July 22, 2009

  • Monopoly

    So yesterday for the first time in ages, I sat down and played Monopoly with my Mom and brother.  It was actually probably the first time I've played with my Mom, since I think as kids she usually passed on board (or bored ;) , bad pun, I know) games.

    So we started off with ~$1500
    Here is how the board looked at the end of the game:

    monopoly
    • So being as frugal as ever, at first I didn't buy much property (regret later). 
    • I ALWAYS buy the Railroads
    • At one point of the game, I was financially almost broke, but then I landed on Mom's property--Park Place, when she had 2 houses.  And I had $10 left--in ones.  FAIL!  With my 4 RRs, I was able to get $200 per time everyone else landed there though, so I had a decent comeback.
    • Mom pretty much owned the whole last stretch and built houses on them (see red, above).  It was to the point where we would go broke/lose if we landed on her property.  At that point, we PRAYED to "Go to Jail".
    • I went to jail eight times in that game.  Everyone else got the "get out of jail free"-cards.  At the end, I was happy though, since I bypassed Mom's houses so many times (whew!).
    • My property was basically epic fail except a few of them.
      • Railroads are always a win :)
      • Mediterranean Ave.--with a whoppin' $2 rent, people landed on there a lot (yay small change o_o).  With the three houses in what my Mom called the "projects" (yay, slang), rent was raised to $90. 
      • For some reason, everyone kept landing on my Atlantic Ave. $22!  (Yes, to the point where it was less work to just memorize rent).  I wish I had a chance to build a house on it ;) .  
    • My brother did alright also.  But a FTL situation for him was that he built a HOTEL on Oriental Ave. but NO ONE landed on there.  But I did hit up Kentucky Ave. a few times when he had a few houses. 
    • Mom owned us both.  Michael was pretty much broke, and I had a few hundred left.  Mom had over $4500.  Triple the amount she started with.
    • Mom has also lost all her future game invites.  Just kidding ;) .

    Today mom also learned that being "the shit" is actually good in modern speech.  Her reaction to that was priceless :) .

Comments (16)

  • I've adopted Settlers of Catan as my boardgame-of-choice.

  • @CelestialTeapot - 

    Hmm! I've never heard of that game prior to the present. But according to Wikipedia, it sounds pretty fun. A lot of these games sort of scream [world] DOMINATION! :D

  • Oh Monopoly. I wish it didn't take soooooo long to finish each session!

  • @Roadlesstaken - 

    Yeah, true. I think we were going at it for maybe 2 hours? O___O I kind of worked on dessert in between turns too, so the timing worked out perfectly (:.

  • @loves_mud - It's a German game, and prior to these last coupole years, it only spread by word of mouth (in the U.S.)

    And I think it's cool how you play board games with your folks. Between my poor mandarin, and my parents' poor english, I doubt my household could maintain a very dynamic gaming atmosphere.

  • @CelestialTeapot - 

    or through the internet now, apparently ;) .

    Nowadays it takes a LOT of coaxing, since Dad just sees them as a waste of time :( . Ah, well my parents usually speak in mandarin to us (kiddies) and we generally respond in english. I kind of regret that habit because now my mandarin has regressed to being poorer than my 5-year old self's mandarin. Do you guys play chess together though?

  • lmao. wow. my brother in law was a bank manager in india, i hate playing with him because he ALWAYS owns everything. :/
    it's depressing to see him take all our money. *sigh* he claims he does so well because he used to play monopoly in india.

    who knew they had an indian version of monopoly....

  • @PiscesPhishie - 

    Ah! Oh no! I think my mom is really into finance-y things too, so maybe that is why she owned us. >_>

    I feel like there is Monopoly for every theme possible...Star Wars, National Parks, Colleges, Disney...! They're so creative; it's neat how it can be so applicable to so many things (:.

  • sure, you could modify one :]

  • Thanks for stopping by! I love Le Petit Prince! I'm using it for a lit class this fall.

  • Don't know if you really care, but if you want to win next time,

    1. buy all the property you can as soon as you can. If you happen to run out of cash, it's ok, you'll have enough property you can mortgage some of it and pay rent.

    2. don't worry about small cash, you want the big stuff that will knock your opponents out. Stuff that will make OTHER people pray they were in jail.

    3. the entire point of the first half of the game is to get 3 of the same color so you can start building houses and hotels. Whoever does that first, wins.

    4. if you only have two of the same color, but someone else has the one you need, it is ok to pay cash for it. Like, if you have to pay two thousand dollars, but you start building hotels and the other person doesn't, you WILL win.

    5. railroads are nice, but the reason you can't win with them is because the other person will make enough money just by going around the board that they will never lose. Thus you will be super rich, which is always good, but super-rich is not enough to win. You need to build hotels.

    6. If everyone has hotels, then it becomes, green properties most valuable, yellow properties second most, dark blue third most, red, orange, purple etc. Having the greens will win you the game almost every time.

    Actually you don't even have to remember all that. If you just remember, "buy hotels as fast as possible" you will probably win. Woohoo!

  • @phantomFive - 

    Haha, awesome, thanks! I will keep those in mind next time I play! I had not played for years, so I wasn't really thinking about it when I started playing, and by the time I started to think seriously most of the property was gone! :(

  • @phantomFive - 

    I meant to tell you earlier, but I played Monopoly with my brother last time I went home and pretty much followed what you said. I was smoking him! But the parents wanted to go else where, and as a big sis I felt a little obliged to let the fact that he was losing slide. O_~

    yay it works! of course

  • lol nice. Good job! You are too kind as a sister

  • @phantomFive - 

    thanks :) . on the bright side, he reciprocates and is an unusually nice brother :) , though from time to time I have to exercise patience; I gather you have a pretty good relationship with your siblings also?

  • Maybe you can teach him the secrets, and then.....you can be like my siblings and me and argue all the time about whether monopoly is a game of skill or luck (very clearly luck when I lose, but skill whenever I win)

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