# Games you play "wrong" **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [November 22, 2020, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202 "2020-11-22T18:02:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2020, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/41 "2020-11-24T20:31:31Z")
> [@snfaulkner](#): > > Hell, I think I’ve been playing uno wrong then. We keep drawing until you can play. Wait-- that’s _not_ the official rule?! I feel like it had to have been in the rules at some point; it’s so widespread it seems unlikely that we’ve all misread the rules the exact same way. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2020, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/42 "2020-11-25T01:13:46Z")
> [@Grestarian](#): > > Good Heavens! > I had no idea there were any other Dopers familiar with that game! > did you play Aeons, Mayfair, or the crippled Parker Brothers\* version? Old original Aeon Cosmic Encounters! We have _almost_ all of the expansion sets. Fun story: we were breaking in a new guy to the game. We explained the rules, assigned aliens, dealt the cards…and, by luck more than anything else, he won in four straight attacks. He said, “I don’t see what’s so special about this game.” So the rest of us mooned him. ---
**Author:** ![Wilson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/96bed5/32.png) [@Wilson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wilson)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2020, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/43 "2020-11-25T16:38:48Z")
Somewhere in my garage is my original Eon set, with all nine expansions. The box fell apart years ago, and I know I’m missing a few tokens, but I think other than that it’s complete. It was one of our group’s go-to games in the mid to late eighties, although too many games ended in rules arguments that could get nasty. Our group’s main modification was using multiple alien powers at once; we’d each draw four and keep three. For a brief while, one friend and I tried to codify our rules and come up with restrictions for our multiple alien version - mainly “Do Not Use in a Power Set With” similar to the game’s “Do Not Use in a Game With” yellow type on the alien powers. Never really got too far with that… ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2020, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/44 "2020-11-25T21:07:09Z")
> [@Wilson](#): > > Our group’s main modification was using multiple alien powers at once; we’d each draw four and keep three. Coo! We’re on the same page; we draw five and keep two. (And we maintain a list of taboo combinations.) Also, _most_ of us don’t like the powers that cause you to change powers – Changeling, etc. But one or two of our mob think those are the best! So we sort of “ration” their use. Jolly fun game. (Imagine our delight when Emmanuel **Macron** became President of France!) ---
**Author:** ![pirviii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pirviii/32/3233_2.png) [@pirviii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pirviii)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/45 "2020-11-26T02:45:27Z")
Back in the early computer days, a friend and I played a Risk game so much that even the hard computer players were not much of a challenge. We started playing where all the opponent territories were the same color so you didn’t know who owned which one and we hid the numbers of units in each territory. Even that offered a limited challenge. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/46 "2020-11-26T03:08:47Z")
Eh, some of the house rules for Monopoly are very widespread (fines get stored and given to the person that lands on free parking, $400 if you land directly on Go). Wouldn’t surprise me if the same wrong rules evolved for other games too. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/47 "2020-11-26T14:02:21Z")
Not playing it “wrong”, but certainly playing it differently… A coworker once told me about a game of Risk he and some friends played one year – one _entire_ year – in college. The only time they touched the dice was at the very beginnning, when determining what order they would play in. When attacking, they played Stratego – the loser of the Stratego game removed an army from the Risk board. Attacking across the water? They played a game of Battleships – if the attacker lost, he removed an army from the Risk board. If the attacker won, that meant his forces landed successfully, and they played Stratego… ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/48 "2020-11-26T14:05:02Z")
Damn, we did the same thing in the 90’s, even to the point of using stratego (but not battleship), what are the odds? ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/49 "2020-11-26T15:28:11Z")
I played Risk a handful of times when I was a kid; I think only one game went all the way to completion. I could see a few choices that might work better than others, like knowing which continent to try and take over first, but it didn’t seem to be so strategically rich that lots of practice would render someone unbeatable. What strategies did you develop that were so effective? ---
**Author:** ![Sparky812](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Sparky812](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sparky812)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/50 "2020-11-26T18:38:27Z")
Risk is a card game… ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/51 "2020-11-26T21:50:23Z")
Not the one they’re talking about. > **[Risk (game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_(game))** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > > > Risk is a strategy board game of diplomacy, conflict and conquest for two to six players. The standard version is played on a board depicting a political map of the world, divided into 42 territories, which are grouped into six continents. Turns rotate among players who control armies of playing pieces with which they attempt to capture territories from other players, with results determined by dice rolls. Players may form and dissolve allianc... ---
**Author:** ![Sparky812](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Sparky812](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sparky812)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/52 "2020-11-26T22:12:09Z")
LOL… Whoosh? Maybe I should have said “Risk is a game of cards?” ---
