Add your own Tips, Strategies, & House Rules! Vote for tips that you think are useful.
Tips & Strategies (18)
Tips & Strategies (18)
Add your own Tip, Strategy, or House Rule
You must be logged in to add a comment.
- 01Clash of Cultures
- 01BattleTech
- 00Spirit Island: Branch And Claw
- 00Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization
- 00Twilight Imperium (4th Ed.)
- 00Thunderstone Quest
- 00Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
- 00Nemesis
- 00Arkham Horror: The Card Game
- 00Sword & Sorcery
- (updated once every hour)
- Check out our users' favorite games!
- (152) 7 Wonders
- (149) Dominion
- (144) Pandemic
- (135) The Settlers of Catan
- (120) Carcassonne
- (115) Ticket to Ride
- (97) Small World
- (96) Munchkin
- (92) Arkham Horror
- (91) Forbidden Island
- (# of user reviews, updated every 12 hours)
- 4 The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
- 4 BattleTech
- 2 Zombicide
- 1 Arkham Horror
- 1 Arkham Horror: Innsmouth Horror
- 1 Arkham Horror: Miskatonic Horror
- 1 Arkham Horror: Kingsport Horror
- 1 Arkham Horror: The Lurker at the Threshold
- 1 Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage
- 1 Washington's War
- (# of times played, updated every 12 hours)
- see all new games >
-
Hasty Baker
19-Aug-24, GoChuckle -
Mythic Quests: The Card Game
7-Nov-22, BoardGaming.com -
Mythic Dungeon Crawler – A Solo Card Game
27-Sep-22, BoardGaming.com -
Lost Ruins of Arnak
28-Dec-21, Czech Games Edition -
13 Monsters
4-Dec-20, Twisted Stranger B.V. -
Forgotten Waters
4-Dec-20, Plaid Hat Games -
Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Core Set
18-Nov-20, Paizo Publishing -
Unlocking Insanity
5-Oct-20, Petersen Games -
Planet Apocalypse
5-Oct-20, Petersen Games -
Marvel United
1-Oct-20, CMON, Spin Master Ltd. -
Draconis Invasion: Wrath
23-Sep-20, -
2 Minute Dino Deal
5-Aug-20, Petersen Games -
Mythic Challenge: The Card Game
2-Aug-20, BoardGaming.com -
Viscounts of the West Kingdom
27-Mar-20, Garphill Games -
Glamazons
14-Feb-20, Prettiest Princess - see all new games >
- see all upcoming games >
-
Gravity Warfare
2018 Q4, Smart Iguana Games -
BANG! The Dice Game – Undead or Alive
2019, dV Giochi -
Hasty Baker
2019, GoChuckle -
Penguinramids
2019 Q4, dV Giochi -
Origami: Legends
2019 Q4, dV Giochi -
Decktective: Bloody-red roses
2019 Q4, dV Giochi -
BANG! The Duel: Renegades
2019 Q4, dV Giochi -
Buy It Or Don’t
2019 Q4, Binks Games -
Four Levels
2019 Q4, Four Level Productions -
Unlocking Insanity
2020, Petersen Games -
High Noon
2020 Q4, High Noon Inc. -
Quantified
2021, Quality Beast -
High Frontier 4 All (4th ed)
2021 Q2, Ion Game Design, Sierra Madre Games -
Legends of Sleepy Hollow
2021 Q2, Dice Hate Me Games -
Game of Energy
2021 Q2, Ninex Games - see all upcoming games >
Recent News
- New Game Adds – What Do You Want?
9-Feb-22|13 comments - Winter Gaming and Gift Giving
17-Dec-21|11 comments - Games Added – Dec 4
4-Dec-20|8 comments - The holiday shopping season is upon us!
30-Nov-20|5 comments - Technology, table top games and the coming holidays
19-Nov-20|8 comments - Support Mythic Kingdoms – Get BG Rewards
11-Aug-20|10 comments - Tournament of the Mythic Kingdoms: Illustrated Playing Cards
1-Jul-20|15 comments - How have games been helping you, your family and friends?
10-Apr-20|12 comments - Games Added (March 27)
27-Mar-20|7 comments - What are you playing during your Stay-At-Home?
27-Mar-20|13 comments
Try not to complete sets unless you can defend them. It’s easier to recover from losing a single card in a set, than losing the whole set itself.
Personally, I try not to complete a set until I have a “Just say no” card and a large bank roll.
Of course if you have hotels and plenty of rent cards for that set, it can be worth giving into the temptation.
The tides of battle can turn fast and no other card can turn it faster in a 2 player game than the Deal Breaker. If you have a problem with 2 player games always being decided with the deal breaker card it is easy to take it out of the to take that huge swing out of the game. Personally I like it in as it adds to the feel of the game.
