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I am brilliant at Monopoly. This is my burden. If you and I were to play a quick game - and it would be a quick game - I would not just win, I would make you cry. This is because of the way I play, employing a strategy in which the real game takes place off the board. The real game is about what nicer people than me might term the negotiation, and in Monopoly I have given myself the leeway to negotiate in any way I please. If we have a personal history together, I will dredge that history, sifting any past misdeeds and suggesting that I might share them with the rest of the group if I don't get the oranges on highly favourable terms. If we don't have a personal history, I will just be a massive jerk to you - and very, very occasionally I will be inexplicably lovely. This will wrongfoot you and you will become confused. You will start to lose hope. Eventually, you will cave, and I will get the oranges on highly favourable terms.There's a problem with this, of course, the same problem that an evil military commander might encounter after razing his own territory to foil an advancing foe. The problem is scarcity. Because of my behaviour, I have not been invited to a game of Monopoly in many, many years. Family members have grown canny and cold-hearted. Friends remember the stunts I pull if you don't hand over the railroads. Even distant acquaintances have heard stories of the wounds I inflict on anyone stupid enough to admit a preference for the utilities. It is lonely at the top. It is so very lonely.
Luckily, I have one friend who is just as brilliant at Monopoly as I am, and for all the same reasons. Even more luckily, my friend introduced me to Monopoly Deal recently. It's a card game that rejigs the rules of Monopoly so that you can play a match in 10 minutes. 10 minutes! We met at a coffee shop across the street from the Eurogamer offices to play. The place was filled with families and pushchairs and people on lunch breaks. Nobody knew what was really taking place. Forget military commanders, this was like that scene in the old horror film where Vincent Price and Peter Lorre, both venerable and enormously deadly wizards, finally face each other in a battle of thermonuclear magic. It's astonishing the place is still standing - and charging so much for a mocha. (Maybe it wasn't Peter Lorre, incidentally.)
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