Monopoly Cheaters Edition

Monopoly Cheaters Edition "What can you get away with?" "Get caught, get cuffed!" Genre(s): Board game Release: 22 April 2018(US) 4 June 2018(UK) Developer(s): Hasbro Gaming Publisher(s): Hasbro Country: United Kingdom Series: Monopoly

Monopoly Cheaters Edition is a 2018 board game by Hasbro Gaming, and is a part of the Monopoly series of board games. In addition to the default rules of Monopoly, players are able to use five out of fifteen "cheats" that benefit the players unless if they're caught. The player has to hide the cheating until the next player has rolled their dice, then the cheater player can say that they have cheated, and how. If they fail to hide their cheating, they're sent to jail and have to temporarily wear handcuffs.

Why It Went To Jail

1. The "cheats" are technically not cheats. Cheating is when one defies the rules of a game, and players are only allowed to use five "cheats" that are randomly chosen at the start of the game and placed on the board, meaning that players still must follow the rules of the game.
2. The handcuffs are uncomfortably tight, to the point where some players may not be able to wear it, and the chain is too short that handcuffed players may accidentally pull the whole board when moving the arm too far away. Due to the handcuffs, only one player can be in jail at a time.
3. The game has multiple questionable changes, additions, and removals to make itself faster, despite that the game is not advertised as a faster version. It has also lead to many of the game's design flaws.
   • There are no houses, only hotels, despite the many strategies that can be used with houses, and that hotels are meant to be worked for in order to be earned, such as by placing four houses on one property.
   • The railroads are gone, despite their power in synergies without houses when multiple railroads are owned. In their places, simple images of locomotives are present, and when those spaces are landed on, they instead take the landing piece to the next railroad space, ending the turn.
   • The utilities are wholly absent; there is no trace of them on the board, neither are they replaced.
   • The income tax and luxury tax spaces are gone, too.
   • Free parking has been changed to instead let the player draw a chance or a community chest card. It now gives no cash.
   • Some properties are valued less. For example, the States Avenue property is only worth 20 Monopoly Dollars, one third of the usual price of the Mediterranian Avenue property, which is supposed to be the cheapest property due to it being the first one. The Pennsylvania Avenue property is free.
   • The mortgaging system is absent despite that it can save players from bankruptcy.
4. The cheats are also unbalanced. In general, getting away with a cheat is not the only reward for succeeding, successful cheaters also gain extra rewards, like more money. What consitutes a cheat, an attempted cheat, or an accidental cheat is not specified. Too many hotels are also rewarded for cheating, meaning that cheating for free hotels risks being more practical than buying hotels. Players are also punished for calling someone out for the wrong cheat, so the Extra Allowance cheat can be confused with the Bank Heist cheat, for example.
   • Identity Theft: At the start of your turn, you can move another player's piece instead of your own. The problem is that you may move someone's piece by accident, and the punishment for getting caught is that the target of your cheat gets their piece back to its original position, and then they can move your piece anywhere on the board, and there's the risk of it ending up on the property with the highest value.
   • Escape Artist: You can take off the handcuff when you are in jail. The issue is that whenever you want to take the handcuff off, even for a break without meaning to cheat, people will farm punishing you. The punishment is that the player, who catches you removing the handcuff, gets 100 Monopoly Dollars from you. This cheat is also the only reason why the handcuff is present.
   • Extra Allowance: You can collect 300 Monopoly Dollars when you pass Go. There is no designated banker in this game, instead the bank tray is passed between players so that a player gets the tray on their turn. The sad thing is that people will closely watch what you are doing with the bank, making it hard to perform the cheat. Why the cheat specifically allows and involves 300 Monopoly Dollars, and not any other amount, is unknown. The punishment is severe too, and it is to put all the money back in the bank, and hand 50 Monopoly Dollars to each opponent. This cheat is too similar to the Bank Heist cheat, that lets players steal money from the bank at any time instead of when passing Go.
   • Property Swap: You can swap one of your properties for one owned by another player or by the bank. How this gets flawed is that players, on a break from the table, are at a disadvantage by people who swap all their stuff. The targets of the cheat have to memorize all of their properties and correctly guess which players have performed the cheat. The reward is getting to place a free hotel on one's new property.
   • Surprise Demolition: One can remove another player's hotel from their property. This is another cheat that can be done accidentally, such as by nudging the board with the handcuffs. This cheat's punishment is paying 100 Monopoly Dollars to the player whose hotel has been moved, and then going to jail.
   • Price Gouging: A player can secretly charge someone more rent than they owe. It's hard to memorize what the appropriate rent is, since there are 22 properties, each with three different rent charges depending on how they are owned. A unentertaining solution would be to ask the other player, "can I see the Title Deed card?", everytime the piece lands on the latter's property. This cheat risks slowing the game down, despite the game meaning to be faster than regular Monopoly.
   • Slippery Deed: One can steal a Title Deed card from another player or from the bank. It is easy to steal properties from the bank and from players with many properties, and the strange reward is the ability to place a hotel on the new property, for free. It is also another cheat that is unfair towards players on a break, since when they come back, they could find their properties stolen, complete with hotels being built on them.
   • Shortchanged: When change is owed to another player, the owing player can secretly give them less than they owe. The reward is not only the saved money, it is also to collect 100 Monopoly Dollars from the bank.
   • Counterfeit Chance: Instead of doing what is written on a drawn Chance card, what the player wants can be done instead. There are sixteen Chance cards, assuming that "what the player wants" can only be the effects of those cards, and that is not easy to memorize. This can be countered when another player asks: "can I see the Chance card?"
   • Unlicensed Contractor: A player can place a hotel, either from the bank or from another player's property, onto anyone of the former's properties. Another cheat that is unfair against players on a break. It can also be done by buying hotels in a bulk and secretly stealing one more.
   • Bank Heist: Money can be stolen from the bank. Any amount. An easy cheat to pull off, and the reward is that all players give the cheating player 100 Monopoly Dollars "out of admiration".
   • Free Stay: The rent for a property can be skipped out. The reward is to take the Title Deed card for that property.
   • Squatter's Rule: Rent can be collected for another player's property. Can happen accidentally when the collected rent overlaps with the rent from another property. The punishment is to pay the owner face value for the property, and then go to jail, but the reward is getting to take the Title Deed card for that property.
   • Trick Dice: Players, on their turn, can move as many spaces as they want. The unusual reward is taking 200 Monopoly Dollars from the bank, in addition to staying where the piece is.
   • Pickpocket: One can steal money from another player. The weird reward is the ability to, on the cheater's next turn, buy the least expensive unowned property.
5. While the concept of having cheats be a feature in Monopoly can be appealing (and works as a marketing tactic), it can already be done in a regular game of Monopoly, and Monopoly Cheaters Edition comes with an alternative game mode, called "Ultimate Cheater's Mode", where players can cheat how they want to, making the game's sense of cheating less useful since that game mode is how people usually cheat in Monopoly.

Redeeming Quality

1. The game's design is creative. The board looks like a darker version, with vibrant colors and a neon aesthetic, with cards having a rough and gritty design.

Trivia

• Despite the game having less content than regular Monopoly, it tends to costs more than the regular game.