Monopoly. Dice. Mentioning either word to a hardcore Eurogamer elicits a particular response:



So why in the heck is a game about Monopoly using JUST the dice so strangely addictive?

For one thing, the game allows you to make choices with the dice. Instead of thinking, "Man, I really, really need a seven so I can make it to the last property in that chain," only to then roll a twelve and wind up in jail for the next three turns, you get to roll ten dice and decide what to do with some of them. Seven of them represent properties, and you want to complete a chain of them to score maximum points. Once you get a monopoly of a particular property, you roll an eleventh die, which represents the houses and hotels from the standard game. These are worth more money. Three of them, though, are the Police dice, so once Sting, Andy, and Stewart roll up on the dice*, your turn is over. This represents the push-your-luck element to the game, which is part of what makes it work so well.

Of course, it IS a dice game, so you're subject to some wildly improbable rolls at the worst (or best) times. But for the most part, the number of dice, the distribution of properties among the dice, and the different values of the properties makes this more a game of managing your resources and playing the odds than being subject to the luck of the dice. But you’re still going to possibly roll all three of the Police on your first roll**, or after having a nice run of luck up to that point, and there's no doubt that it's frustrating. But that's part of what makes the game a little more fun than, say, In the Year of the Dragon.

Another good thing going for the game is that each player starts his or her turn with a clean slate. You don’t have to follow up from what another player has started, or change your plans because someone else cut you off from that one purple good you needed to deliver to stay out of bankruptcy***. You have the same odds as you did on your previous turns, and the same odds that all your opponents had on their turns. I'm sure this will bring up points regarding the game's "multiplayer solitaire" issues, or complaints regarding how the game is strictly dependent on the roll of the dice. I think there's some validity to both points, but I also think that it overlooks the choices that one CAN make during the game.

To wit, not all the dice are the same. If you commit yourself to completing the railroads, then you've pretty much confined yourself from going after any of the other high-value properties, as well. You’ll always have a pretty good chance of completing either the utilities or the Baltic Avenue monopoly, but the higher your aspirations are, the more you're pushing your luck. So you can go after the slow-and-steady strategy, or try to go balls-out to get the higher properties, at the risk of crapping out in the process. The frequency of the higher-valued properties on the dice is much lower, and you're more likely to bust trying to complete those monopolies.

Also, knowing the distribution of the properties among the dice will give you an advantage. As such, I tend to play the game where players can pick up and examine the remaining dice. There’s no sense in pushing your luck when there's no chance to complete the monopoly you want, and since the distribution isn't intuitive enough to grasp at the start of the game, it only seems fair to do so. Others may feel differently, though I expect that once everyone is familiar enough with the game, this wouldn't be necessary to do.

Monopoly Express won't replace Can't Stop as the quintessential push-your-luck game, but for a 20-minute dice game that everyone will already be partially familiar with, it's not bad. In two days, I managed to play more games of this than I had managed in the previous month****. That's definitely worth something.



*Not really. It's the same policeman that you see on the "Go Directly to Jail" space on the game board.

**I've adopted the "Re-roll your first roll if you bust immediately" rule to compensate for this issue. Busting on your second roll is no less frustrating, but at least less likely to happen.

***Thanks, Malachi, for taking that one back.

****I only played 5 games in July.

(reprinted from Veni Vidi Verkisto)