Hm, I do remember that Monopoly’s actual rules are better than most people’s house rules. Maybe the Uno people have a point?
The two main rules that get ignored are 1. Free Parking is exactly that, you don’t get anything for landing on it, and 2. If you land on an unowned property and decide not to buy, it immediately goes up for auction. Ignoring those rules drags the game out forever. It’s supposed to be relatively short and brutal.
I never caught that second one and I can immediately see it’s benefit. That would speed the game up significantly.
Auctions also mean that if your opponents overextend into double digits cash, you can buy anything that gets landed on for their balance plus 1. Very tasty to get dark blues for less than their rent prices.
It’s in the official rules.
Also that if there’s no houses left in the bank you can’t buy more, even if you buy enough houses to buy a hotel.
Which is why the best strategy is to buy 4 houses and never upgrade to a hotel. It prevents others from buying houses. And you can’t just skip straight to a hotel in the actual rules either. You have to have 4 houses and the next turn you can buy a hotel.
To max your strategy you can buy the hotel, if you also have enough money to buy all the houses back on the same turn.
Using the actual rules of the game, you’ve typically already won by the time you’re at the point of having that much money lol.
I haven’t played monopoly since about 1996, but the house rules in your first point were how I was taught the game. Crazy how ingrained those mods are, and where tf did they come from!?
Well, the game was basically designed to show that rent as a concept is frustrating rich-get-richer bullshit. When people get frustrated, they try to tweak the system to make it less frustrating. Ultimately, it just delays the inevitable.
There was a spread of “Memes” or cultural context Pre-Intetnet. It traveled by mouth to mouth and sometimes via Television or Radio.
The legend that Maryiln Manson had one Rob removed to give himself BJs is one that comes to mind.
Or, different but also relevant, how kids call the place where they can’t be caught during a game of catch (I am no native speaker, so no idea if “catch” is the name of the game. You run after each other, once you touch another player they become the one to catch allothers). In my part of the woods you would agree on a (say, a tree) and couldn’t be cought while beeing in contact with it. We called is “House”.
Edit: It’s called Tag, as has been pointed out. Also corrected some spelling.
Only adding because you said you aren’t a native speaker and thought you might want to know:
- It’s caught not cought
- The referenced playground game is typically referred to as Tag as far as I am aware
- We would always refer to your example of “house” as “home”, “base”, or “home base”
- And I’m guessing “whole beeing” at the end was just a typo but in case it wasn’t, the correct use would be “while being”
Again, I’m not trying to critique anything, everything you wrote was perfectly understandable, especially with context, I just felt you might appreciate the information.
Thanks for the input, I appreciate it.
Putting $1000 and all fines paid on free parking though makes the game so much more enjoyable. It’s like winning a local lottery.
Monopoly house rules makes the game last forever and being boring af. Uno house rules makes the guy who called Uno draw 12 on their next turn.
I feel like the biggest problem with monopoly is how long it takes to lose. If you get a bad start, you can find yourself in a losing position just a few laps in. But the game doesn’t outright finish you. You need to land on bad squares to slowly get drained. Every lap you take gives you a small amount such that losing takes even longer. You still need to play and pay attention, because the rest of the table might still be in it
Depending on the player group, I’ve found that losing a game could take 1-2 hours while the initial stage where you realize you are losing could take a mere 15-30 minutes.
It’s a miserable game.
That was the goal of the design, it wasn’t meant to be a game. It was social commentary.
it’s a lot like soccer
I’m deeply and sincerly indifferent to soccer. But that’s a shit analogy.
I think it was a joke about knowing you’re going to lose the soccer game, and proceeding to lose. I don’t play soccer either but I can still relate.
Edit: really this goes for a ton of point-based competitive sports. It might be obvious that the game isn’t going your way in the first 20 minutes, but you can’t go home until you hear the buzzer
Yeah, maybe. The thing is that in soccer, it’s still a game which both sides can play, even if you’re down by a ton of goals. Yes, maybe your chances are bad, but you still get to play and make meaningful decissions.
In monopoly, you’re stuck playing a circular version of Chutes and Ladders with no meaningful decissions.
