker, we sat down last night to play the James Bond-themed Monopoly board.

For movement counters, Pete chose the Lotus Esprit (from The Spy Who Loved Me), Clare picked Rosa Klebb's dagger shoe (from From Russia With Love), I took Oddjob's bowler (from Goldfinger), and Rachel was the 007 logo/pistol.

Instead of properties, this set allowed players to buy up the various films in the Bond franchise, marked out on the board in chronological order, starting with Dr No just past 'Go' right round to No Time To Die and M16 being the two most valuable squares.

Oddly, this meant that - while the "utilities" were two variations of Q Branch - the "stations" (from the traditional game) were just whatever film came at that point, which felt a bit strange given the wide variety of signature vehicles associated with the character of Bond over the years.

While there were no special rules for this set, some effort was made to personalise it to Bond by having the houses and hotels as "safe houses" and "headquarters", and chance and community chest cards were "allies" and "enemies".

I started off poorly, never really recovered, and was the first to go out - bankrupted by my own wife.

After that there was a bit of a lull when it looked as though several people were on the verge of being knocked out, when suddenly the game got its second wind and a spate of house building ensued, upping the threat level enormously.

That's a lot of headquarters on the board!

There was definitely something in the air last night that meant everyone was slightly befuddled and possibly not bringing their a-game to the table, with a mixture of tactical errors and minor rules mistakes (such as forgetting whose turn it was or forgetting to take property cards when you made a purchase). 

Everyone was tired - and slightly distracted - for various reasons, meaning their minds weren't always focussed 100 per cent on the game. There was even a distinct lack of Bond-related punning, which with this franchise is always an open goal no matter the situation.

Nevertheless, the final three fought on heroically, with Rachel's property portfolio and cash reserves eventually being whittled down until it was just Pete and Clare remaining in a tense head-to-head showdown.

As 11 o'clock drew closer (now our official "end time"), Clare chose - in the dying seconds of the game - to concede to Pete, taking second place rather than sharing the glory of joint first.

She explained her reasoning on her Three Beautiful Things Substack today, and while it was good sportsmanship, I breathed a slight sigh of relief as it meant points-wise Clare only drew level with me, instead of sliding ahead of me (see table below).

Of course, she still, historically, has a game in hand on the rest of us (having missed our Scooby-Doo game, subbing in Nick in her stead).

Monopoly guru Pete continues, frustratingly, to pull away at the top of the table with another win, while Rachel's third place finish this week did little to help her close the gap on Clare and I.

In judging the theme of the evening, we all agreed that while the James Bond set was well made, when you dug down there were issues - from the plastic insert in the box not being geared to double as a bank to some of the 'property' names and cards being difficult to read at a glance.

Also Rachel's chosen token (the 007 logo) was so narrow that it was surprisingly hard to spot on the board when its thin edge was pointing towards her.