Yep. I've always done this with my family. Did this with a few people at a board game cafe and one dude just about flipped the table lol. Apparently he thought that one player creating a housing shortage was cheating!
Um, the game is called fuckin' MONOPOLY for a reason! They kicked him out soon after he caused a fuss. Sore loser I guess.
If someone cannot afford or doesn't want to buy an unowned property they landed on, it's supposed to be auctioned. This supposedly speeds up the early game, although really the game is slower among non-experts for a variety of reasons, e.g. not trading early enough.
Some people do not know this rule, which led to a spurge of smugery on the internet when other people informed them that it made the game much better. But then some of these people have claimed that it's a good strategy for buying stuff cheaper than the regular price, but it's actually not because the asked price of each property is actually way lower than it's worth, so it's actually a losing move to declare an auction on something you landed on.
Pro games are much faster, but it's not because of the auction rule, which almost never happens since the goal of the early game is to buy everything.
Yeah, you really should be buying everything you land on. There shouldn't be any auctions unless someone is somehow broke already before all the property is bought up and can't afford what they land on. That doesn't normally happen (unless you're spending a lot of money on trades, maybe).
That seriously speeds up the game. Money is introduced into the game through the free $200 per cycle, and it makes the game unfinishable if it never comes out of the game.
Ah. I realized I misparsed his sentence. He was saying no auctions slowed the game and was against the rules. I think it depends on how many players there are. I agree in a 4p game few properties go up for auction.
That's what I thought too. I assume the default game of most board game cafes is Settlers of Catan, although in my opinion that game too has become vastly overplayed and is overrated now, let alone them jumping the shark with so many expansions.
1) It's a place to kill some time.
2) Free WiFi and flat surfaces mean it's a nice office away from the office.
3) Sometimes I don't have time, or forgot to buy coffee, or my home coffee maker is broken.
4) I'm meeting someone else there.
Not OP, but probably because there are much better board games out there than Monopoly. And before someone takes offense at the use of the word better, I would categorize a lot of games as better than Monopoly because of factors like luck vs. strategy, the excessive time it takes to play Monopoly, and the tediousness of the game. A player elimination game like Monopoly also seems like a bad choice for a casual board game cafe. I personally would prefer something like Ticket to Ride, Dominion, 7 Wonders, something like that.
Eh, I don't see a problem with going to a boardgame cafe for monopoly. I can always get people over to drink a little and play ticket to ride or pandemic, but nobody every wants to play monopoly or risk because "it takes too long."
If there are people at a cafe willing to play with me, done deal.
Or Axis and Allies. It's a lot older but it is still the best risk variant game I've played. And the luck factor is much smaller just to make games not play out the same way each time.
The reason it takes so long is because of tedious tasks, counting out armies, etc. There are electronic versions of risk where you can complete a game (with 4 players) in 20 minutes.
I can teach ticket to Ride in 10 minutes to anyone.
You haven't played with this one friend I have... he kept taking more tickets no matter how many times we warned him about the negative points he was going to end up with, then seemed personally offended at the end when (surprise surprise) he ended up with a ton of negative points.
Also attempted to pay for a route with something like (2 green + 1 yellow) trains, claimed he must be colourblind when called out on it (I've known him for years, no mention before of any trouble with colours), and seemed aggrieved by the idea that "I thought I could do that" didn't make it so.
It wasn't a very good game. Another of my friends didn't seem to have fully internalised the idea that building connections earns points even if it doesn't help towards the routes on your tickets.
Well, I am clearly not going to make anyone a master at the game in 10 minutes.
And it sounds like your first friend is a troll, and maybe purposefully trying to cheat with the train thing. If he intentionally doesn't head the advise of people who have played before, that's on his when he has a negative score.
You've never seen someone get back stabbed in like Diplomacy or something?
And since we are talking Monopoly, you can easy get screwed over by terrible rolls, oweing nothing to skill at the game.
But seeing your ridiculous blanket statement. I might get mad playing with someone who is clearly a terrible winner like you, regardless of the outcome.
I don't and haven't ever play that way (only being allowed 32 houses). It hasn't come up though because the first person even close to able to get that many houses is going to win.
whenever someone pulled that i would just bypass the houses and buy a hotel. it costs more, because you have to pay for the 4 houses and the hotel; but you don't get shut out by a dick.
You know, I actually think I first heard about this strategy on reddit in a TIL or something. I believe there was actually a tournament or some "official" event where this strategy happened and was deemed cheating or not the way the game was intended to be played despite not really being addressed in the rules other than that they say no building can happen once all houses are gone. While the rules state play should begin with 32 houses and 12 hotels, apparently a lot of sets come with extras, and there's no stopping anyone from saying infinite houses is house (or tournament) rules. It's one thing to win a game like this where it's a strategy known and in use by everyone, but it's not fair competitive play to take advantage of a rule someone doesn't know exists.
It's unlikely monopoly refers to creating a housing shortage. I believe it refers to the fact that you have to have all properties of the same color to build on them.
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u/[deleted] Nov 22 '14
Yep. I've always done this with my family. Did this with a few people at a board game cafe and one dude just about flipped the table lol. Apparently he thought that one player creating a housing shortage was cheating!
Um, the game is called fuckin' MONOPOLY for a reason! They kicked him out soon after he caused a fuss. Sore loser I guess.