Recession busting property dealing (Hasbro Monopoly Deal)

Member Name: Chelle1969

Product:	Hasbro Monopoly Deal
Date:	29/06/09 (145 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quick to learn and play, good fun

Disadvantages: None

Unless you've been living on another planet all your life you will probably be aware of, and indeed have played Monopoly, the property-dealing board game. Monopoly Deal is a card game and brings a new twist to an old classic.

History
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Charles B. Darrow created Monopoly, the board game, in America during the great depression. In 1935, it's first year of production, it was the best selling game in America. Now it is the best selling board game in the world, sold in 103 countries and produced in 37 languages. The basic premise of Monopoly is to work your way around the board buying up property, building houses and hotels on your property and trying not to be made bankrupt by other players. The original UK version is based in London but there are now many regional versions as well as limited edition themed games (such as Wizard Of OZ, Scooby Doo, Star Wars, Simpsons etc) and of course various computer versions. Monopoly Deal is the latest addition to the Monopoly family, released in March 2009 by Parker Games/Hasbro it's a card game based on the classic board game.

What's In The Box?
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In the box you get 110 playing cards and an instruction leaflet. The cards, just slightly smaller than traditional playing cards, are divided into categories; property cards, property wild cards, action cards, rent cards, money cards and 4 cards of game rules.

Playing The Game
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The aim of the game is to be the first player to collect 3 full sets of properties.

A brief instruction on playing: Players are dealt 5 cards each and the remainder become the draw pile. On your turn you draw 2 more cards from the pile and then 'play' up to three cards from your hand. This means various things. If you have money cards in your hand, it's good to play them by placing them down in front of you to use to pay other players. If you have property cards (the familiar London streets from the board game including the 4 stations and 2 utilities) you can place them down to start your collection. Other cards are actions, which get played into the middle, such as demanding money from players because it's your birthday, or asking for rent for your property. Players can only 'pay' from cards they have placed down, not from any they are holding.
It gets interesting when some of the action cards are brought into play, and knowing when to use them is key, for example a 'deal breaker' card lets you steal a full set of properties from an opponent, a ' forced deal' card lets you swap a property of your choice from and opponent and a 'just say no' card does just that and can be used against the two aforementioned cards. When you've collected three full sets (a set is usually 2 or 3 cards) you win and the game ends.
There's more to it than I've described, but that's the basics. The clearly laid out instruction leaflet in the box gives full details on how to play and the functions of all the cards. It may sound complicated, but it's really not. You can pick up the rules after just one hand and the cards are all quite self-explanatory.

Who Can Play?
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The game is for 2 -5 players and they recommend ages 8 upwards, although my nephew aged 7 plays it very well (too well sometimes!!)

Opinion
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This is a fabulous little family game. It's easy to play and compared to traditional Monopoly is very quick, on average a game of Monopoly Deal lasts about 15 minutes. So it's ideal if you don't have the necessary spare few hours/days/weeks (!) required for a 'proper' game of Monopoly. It's small and compact, the box is about the size of two boxes of traditional playing cards side by side, and so can be taken anywhere, you just need a surface to play on. And it's incredibly cheap, it retails around the £5 mark although I picked mine up for just £4.50 from Tesco. But most of all it's fun and there's enough cut-throat action to keep even the most competitive Monopoly player interested.

I'm amazed that somebody had the foresight to be able to turn such a classic board game into a card version and still keep many of essential elements in place and retain the familiar Monopoly look. Another future classic!

Summary: If you like Monopoly you'll love this.