On occasion, you will run across a $10M card, and a few $5M cards. Don’t play these into your back too quickly! Keep them back until you have enough small change to cover smaller rent payments, so you don’t wind up coughing over your $10M card on a $1M debt.
I discovered this combo mid-game awhile back, which is always the best to way discover something fun in a game like this.
Use a Force Deal to swap two non-complete deeds with an opponent. Ensure the card you are giving them will complete one of their sets. (Obviously, make sure this move doesn’t win the game for them). Next action, use a Deal Breaker to take the newly completed set from them.
Especially useful for players that tend not to complete sets to avoid deal breakers. You just finished it for them, and steal it anyway. 🙂
A lot of people when first playing this game don’t realize that cash in your hand is worthless. You can only pay from the cash in play in front of you and there are cards early in the game that will force you to pay up. If you have no cash, you will have to give your properties up and give your opponent an early lead.
Always get cash out first, do not lead with properties if you can help it. Always hold onto a No Thanks for a big play like a Deal Breaker that would ruin you. Also not making a set can protect you from the Deal Breaker. Do not play out all your cards each turn just because you can. Holding onto property cards whilst getting money out is very important. Smile and have fun.
You need to assume the other player has a “Just Say No” card.
(One way to know they have one is when you see them holding this one card off on the side or if they have 3 cards in their hand but only play 2)
Before you lay out some devastating attack on an opponent try to flush out their “Just Say No” card by asserting a weaker attack, but do it with gusto as if that move is going to win you the game. This may trick them into playing that “Just Say No” card to stop you. After you feel certain it’s gone then steal all their properties or charge that exorbitant rent.
If you see another player is getting close to having 3 sets use one of your cards to do a swap and take away one of their non completed sets of 2 or 3.
Complete your sets quickly to protect them from being broken up.
You can make the game a bit longer by keeping track of property values of the course of several games. When a game ends, simply write down each player’s monopoly property values and then play until 1 player reaches a goal value (say $100 million).
This allows people to play a bit more strategically for a long term goal win instead of game to game, and also extends the length of the “game” to be longer.
Play cards if I have to…
In the beginning of the game you can skip putting anything down for one turn. Especially, when you have a “It’s My Birthday” in your hand. Allowing your opponents to place things down first gives you chance to steal it on your next turn with your birthday card. By doing this, you’ll acquire more cards than you could’ve put down on your previous turn.
If you don’t have a birthday card in your first hand, you can still skip your turn in the beginning to prevent your things from getting stolen. Especially, if you have all property cards in your first draw. This will give you a chance to acquire cash or action cards for the next turn.
-Enjoy Yourselves!
Many players pick up the game quickly enough that they can play without reading through the rule book. Don’t forget that you must have a house on a property set before you can add a hotel to it. This is NOT printed in the cards anywhere and it is an easily missed sentence in the rules.
When my girlfriend and I play the game, we take out half the cash. We found after a few times through that we would both have a nice stock of cash we were just trading back and forth without any real damage or interaction between us. Taking out half the cash forced us into a position where we would have to give up some of our properties when rent was due.
Basically whenever you want to play a property card, you must “pay” for it by spending money equal to 1 less than the value on the property card itself.
This slows the game down slightly and gives more value to money in the game.
Because of the inevitable turtling that happens, especially in 2 player games, where someone will complete their monopolies all at once, you can try this variation:
As the Title says, simply change the win condition to needing to complete 4 monopolies to win the game.
This also slows the game down a bit which can be a plus or minus depending on your opinion.
My wife and I play this game a lot. We like the back and forth nature of the flow of cash when there are two players. We don’t remove any cards. But we try to wait to lay down that property that completes a high value color set until we can defend it with “just say no” or “deal breaker” cards. Money isn’t the only thing that will go back and forth on two player games. Properties are stolen a lot with sly deal and forced deal cards. I lay down my lower value properties first, especially if I don’t have a stack of cash to pay for those high rents or the card that makes you pay five million. Use your last turn to lay down the completing three properties to win.
Wild property cards have two colors representing one of the property sets the wild belongs to. The game rules allow you to move this card or switch the use of color at anytime during your turn. To make things a bit tougher or to make you think a bit more about strategy, make switching your wild one of your three actions you can perform so it cost you something to do.
When playing with fewer players tweaking the game is almost necessary. Getting to three properties with two people is a bit easy. When my girlfriend and I are playing a two player game we have to get to five properties, with three people its four properties, then you can relax with four players getting the three.
As others have mentioned, when only playing with 2 people, this game can just be a game of “pass the money back and forth” with no real danger to the property cards. In order to increase the odds of property being exchanged, when playing with only two people, just make all rent cards “wild” rent cards that can be used on any property. This way, the resources will become more restrained and the game will become more interesting.