A couple of weeks ago, before my oldest daughter’s school ended, they had a special event day where every (1st grade) kid brought a game to play.
My daughter really wanted to take the Monopoly: Disney Lilo & Stitch. We advised her that she would not have a chance to play Monopoly, regardless of version, at school because it would simply take too long (among other things).
This is one of two copies of Monopoly in our house. The other copy is Monopoly: Friends – The TV Series, that I got via no-ship math trade last year. Monopoly: Lilo & Stitch, on the other hand, was a gift from one of my partner’s friends to our kids. They know that we like to play games, and this was their best guess – fair enough, it’s actually not such a terrible thing to have an example of Monopoly around to show my kids how some games can be worse than others.
This past weekend, after spending the morning with my oldest at her softball game, we came home and I was going to watch her and the two youngest daughters while my partner took my second-born to a birthday party.
Somehow, I got roped into playing Monopoly: Disney Lilo & Stitch during this time, with only my oldest (lucky!), while my youngest two otherwise entertained themselves (not.. so lucky; turned out okay, I suppose)
First, we played using Iron Clays instead of paper money; my daughter was okay with this as soon as she saw how pretty the Iron Clays are. Her goal during the game became “have at least one of each color of Iron Clay”, rather than actually winning.
This, in the end, was her downfall. Where she was focusing on keeping her $500 chip, I was interested in investing heavily at all times.
I bought every property I landed on, mostly for face-value. I also participated heavily in the auctions for what my daughter didn’t buy outright. I mortgaged properties when needed, though that wasn’t very many.
Unfortunately, as luck would have it, my daughter ended up with all 4 railroads and both utilities (in this edition of the game: spaceships and… uhh, squirt bottles or something like that). And she also ended up in jail for an extended period of time. I thought that surely I would lose.
Eventually, however, I managed to pay off my mortgaged properties and start building hotels. Because of having to watch 2 young children while also playing, I was not being super-aggressive with my property improvement. Rather than incrementing with houses as the money came in, I looked down and saw that I had an extra $750 sitting there, enough to go from nothing-to-hotels on the light blue properties.
My daughter, as luck would have it, would avoid these light blue properties for the entirety of the rest of the game; somehow landing on either side, or on the non-property space in the middle of them (this edition’s version of “Community Chest”, I believe).
My daughter, on the other hand, built one hotel… on the second-cheapest property in the game. Honestly, this was a pretty good move, but ultimately wasn’t enough.
I eventually got hotels on the orange group as well, and had gotten 4 houses each on the red group.
Around that time, my daughter landed on the orange group, and was forced to mortgage most of her properties to pay the rent. I took this picture, thinking it would be the point we called the game in my favor
In reality, my daughter wanted to keep going, though she was severely cash-limited. The game ended on her following turn when she landed on one of the red-group properties and, I think, could have raised enough money, but it would involve selling the properties via auction… and I just don’t know how that would realistically work in a 2-player game (I mean, I could just bid 1 on each of them?). I convinced her to call the game instead.
Playtime: about 2 hours even with using poker chips instead of paper money
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