Tried playing with official Uno rules over Christmas and they suck. The house rules we played with were a lot quicker and there where more up and downs as you could fall behind quicker butt also catch up quickly.
I fucking hate house rules
“I pulled this rule of my ass and now it’s the law”
Most people don’t hate actual Monopoly, they hate the house rules version of it.
RentUtilities go in the bank, Free Parking is just an empty space. If you don’t buy the property it goes to auction.Monopoly was literally designed to be terrible, it’s a sardonic statement against capitalism expressed as a game that’s meant to tire you out. The house rules definitely make it worse, but Monopoly isn’t a good game without them, or even intended to be.
I still hate actual Monopoly because it’s all about fucking over everyone else. I don’t mind competitive over cooperative in a board game, but Monopoly pretty much always rewards asshole behavior.
Welcome to America! The game where the points don’t matter (if you’re rich), the rules are made up (if you’re rich), and grandpa swindling all the college funds is the entire point (to get rich).
I learnt about the auctions while playing a Monopoly videogame.
But I can’t find anywhere where it says rent goes in the bank 🤔
Yeah I meant utilities, my bad.
Oh OK, that makes more sense
Variety is the spice of life, homie.
I’m not against custom rules that everyone has previously agreed upon.
However, bringing up on the go random made up rules…
Elbows!!!
You think that’s bad you should see pai sho.
Next you’re going to tell me I can’t sandbag on purpose in Spades to trick the other team into reneging.
Do you mind a quick elif on this? I don’t know spades and immediately got overwhelmed trying to look up these terms and research enough to know their context x.x
You know what I’ve been playing spades since I was 9 and I’m as confused as you. Reneging means playing a card from the wrong suit, i.e. playing a spade even though hearts was led and you have hearts. This happens very rarely and it’s almost always a player error, and it’s almost never done in relation to the bid. There’s no strategy that involves reneging, it’s just a penalty when someone sees it happen. (Someone always sees it happen. It’s hard to renege without someone at the table knowing what cards should be left.)
It’s possible OP was talking about “setting” the other team, which means tricking the other team into bidding overconfidently so they fail to take enough tricks. (This results in a big score penalty for the team going set.) Sandbagging (deliberately underbidding) can definitely be used, and legally, to make the other team go set.
Before you play a round you guess how many of the 13 ‘books’ you will win. Books come from the single cycle where everyone throws out one card. The winner collects the 4 cards like a little book and count it as a point.
If you win more books than you guessed, you collect one sandbag for each book overguessed. Every x (usually 10?) sandbags and you get a permanent penalty against your total score.
Reneging is almost the opposite. If you win less than you guessed, you get a penalty instead of adding anything to your score that round.
They’re suggesting that if they guess first, they will purposely make their guess less books than they know they have (and collect sandbags) to hopefully trick their opponent to guess more. It can be easy for the last person who guesses to just subtract what’s been claimed from 13 for a good ballpark of where they should guess, so if there’s a lot left it’s easy to bite off more than you can chew.
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Doesn’t the official uno online app allow for +2 stacking?
Yes it does, but it’s a “custom” rule
I hate Uno.
First you stack +2. Then you stack +4 and +2. Next, whenever there’s a +n, everyone can throw a +n in. Logically this now goes for reverse too. And so on… it ends in a card fight.
This is one of the best things about it. There’s no feeling like passing on a +8 to someone.
it ends in a card fight.
That’s the point.
Don’t forget it’s just a game. Better than having an actual fight.
I meant an actual proto-fight because everyone throws so fast in all the time.
it’s not normally both for everyone else?
Uno is just a shit version of the dutch game Pesten, which in turn is more fun if you shuffle 4 packs of cards together for larger groups.
Yeah I was going to say, I remember someone I know buying an Uno set and it turned out to basically be a game we already played with normal cards that cost £1 a pack.
Thanks for this, I’ve added this to my short list of card games to play. I’m gonna try it with some friends tonight. I like Uno well enough, but not enough to own it. Now I can play a better version whenever I want.
I’m curious, what other card games do you enjoy?
