Monopoly is a classic game owned and played by millions. The game is a classic alongside greats like Scrabble and Parcheesi. It has seen hundreds if not thousands of variant editions from Chicago Monopoly to Star Wars Monopoly. Despite the long time appeal of the game, it is actually quite simple and repetitive once you get familiar with the game. Presented are some variants that will help spice up this old family favorite.
Free Parking – Per the rules, Free Parking is simply a space that does nothing. But that is boring and many players like to add something to the space. The most common variant for Free Parking is that any player landing on it gets a $100 or $500 bill. A slightly more complicated variant has all money from fines, both from spaces on the board and from cards, going into a pot that is awarded to the first player to land on Free Parking. A third variant recognizes that the parking is free on the space. In this variant, you “park your car” and on the following turn you can move to any orange, purple, red, or yellow property instead of rolling normally.
Auctions – Luck plays a big part in Monopoly. Whoever lands on a space first has the first chance to buy it, which good players know to do. Auctions help remove part of that luck. In this variant, when you land on a space, if the space is not owned, you may choose to do nothing or put the space up for auction. The auction is a once around auction starting with the player to your left. Each player may choose to bid on the space, with a minimum bid of the normal cost of the space or 10% more than the previous player bid. When the bid gets around to you, you may bid to buy or accept the highest bid. If you bid to buy, you get the property. If you accept the bid, that player gets the property and you get half the money paid by the player.
Jail – Top players have realized that jail is a very useful space in this game. You can use it to stay safe on the board and only pay to get out when you absolutely have to. Furthermore, since only doubles get you out naturally, it is a way to increase your chances of landing on some pretty good spaces, including Virginia Ave. and St. James Place, two of the most commonly landed on locations on the board. In order to counter this, a good variant is that players in jail don’t earn money for their properties and if another player lands on your property while you are in jail, they can pay you price of the property to buy the property from you and you can’t refuse.
Yearly Taxes – In this variant, take an unused piece and place it on the board on “Income Tax” at the start of the game. Play the game normally, but before the start player takes a second turn, somebody rolls the dice and moves the piece on the “Income Tax. This continues to get moved before the start player’s turn every go around. This piece ignores all spaces on the board, with two exceptions. When it crosses or lands on either “Income Tax” or “Luxury Tax”, every player has to pay those taxes as if they landed on that space. If you land on either of those spaces normally, you may choose to pay that tax early. If you do, you pay half the normal cost and the next time the tax piece crosses that tax, you don’t pay.
Free Market – Monopoly often slows down as one or two properties go unsold simply due to the luck of the dice. This variant speeds up the game and makes it a lot easier to buy properties. In this variant, whenever you land on a railroad or utility, you may buy any one railroad or utility, not just the one you land on. Whenever you land on a property, you may choose to buy any one property of that color. And, whenever you land on Free Parking, you may buy any one property on the board. If you really want to speed the game up you can simply change the rules so that at the start of each turn, you may buy any one property you want and you don’t buy properties after moving.
Time Limit – Competitive Monopoly games have time limits in hours or minutes, but another way to put a time limit on the game is based on number of turns. In this variant put an unused piece on the board as the clock counter. After every player has taken a turn, but before the start player acts again, move the clock counter forward one square. Do this every single round and when it gets back to “Go” the game ends. This will give you a forty round game. Alternately, roll a single die for the clock counter and move it that many spaces. This makes the game variable length, but averages at about 12-13 turns.
