New Games For Old: Modern Alternatives to... Monopoly

As the holiday season approaches, an insidious specter haunts the land, striking fear into the minds and hearts of all men and women of good cheer. I refer, of course, to the annual tradition of inflicting the game of Monopoly upon the family unit. I despair that a technology nearly a century old should be forced upon the young, thus turning another generation off the hobby of boardgaming. I fully understand why this happens - each generation of parents had Monopoly inflicted on them, and so do the same to their children, who then punish their children in the same way and so on, the curse carried unto the hundredth generation.

There are those who claim that Monopoly is a "good" game, and demand to play it at family gatherings. These people are wrong. Let's briefly look at the structure of a Monopoly session to understand why. Any game of Monopoly plays out in three overlapping phases:

1. The phase where properties are acquired. This involves a dreadfully tedious process of rolling the dice, and then perhaps landing on a space you can buy. Precisely zero strategy is to be found in this phase, and player interaction is slim to none. Theoretically, this phase could cause interesting moments if the rule is activated whereby a person who lands on a property they don't want has to auction it off. In practice, this rarely occurs, since players should always buy properties (even if they have to mortgage owned properties to do so), even if they don't want them, for the leverage they bring in the trading phase. While I'm here, I might as well provide a variant to greatly improve on this phase:

Picture by Detlef Dolling

• Remove one of each colour group from the properties cards.
• Shuffle and deal out all remaining properties evenly among the players (adding any remainder to the "removed" group).
• Players pay for these properties, exactly as if they had landed on them and bought them. Give each player 500 pounds/dollars to represent the money they would have gained/lost while circumnavigating the board. Optionally allow players to refuse properties, adding them to the "removed" pile.
• Auction off properties from the "removed" pile. Properties attracting no bids are unsold, and may be bought later during the normal course of the game.
• Start rolling dice and progressing the game as normal.

Voila, a variant which achieves exactly the same thing in a fraction of the time (and, due to auctioning off one of each colour group, is considerably more strategic and interesting).

2. The trading phase. This is the part where players make deals among one another, attempting to complete a colour group and thus commence building. This phase isn't actually that bad, as it tends to go reasonably fast, and involves strategy and player interaction. Nonetheless, there are plenty of other games which do a better job of delivering the same thing.

3. The end phase, where players circle the board endlessly, their cash slowly bleeding away, until one winner is left. This interminable horror is the main reason why Monopoly is a bad game. Of course, most people just get bored and call the game in favour of the obvious future winner - though there are some sadistic individuals (usually young, with more years of precious life to spare) who demand the game be played to its tedious conclusion. These individuals should be sent to the workhouse at the earliest possible opportunity.

Picture by Gerald McDaniel

Ultimately, then, Monopoly is a game with far too few strategic decisions, far too much aimless
roll-and-move, and just far too much time required. Happily, a great many games have since become available which achieve similar aims to this game (bar, arguably, its moral purpose in teaching the evils of rent-based economies) in much less time. Let's take a look at three of the most family-friendly and widely available.

1. Acquire

Sid Sackson's Acquire is one of the small group of games published before the 1990s which are still considered acceptable among modern boardgame connoisseurs. Acquire contains precisely none of the mechanics of the game Monopoly. What it does offer is a game which is actually about forming monopolies.

Picture by the author

Rather than aimlessly rolling dice, players place tiles from their rack, thus expanding corporations in which the players can invest. When they come into contact, a merger takes place, the larger company swallowing the smaller - thus producing something that feels a little like "a monopoly". These corporate mergers invite key decisions - whether to convert stock from the merged company into shares in the parent (which will probably then be frozen until the end of the game), liquidate stock for immediate cash, or keep the share certificates for when (and if) the company is reformed. This last move is risky, but key to winning - majority shareholders of merged companies enjoy big bonuses, so getting the most shares in startups is what separates winners from losers.
Overall, Acquire is a much more strategic game than Monopoly, with more of a feeling of corporate intrigue, while keeping a simple and easily learned ruleset. The only downsides are a somewhat dry theme which may be a hard sell to younger players.

2. For Sale

It may not be corporate espionage that attracts you to the theme of Monopoly - perhaps it's real estate
speculation that you find more compelling. In this case, For Sale is the game for you.

Picture by Gary James

It's split into two parts: in the first, a number of properties are auctioned off. Technically, only the most valuable is up for auction - the rest are taken, in order of value, as players drop out of the auction, in which case they pay only half of their bid. This creates a quandary for the player - not only do they have to judge how much they want the big-number property, but if they instead choose to bid up the other players, they will have to pay the piper eventually. Already players are trying to read each others' minds, switching instantly between bluffing and honest bidding.
The second phase is even nastier - this plays as a series of blind auctions. A number of cash amounts are laid out, and players secretly choose which property they will bid against these amounts. Then everyone reveals simultaneously. The property with the highest number takes the biggest cash prize, the next-best property takes the second-largest, and so forth. You may wish to deliberately lowball, taking a prize that's nearly as good and save your big cards for later - but your opponent may be thinking exactly the same thing...
For Sale combines the fun of quickfire speculation with a poker-like game of bluff and blind bidding, within the same real estate theme as Monopoly. Plus, it plays in under twenty minutes. Beats Monopoly in pretty much every way.

3. Bohnanza

Then again, maybe you don't care about property speculation either. Perhaps its the wheeling and dealing of the trading phase that appeals. In which case, there are so many better trading games in the world than Monopoly. The one I would recommend would be Bohnanza.

Picture by spearjr

Bohnanza has perhaps the least appealing theme in the canon of modern gaming - players are bean farmers, attempting to grow the largest possible crops of a given bean variety for harvesting. It would be hard to come up with a less attractive theme. But don't be put off - the game itself is pure gold.
The core of the game is the middle phase of each player's turn, where they turn over three new beans and then have to somehow dispose of them. Perhaps they already have those beans in their two fields, and just add them to their existing harvest. More likely, they don't want them at all, and would much rather trade them to the other players - and the game strongly encourages trading away unwanted cards, as if you don't trade them away, you must plant them, even if it ruins their current plan. You only have two fields, so if you have to plant, one of your existing crops will have to go - probably for much less value than you would like.
On top of this, players are constantly forced to plant cards from their own hands - if those cards don't fit with their plans, then they have some powerful motivation to trade out these cards too. All this positive motivation leads to a frenzy of trades; some players will enter bidding wars when they compete for the same card. Others play it cool, trying to act like they don't even want that bean, to try to make a favourable trade. "I'll take that green bean off your hands", you say, hoping to get something for nothing - "Two blue for a soy!" cries your sister, forcing you to either bid up and reveal your plans, or let her have it when you'd much rather be making money off it. Most players' turns will involve multiple trades - and a minute later, they whirlwind will start again with the next player.
Of all the games here, Bohnanza offers the most player interaction, and is one of the most active trading-based games available on the market. Absolutely, 100% recommended for families and pubs alike.