Monopoly Chance Review

Monopoly Chance is a game for 2 – 4 players ages 8 and older. With Monopoly Chance, forget what you know about regular Monopoly, because this may as well be a new game altogether! It’s still competitive, but the strategy is a lot more fast paced and moment-to-moment. In this game, you roll the die, and draw from your individual deck of cards *up to* the amount rolled. Hope that you net either cash cards to claim property spaces, or item cards to aid you in your current or future turns. If you draw a bankruptcy card, you immediately discard your cards and end your turn. If not, place any cash card on a property to claim it, as long as it exceeds the value of the property. Don’t relax yet though, because anyone on their turn can play over your cash card with a higher value one to take over your property! The color coding of each deck makes it easy to keep track of who is dominating what space. A lucky break card protects you from one bankrupt, a flip 2 can force a player to draw 2 more cards even if they want to stop, and a nope card can protect your property from a domineering opponent one single time. Token cards can be used to activate a very powerful corner space effect for a round. “Go” lets you pick any cash card from your draw pile and immediately play it on the board, “Free Parking” allows you to play a cash card on any property, regardless of the property’s value or the value of any prior cards on the space,  “Just Visiting” let’s you resurrect any cash card from your discard pile to play on the board, and “Go to Jail” lets you remove any player’s cash card from the board and place it in their discard pile. These special abilities can only be claimed once per round, and by only one player. They check and balance one another very well, so tune your game sense up high and choose wisely. Don’t wait to long or you’ll miss the ability you want. But also don’t waste your token card too early, or you’ll have your powerful move negated by another player’s token card play!

Rounds end once every property has a cash card on it, and every remaining player then goes one last turn. If your cash card reigns supreme on a space, help yourself to a building, and add it to your skyline. Made a color set? Add a gray building in there as a bonus. The first to complete their skyline wins! 

This game is so cool! It references Monopoly in the decor and the references, but the gameplay is so vastly different. The mechanics seem simple enough to grasp, but there’s quite a bit of strategy necessary to succeed, and of course, there’s that palpable element of chance. Speaking of, there are also Chance cards that really throw curve balls, like letting you take or give away a building based on whether you have some when you draw the card, or taking the highest value cash card and immediately discarding it from play.