Board games that take hours or even days to play: Great idea or Good Lord when is this game ever going to be over?
What other board games would fall into this category? What's the longest you've ever played a board game?
The key to winning in Monopoly to getting all the railroads. No joke.
shareI will bear that in mind, though my husband who loves trains will probably try to buy them up first.
share"The key to winning in Monopoly to getting all the railroads. No joke."
If the railroads are your only complete property group, the only way you're likely to win is if no one else has any complete/buildable property groups at all. The only complete group that the railroads trump is the pair of utilities. And even then it will probably take a long time to win.
I've done a test with the PC Monopoly game, manipulating it at the start so that I not only had all four railroads, but both utilities too, plus a handful of other properties, none of which were complete groups (so as to prevent the three computer opponents from being able to build on anything). It took around four hours to bankrupt one of the computer opponents. Another one went bankrupt not long after that, but the remaining one somehow had over $4,000 in cash at that point in the game, so it would have probably taken a couple/few more hours to bankrupt him. To speed things up I put hotels on the cheapest property group (Baltic and Mediterranean Avenue, one of which I got when one of the computer opponents went bankrupt), and even then it took another half hour or so to bankrupt "him."
Statistically, the best property group to have is probably the orange ones, because they are landed on a lot due to their proximity from jail, they have a big rent with hotels on them, and they are relatively cheap to build on ($100 per house).
I used to own a really cool WWII board game called Axis And Allies that required several players and could take all day.
Dungeons And Dragons was very fun and we’d have maps and pewter figurines and fancy dice for the rolls.
I’m pretty sure I was a nerd😄
I've heard of Axis and Allies, but have never played it. I've always assumed it was similar to Risk, though I could be wrong.
As for Dungeons and Dragons, despite having a healthy inner nerd, I've never played it. Part of me always wished I could, just once, to experience it.
AXIS & ALLIES was very similar to RISK, just more modern, and more detailed
for example, you earned cash and could buy tanks, ships, fighters, bombers and even factories, in addition to just adding soldiers
we used to play for 3 or 4 hours, and then leave it out,
even though we really never went back to it, lol
we also had a Roman version called Conquest of the Empire,
in that game, you could use coins to buy things like triremes and catapults
I quite enjoy a good game of Monopoly and having the right players who are willing to risk their Hotels and Houses or Boardwalk and Park Place make the game more enjoyable
shareMonopoly doesn't usually take hours to play as long as you play by the actual rules (a typical game lasts about an hour). For example, if someone lands on a property and doesn't want to buy it, it's supposed to immediately go up for auction (and the person who chose not to buy it to begin with can participate in the auction if they want). A lot of people ignore that rule which can result in a longer game due to it taking longer for the properties to get sold.
I think the biggest contributor to Monopoly's reputation as a long game is the very common "house rule" that provides for a jackpot when you land on Free Parking (nothing at all happens when you land on Free Parking according to the actual rules). The way my family always played when I was a kid was to put $500 from the bank in the middle of the board to "seed the jackpot," and also, all debts incurred from Chance and Community Chest cards, as well as landing on the Income Tax and Luxury Tax squares, and bail payments to get out of jail, were paid to the jackpot in the center of the board, and whoever landed on Free Parking won the jackpot. Then it was immediately seeded with $500 from the bank again and would continue to grow until someone landed on it again, and so on.
The problem with that is that it injects too much money into the game, so it takes longer for players to go bankrupt.
Other fake rules that can result in longer games include allowing loans from the bank (the only way to get a loan from the bank according to the real rules is by mortgaging property), allowing loans from other players, allowing players to sell houses/hotels back to the bank at the full price they paid for them (instead of half-price like the rules state), allowing players to unmortgage property without paying 10% interest, allowing people to buy houses or hotels when the bank has no more to sell, and various other things.
for sure the house rules is what makes that game long and insufferable. still my favorite boardgame.
shareBobby from Sopranos on Free Parking house rule: "You take a game of skill and you make it just about luck."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqHXcDfiK0Q
wow. totally forgot about that. what a great show. and exactly.
i think a lot of house rules are made to keep kids entertained and engaged, and then we just carry those bad habits right through adulthood.
