Friday, June 19, 2015

Z-A Games. Monopoly and Magnum Opis

We are still working through the letter M in our quest to play all our board games.  We've reached a favorite of mine and one that Matt hates.  
Having played Monopoly many, many times while a park ranger for the Boston Harbor Islands, I can tell you that if you follow the rules, it's not actually an endless game.  In fact, with two people, it often lasts less than an hour.  So stop putting all the money in Free Parking and enjoy the game that is Monopoly.
I would have enjoyed the game that is Monopoly more if Matt hadn't locked down all the Orange properties, and locked me out of a monopoly of my own.  He then refused to make a deal.  But he's not a gambler.  He'd rather win slowly by small increments while the girlfriend sits grumpily seething.  It worked in my favor when we played poker, but not so much here.  Yes.  It's true.  I lost ANOTHER of my games in this tournament.

After that, we played Magnum Opus, a deck building game. I'm not the biggest fan of deck building games, but this one was okay.  There was at least a concrete goal and a means to get to it.  I lost this too, but not by much, which is good, since it was my first time.

3 comments:

balyien said...

Your post makes me realize that I have absolutely no idea what the actual rules of Monopoly are. I never liked it as a kid because my brothers were so much better at it than me, so it was an exercise in slowly being screwed over (I suppose it prepared me for real life, haha). I'm not sure that I've played it as an adult. Never heard of Magnum Opus but I could see getting into it.

Sara K. said...

Well, rats! I always play Monopoly with really aggressive people and never find it terribly enjoyable. I can see how working with a non-trader would make it rather meh!

Patricia said...

When you play by the rules it can be an exercise in slowly getting screwed over (less so if you trade) but the "slowly" is much faster. Usually people put all the money paid for taxes etc. into the middle of the board and then whoever lands on Free Parking gets the kitty. But if the person is slowly losing, this just prolongs the agony. When you just pay the money to the bank and Free Parking is simply a respite from the places on the board you have to pay money, things come to an end much more quickly.