**Author:** ![pirviii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pirviii/32/3233_2.png) [@pirviii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pirviii)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2020, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/53 "2020-11-26T23:33:43Z")
The Hasbro PC Monopoly game has options you can turn on to customize the rules like once around before you can buy property, double pay for landing on go, fines and or set amount in free parking, and more. ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Finn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Mark\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2020, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/54 "2020-11-27T12:28:21Z")
We had our standard “house rules” for the card game “Hearts”. Four players only. Alternate hands passing three cards left, right, across (no “keep” - i.e. no hand when you passed no cards at all.). Hearts worth 1 each; Queen of Spades worth 12. The game is over when someone reaches 101 or more. Queen of Spades had to be played at first opportunity (no holding off to get the person with the low score), unless it’s clear that you are going for “control” (taking all 13 Hearts and the Q of S.). With a successful “control”, you can either reduce your score by 25 points, or increase the scores of the other three players by 25 points each. Sometimes we played that if your score after a hand was exactly 69, you went back to zero. Stakes were agreed on beforehand (we usually played “penny a point”). After someone went to 100 or more, write down the four scores, and add up the +/- differences in everyone’s scores. If you won by a huge margin, you would be collecting off each of the other three; in a close game - very little would change hands. A $2 or $3 win in one game would make my day (early 1970’s). ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2020, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/55 "2020-11-27T13:19:20Z")
In computer role-playing games of the early 1980s, it was common for players, ostensibly in the role of the noble hero, to hold off on the main quest in favour of running rampant through peaceful towns, slaughtering their inhabitants and stealing their gold. A little grinding like this would quickly buff your character up to the point where tackling the main quest would be a piece of cake. (It helped that the NPCs and items in such games tended not to be persistent; once you’d massacred an entire village, you’d just need to leave it and re-enter it again to find it completely repopulated and restocked with treasure.) Probably the first CRPG to cleverly address this rules-breaking was Ultima IV, where the main quest isn’t your standard “slay the evil dragon” or “rescue the princess”, but rather “attain enlightenment by leading a virtuous life”. First-time players (myself included) who adopted the usual strategy of murdering and pillaging quickly found their game in a nigh-unwinnable situation. ---
**Author:** ![Scarlax](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scarlax/32/2927_2.png) [@Scarlax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarlax)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2020, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/56 "2020-11-27T14:43:55Z")
I never prefer to win Scrabble by individual point total, but rather to build the most interesting and dense crossword grid, which requires a shared sense of cooperation. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2020, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/57 "2020-11-27T21:19:05Z")
I used to play Magic the Gathering a lot with my friends back in the mid-90s, except we didn’t bother with the whole “building a deck” thing; instead, we kept all our cards in a shoebox, divided them out randomly before we started, and played with whatever we got. It led to some very long, very messy, very fun games. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2020, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/58 "2020-11-27T21:41:53Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > There’s a great game, _The Castles of Mad King Ludwig_ , where you build a ridiculous castle in the style of [that dude](https://historiceuropeancastles.com/king-ludwigs-castles-to-visit-in-bavaria-germany/). But my second-grader and I will sometimes just pull the pieces out to build our own castles and explain why ours, unlike his, actually make sense. One summer, my friend and I played so many sessions of Carcassonne, that we stopped caring who won. If one of us needed a very specific tile to complete a city, and the other player drew it, he’d play it just for the psychological satisfaction of completing the pattern, even if it meant he lost the game on points. Yet when we tried just drawing and placing tiles without competing at all, we got bored halfway through. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2020, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/59 "2020-11-28T19:26:44Z")
I grew up playing Avalon Hill board games, and the ‘War and Peace’ thick rules book usually meant that I would read enough to get playing, and then start. But never completely finish and therefor omitted many elements of the game. Key examples were ‘Patrolling’ ships in _Victory In The Pacific_, some obscure stuff in _Luftwaffe_ and _Bismarck_. In fact, me and a friend pretty much gutted Bismarck and only did the battle portion of the game, scrapping all the boring searching around in the fog. Still got all these games in a box in the garage. eBay awaits… > [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > What strategies did you develop that were so effective? The Australian Stronghold. I almost never lose. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2020, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202/60 "2020-11-28T19:59:50Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > I have all of my pinball machines set for 5 balls. Not really “wrong” or the factory wouldn’t have given me that option, but the standard for every machine since 1990 is 3 balls. If you ask me, 3 balls are the ‘wrong’ setting. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/games-you-play-wrong/926202.md?page=4)