I’m in Michigan USA, so off the top of my head end in rough order of preference, I enjoy hearts, euchre, cribbage, egyptian ratscrew, kings in the corner.
I’m not fond of pinochle, or hand and foot. There are probably others I can’t think of at the moment.
And of course not mentioned are kids games like go fish, etc etc.
I’m curious, what other card games do you enjoy?
lol just this one.
let me know if you need clarification on how to play.
It’s all Crazy 8’s.
No one has ever played Mouse Trap or Operation and followed the rules.
What are these even for?
Wait, operation has money and cards? Since fucking when?
Right?
The fun of mousetrap is spending an hour setting it up, finding out you’re missing one crucial piece of tiny plastic and trying (and failing) to set it off anyway. The game board is just there for stability.
mouse trap is not the same game i remember from when i was a kid. it is a dumbed down piece of shit now.
+4 can also go in a +2 but now only +4s can be player—you can’t go back to +2.
You can skip a skip, but then it skips two people. If the person who it lands on skips again, it skips three people, and so on. Fun to figure out when you’re all wasted.
We calls it Meanuno.
Don’t forget Reverse on a +2 or +4 so the person who played it has to pull it.
This is the first one I’ve read that I have legitimate disagreement with.
Have you ever played Mornington Crescent?
Not sure how many radio 4 listeners are on here 😆
I use the rule “face cards can interact with each other”.
You can add +2’s, you can throw in +4’s. All the normal rules apply still, so color matters. Throwing a +12 at someone is almost as amazing as them dropping a reverse to win. The only rules change beyond this is that skip changes from skip the next person to skip you drawing, thus passing it along.
I’m not even sure where the official rules end and where the house rules begin and a quick Google search didn’t find anything for me either, but I think that’s stupid (no +2 on a +2) and it runs counter to how the rest of the game is played (unless I’m also going off of other house rules, I’m not clear on what the “official” rules are).
So the main mechanic of the UNO is matching cards, whether it’s by text/symbol, or by color. I can play a green 2 on a red 2, because the text/number/symbol matches. I can also play a blue ‘Skip’ on a yellow ‘Skip’ or a green ‘Reverse’ on a yellow ‘Reverse’ or I can match them up by color, the whole point is that you’re matching things up because that’s how the color cards work. The black cards Wild and Draw 4 work a little differently, that’s understood (for the most part), those you can’t play unless you have no other option.
Why then is it that the ‘Draw 2’ cards are given a special place, why even have color versions of those cards in the first place unless you’re trying to confuse players? If they had wanted them to behave differently, they should’ve made them black-bordered and/or multi-colored like the Wild and Draw 4 cards, that would let people know, “Oh hey, these have different rules.” Instead, they’re made to look like all the other color cards and then the UNO Industrial Complex says, “No, you can’t actually use these the same ways as every other card, you’re an idiot for thinking that.” The reason so many people “screw up” this rule is because they’re playing the game consistently and they’re applying the main mechanic as it should be applied.
This is generally referring to the practice of allowing a player to play a +2 to avoid the penalty and stack it for the next player to draw 4 cards. That has never been part of the rules.
It is legal for player A to plays a +2, player B draws two (their turn getsskipped), player C plays a +2.
It doesn’t allow the skipped person to play a ‘Skip’ card to avoid being skipped. It still stacks, but for the person after the skipped person. Part of ‘Draw 2’ and ‘Wid Draw 4’ is skipping the next player. ‘Wild’ cards do not skip the next player.
You cannot play a +2 on a +2
Sounds like the Pauli Exclusion Principle applied to cards.
If you make your own rules you may end up in:
What a great video, thanks for the reminder. Will have to rewatch.
i played a game where we had a rule that skip cards could stack.
while being skipped, if you have a skip card, you could play it instead of being skipped. skipping your skip. the next person would be skipped instead, continuing the cycle.
I brought an official Uno deck and it comes with blank Wild Cards where you can write in your own house rules. It also came with a ‘Swap Cards’ card that let’s the holder take another player’s cards.
Uno sucks. Skip Bo is the ultimate strategy count em up card game.
As someone who has a pack on his shelf, agreed.
