return void;

we spent some time at my uncle-in-law’s house this weekend helping them move furniture. afterwards, we enjoyed a nice steak dinner with several glasses of wine. we all decided that a good game of monopoly would be fun. as i’ve learned in the past, monopoly can turn into a very nasty game. there’s always one person in the group that seems to spoil all the fun.

that person happened to be my uncle-in-law. several trips around the board and i ended up with a variety of properties and so does he. crystal manages to collect 2/3rds of one set of properties while the other two players do not manage to collect much in terms of property. in fact, one of them only collects the light blues (oriental, connecticut, and vermont) while the other person doesn’t buy a property for half a dozen trips (boardwalk).

in a matter of a half hour, i had 2/3rd of the reds (kentucky and indiana, lacked illinois). my uncle-in-law had illinois but lacked 2 properties that i had. i actually had one of the light blues that the one player needed. i gladly traded the property for indefinite immunity to rent. this of coarse angered some of the players, of which included my uncle-in-law. he vowed to make the game very difficult on me; he delivered on this promise.

for the next 2-3 hours, i made dozens of offers to retrieve illinois, but every offer was scoffed at unless i was willing to go flat broke so i couldn’t build on the properties. apparently, it was irrational for me to want to build on properties. near the end of the game, he was very low on cash and i had a large surplus. however, i wasn’t able to make any dent in my opponents due to the fact that i was unable to improve my properties.

i was collecting rent, and it was getting old fast. round after round of negotiations resulted in him insisting that if i trade him, he will be unable to build and i will be able to do so. this was obviously unfair so he was only willing to trade if i was willing to fork up all of my cash and some limited immunity if i ever built up on my properties. since all of the other players now had at least 1 monopoly, i needed to improve my properties to stay alive in the game. his offer was clearly unacceptable, but he did not understand this.

he managed to trade with another player to build a monopoly on the yellows (marvin gardens, atlantic, ventor). this was eventually my downfall. he was the only player that i was really able to trade with because he had all the properties that i needed. eventually, i landed on of of his yellow properties and basically was put out of the game. i had landed on some of the other properties and survived them, but once i landed on his property, i was left with little to no money. continuing at this hope was delayed suicide. i quit and gave all of my property to crystal. shortly thereafter, everyone else quit.

one other interesting thing, crystal managed to land on boardwalk 4 times, once with 2 houses, once with 3, once with 4, and once with a hotel. somehow, she not only managed to survive, she dominated the game in the end with several monopolies and plenty of cash to spare.

i’ve never met a boardgame griefer and i can’t say i’ll ever play with someone who does that again. it was intentional and plain annoying. it may have been the wine, but i’m very leary about who i play monopoly with from now on.