You can play a version of Monopoly that lasts just 30 minutes. Before the game starts, shuffle all the properties and deal out the entire deck. The official rule book that comes with the board game says that you only deal out two properties to each person. Hogwash. That doesn’t save much time at all. Just deal the entire deck of properties out.
Strategies:
1) Build first
Since all the properties are now out, you need to build. And build fast.
2) Make a deal first
If you didn’t get dealt a monopoly off the bat. Get one NOW. Don’t even roll the dice. Make the deal.
3) Get orange or purple
The deal you should make are for the orange and/or purple proerties:
–Purple (St. Charles Place, States Avenue, Virginia Avenue)
–Orange (St. James Place, Tennessee Avenue, New York Avenue)
The cost of $100 to build per house is not too expensive, and you get a decent return when you build three houses. (Orange is the preferred color here, more on that in point five)
4) Trade off expensive properties
People get all attracted to the allure of expensive properties, but in Monopoly Express there isn’t enough time and money to build a good number houses on them. Use the expensive properties as trade bait. I would definitely rather have a purple monopoly than a green one (green costs $200 to build a house).
5) Build three houses
Please oh please build three houses on each property and not two–or gasp–just one. One house on Virginia Avenue gets you a measly $50. Two houses earns $150. But three houses gets $450. DING! But the even better returns are on the orange properties. St. James runs 70, 200, $550 for one, two, and three houses respectively.
Build on orange and purple early in Monopoly Express, and you got yourself a winner!
And for you keyword nuts, I titled the post this, because it’s the top searched term for this topic based on overture: 382 searches: monopoly strategies 105 searches: monopoly tips 0 searches: monopoly advice 0 searches: monopoly secrets
I should also say using these stategies is how I beat my brother and sister-in-law last weekend. haha!
This is SO clever!
I bet I would have won if I didn’t build any houses on my properties. In fact, it’s a fact that i would have won. You had about $800. Andrea had about $700 and I had about $600. I spent about $750 on houses. No one landed on my housed properties. So I would have kicked everyone’s butts if I didn’t build those houses.
Moose, yes, but we were playing with only a 15 minute limit. I would suggest that Express Monopoly be played out to the bitter end until one player is left with everything. We didn’t even finish out the game–let along circle around the board two times.
I bet that would have taken only 30 minutes. Maybe 45. (we had 3 players)
Another interest variation would be to group all the properties together and deal out entire monopolies. Take just one card from each property. Put it into a deck, and deal that deck out. Whichever card you get, you now own that entire monopoly.
i like you last suggestion. That way everyone is guaranteed at least a couple monopolies and you don’t have to negotiate for monopolies. I find negotiating annoying. If car dealers were playing express monopoly, then would want to do it the negotiation way cuz they like to argue and fight.
It would be interesting to try to get Monopoly down to a 15-minute game. That way people can play best of three. Monopoly can be such a stressful game, because of the time involved–people don’t want to lose and have itbe all drawn out. But shorten the time down to about 15 minutes, and it would really lighten the game up.