There's some skill involved, but Monopoly is still mostly a game of luck even when played strictly by the official rules. The fundamental key to winning is having developed properties, better ones and/or more of them than anyone else in the game. Obtaining those properties comes down to rolling the dice (not counting auctions, bartering with other players, and obtaining properties by bankrupting another player), and getting favorable dice rolls is a matter of luck.
There's skill involved in bartering, but there's no rule requiring any other player to make a deal of any kind with you, so that can easily be eliminated from the game entirely, depending on the attitudes of the players.
There have been Monopoly tournaments for a long time, and no single player has ever dominated the game year after year, as opposed to true games of skill like chess (e.g., Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov, etc.). That's because the level of skill required to be as good as you can possibly be in Monopoly is very low. It just comes down to:
- Buy everything you land on even if you have to mortgage to do so.
- Don't make any deals with other players if you already have the upper hand, unless they are blatantly in your favor.
- Buy houses as soon as you can, getting to at least 3 houses on each property as soon as possible, even if you have to mortgage to do so.
- In some cases it's better to not upgrade from 4 houses to hotels. Sticking with 4 houses on each of your properties can create a housing shortage, limiting the amount of building that other players can do, or preventing it entirely if you can create a total housing shortage.
Those tournament players are all on the same skill level, which cancels out skill and makes it all about luck.
The problem with playing to win no matter what against friends and family is that a lot of them become disgruntled when the writing is on the wall for them and you won't barter with them to "give them a chance."
Monopoly is a fun game for everyone, but only up until the point that it becomes obvious who's going to win; then it only becomes fun for the inevitable winner. For the other players it will range from just going through the motions with disinterest to "rage quitting."
Bobby wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.
shareIt has been so long since I've played it that I don't remember what rules we used, but I'm kind of a purist so if I play it again as an adult I'm going to want to play by the real rules.
shareI love long games. The problem is the winner is usually clear cut from the early stages and then you have to spend hours waiting for the inevitable to finally play out. I like to pair a long board game with binge watching a tv show. But theres always one player who wont pay attention when their turn is up.
shareThat player would probably be me. 😁 I don't think I could do two things that required such intense focus at once.
sharegames like Risk can have very long turns. its easy to get overly wrapped up in a show, even if you've seen it many times, while your buddy takes their sweet ass time trying to figure out how to conqueror the world. start mixing in beers and it takes all weekend!
shareNow I could do that if the show in the background was one I had already seen before so it wouldn't matter if I missed parts of it during my turn. That would be my concern. The few times I've played Risk with my husband and sons I spent the time between turns building towers out of the game pieces.
shareI don't even remember the last time I played a board game. I'm 65 so they were much bigger when I was a kid than today. When I was in my early 20s I had a friend who was into Avalon Hill military board games (see link, and that doesn't even show all the pieces). They typically take a long time, I just couldn't get into them. Nowadays the only board game I think I would like is Scrabble.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1790720929989103007/0430D7CE4B133735B304188C43D1ADC94D0277C6/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false
I love Scrabble! My husband and I still play some board games occasionally and enjoy them, but they're all relatively quick games. The main ones we play are Scrabble, Battleship, Tri-ominos and Clue. We also play a lot of Skip-Bo which is a card game.
We play Skip-Bo several times a week but as far as the board games that might be more like once every 3 to 4 months.
"We need a medical dictionary"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzPy8kSn7o0
And, if you have a few minutes, best Scrabble story ever
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9czoezm2vqw
Makes me wonder if old Harold wasn't messin' with him.
shareI think the longest was doing 2 years of Payday. I think it took my brother and I maybe two days but we didn't play it straight. I just know my mom was annoyed that we left it on the coffee table overnight. I don't know if that really counts as we could have stopped at the end of any month.
shareI don't remember Payday but Mr. fourlemons says that he does. I had to look it up. And yeah, my mom would have been annoyed if I left a game out all night, too. Those coffee table decorations and magazines had to be back in place by nightfall! 😂
share