Monopoly Hangover

I woke up this morning with a Monopoly hangover. In case you are wondering, that is when you stay up until 1:00 in the morning hoping to make a miraculous turn-around in a 4 hour game that you have been losing for the last 2 hours and then make yourself get up only 7 hours later knowing that if you don't your natural bio-rhythms will have taken over for good and you will NOT be able to get up for work next week.

When you are winning, Monopoly is a fun game. Unfortunately, there is always that point when you realize that there is NOTHING you can do to turn the game around, but it is still going to take several hours for your opponent to actually win. This is more a problem when you only have 2 players, but I think it applies to just about any Monopoly game every played in the entire history of the world. I have recently learned that it also applies to the game RISK.

Why, yes! We DID get several board games for Christmas! How did you guess? This year I became the proud player of Monopoly - The America Special Edition (If you land on the Go To Jail corner you can either plead guilty or pay $20 to roll the dice - if you roll an even total you are guilty, an odd total and you are free. Sounds pretty accurate, right? I am very familiar with this side of our friendly legal system, since I went to jail about 6 times last night.) I also have Monopoly Junior - Dig'n Dinos, a much easier, faster version of the original. Of course, I still lost!

In the non-Monopoly genre (yes, there IS such a thing, Virginia), I received Risk - LOTR Special Edition and got to play as the dark side! I gave him a run for his money, but in the end Mikey won, as usual. I believe my downfall was my obsession with getting Lothlorien under my control. I lost many an orc to that hopeless end. The fun in this version is that you have to conquer the world before Frodo leaves Middle Earth with that damned ring.

And finally, a game that really needs more than 2 players is regular old Clue. This was one of our favorites when we were kids. And it is even better after you have seen the movie! :) We are working on 2 player rules, but they lack some of the suspense that usually comes with the game. It mostly involves hiding cards in each room, making it practically impossible to win the game until you have been in each room at least once. I'll let you know how that turns out. Meanwhile, I am off to nurse my Monopoly hangover with a little hair of the dog!