Oh, sure, it’s not like those Euro style games (which I never could quite get into.) But I find it more enjoyable and interesting than something like Risk. (Now that’s a game that’s inexplicably popular to me and takes WAY too long to finish with one or two players getting knocked out in the first hour and sitting around for the next two or three or more [I remember one six player game going six hours] with nothing to do.)
We also occasionally played Monopoly where we just shuffled all the properties and dealt them out to the players as some sort of exercise in trading and deal-making
The thing about Risk is that it’s not actually a board game. It’s a computer game that inexplicably got invented before the computers to run it. Play it on a computer, and that same game that would take three hours on a board now only takes a half hour or so.
Warhammer is another one in this category, except that there I’m not sure whether the real hobby is the playing of the game or the painting of the miniatures.
Playing Monopoly with rules variations seems to be very popular. I loved getting my Geometry students (during a discussion on how the “rules” of a game can affect the way its played, hinting at the difference between Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries) to realize that their favorite alternate rule (all fines etc. go to Free Parking) simply prolongs the game by removing the money sinks. :smack:
Yeah, a lot of people seem to play with house rules that needlessly prolong the game, add a greater factor of luck, and totally miss the main mechanic of the game, which is to be a good little ruthless capitalists learning The Art of the Deal trading and negotiating with other players. However, as kids, we just like to throw the dice and collect money, steal from the bank if not other players, hide our money so other players didn’t know how much we had. You learned very quickly whom not to trust in the role of a banker and whose hands to keep a close eye on. Chicago style, I guess.
Wait, I thought Chicago style was that if they sent your tophat to Boardwalk with a hotel, then you sent their Scottie dog to the morgue. Or something like that, anyway.