Anti-Monopoly (1973)

The "Bust~the~Trust!" Game

The basic idea of the game is to end the monopolistic practices of the 3-company-combinations of the game board. The players are Trust-Busting lawyers going about the board slapping lawsuits on the monopolies. The winning trust buster is the one who ends with the largest number of social-credit points when one of the players runs out of money.

There are 3 kinds of company combinations on the board: Oligopolies, Trusts and Monopolies, marked by one, two and three "accusation circles" respectively. "Accusing" is done by placing a small, round chip of the same color as your token on such a circle. When all accusation circles of a combination are covered, the monopolistic practices of that combination have been ended. An accusation chip can be bought from the "Budget-Commissioner"; when lending money, he provides a Social-Credit card as an IOU.

Variant rules are supplied for a Low-Budget Game and a Trading Game.

Anspach fought --and won-- a vicious court battle against Hasbro (and others) over this game.

Anti-Monopoly was briefly (1976-1982) published as "Anti" and "Anti-Monopoly II" was published as "Choice" whilst the company was forbidden to use the word "Monopoly". In 1984 after prevailing in court the company used the names "Anti-Monopoly" and "Anti-Monopoly II" for its two games. In 1987, Anti-Monopoly was withdrawn and Anti-Monopoly II was renamed "Anti-Monopoly". The game described here was produced as Anti-Monopoly before 1976 and from 1984 thru 1987. The game produced as Anti-Monopoly after 1987 is a different game, with the same name. Plenty of potential for confusion there, eh?

A newspaper article from the Wall Street Journal on the history of the game and the court dispute with Hasbro can be found here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125599860004295449.html

The official webpage of the new edition: http://www.antimonopoly.com/

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Monopoly