Great fun for the whole family! (Monopoly)

Member Name: katykicker

Product:	Monopoly
Date:	20/02/09 (90 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, great fun, very durable board!

Disadvantages: Easy to lose the little pieces.

I recently purchased a new copy of the original Monopoly game from Asda for £10.00, absolute bargain in my opinion!

The game of Monopoly is 75 years old now and I am sure that pretty much everyone reading this review will have played the game or owned it at least once in their lifetime!

Over the years there have been many different varieties to this game (themed games, different countries, different counties, electronic versions etc) and I am reviewing the original version here.

Upon opening the box you receive a board game, counter pieces (car, boot, iron etc), 32 houses, 12 hotels, money pack (1's, 5's, 10's, 20's, 50's, 100's & 500's), community chest cards, chance cards and the property cards to help with playing the game.

You also receive a set of rules which I haven't really bothered to read, other than to prove that I am right about a rule to my other half (and on occasions that he might have been right too!).

The aim of the game is to work you way around the board buying and selling properties to ensure that you opponent/s have to pay rent and ultimately you want to bankrupt them so that you are the ultimate tycoon!

Each player (2-8 players) starts the game with £1500 (2 X 500's, 4 X 100's, 1 X 50's, 1 X 20's, 2 X 10's, 1 X 5's & 5 X 1's) and for the first go around the board you are not able to buy properties meaning that if you get sent to jail your opponent/s might just get around a couple of times and buy more properties that you would have wanted.

You might land on the chance or community chest square whilst working around the board and these are mystery cards containing a variety of good and bad things such as: good - bank error in your favour collect £200 or bad - GO TO JAIL! there is also a GO TO JAIL square on the board also which sends you backwards and in to jail.

There are many variations to the rules, I generally follow the standard rules but sometimes we make landing on the free parking worth £250 or all the fine money around the board can be placed in the middle and then the lucky person to land on free parking wins this little bounty. Also, you can cancel the no buying rule on the first go around the board or you can start with more or less money or each get some random properties at the beginning of the game.

The list of changes that you can make is pretty much endless and I never ever tire of playing Monopoly even now as I'm past my teenage years.

My top tip would be to buy the pinks & oranges and put as many properties on there as you can afford as it's definitely the best row to have based on statistics of dice rolls after exiting jail and throughout the game you'll catch people quite a few times with these, especially if they've just left jail.

I think this game is good from about the ages of 6 and up, although my nephew is 4 and he played quite happily with his older sisters and I with a little help but he did throw a strop once he'd run out of money and I advised him that it was most definitely past his bedtime!

Thanks for reading :)

Summary: I would recommend this, great fun for the whole family!