Kulkmann´s Gamebox - Monopoly Worldcup Edition 1998

MONOPOLY WORLDCUP EDITION 1998

Author: unknown

Publisher: Parker 1998

Awards: none

EVALUATION

Why just building houses and hotels on simple building sites ? Now Monopoly-Players are free to enjoy Monopoly in the new thrilling atmosphere of the Soccer World Cup...

In Soccer-Monopoly, the players don´t buy streets anymore. Now they can decide to buy national teams of 22 nations from all the world: From Uruguay to Germany, from England to Mexico - all great soccer nations are present on the board for Soccer-Monopoly. Since national teams don´t need houses and hotels, these are replaced by spectator stands and stadiums. Like in "normal" Monopoly, the owner of a group of national teams may buy up to 5 spectator stands for each of his teams - and when he buys the 5th one all of these stands are replaced by a stadium.

Soccer-Monopoly comes with the standart Monopoly-Rules, but the outer appearance of the game has been totally re-arranged in order to convey a fitting soccer atmosphere. The random event cards now show events from the life of soccer, making a red-carded player go directly to Jail in order to cool down or giving a bonus for finding a new sponsor. The playing pieces aren´t anymore Hat and Ship, but they now were replaced by small soccer items like a Goal, a Shoe, the Ball or the Fifa-Worldcup. Even the dice have been changed, beeing no more six-sided but 12-sides and coloured like a soccer ball. To give an additional enhancement to the atmosphere, the inside of the gamebox has been shaped to match a stadium, which now can be used to roll the dice in a "proper setting".

Apart from the changes to the outer appearance of the game, the basic Monopoly-concept has remained exactly unchanged. The national teams with spectator stands and stadiums take exactly the same entrance fee like the house´s and hotel´s rent in basic Monopoly. But a change of rules isn´t the fascinating fact of this new edition. I think it´s most entertaining to go for a game of Monopoly in a new setting. The new Sports-spirit of the game is directly passed on to the players, and thus even an old classic like Monopoly may become an addictive game once more...

G@mebox Special - World Cup Rules

The rules of Soccer-Monopoly can be slightly changed in order to give the game an even better atmosphere of World Cup Soccer. By introducing regular tournaments, the ownership of a nation becomes much more important. In the build-up phase of the game, you need only to place the playing piece of the Fifa World Cup as an additional piece at "Start". Each turn, the last player moves the figure of the cup forward for one space.

If the cup reaches a stadium (former train-station), a World Cup Tournament takes place. A die is rolled and the result of the roll indicates from which group of teams the winner of the World-Cup comes.

1	The winner comes from the first row of nations: Scotland, Switzerland, Romania, Chile and Mexiko.
2	The cup is won by a team from the second row: Belgium, Austria, Tschech Republik, Netherlands, Poland and Hungary.
3,4	One of the stronger teams from the third row wins: Yugoslavia, France, Sweden, Uruquay, Russia and Spain.
5,6	A champion is dawn from the fourth row: England, Argentinia, Italy, Germany and Brasil.

After the group of teams from which the winner comes has been found, the die is rolled again and the winner is simply counted off (on a row with only 5 nations the die is rolled again on a roll of "6").

The owner (if any) of the winning team gets an attractive benefit:

If the winner comes from 1st or 2nd row, the owner gets 5000 Money or two additional spectator stands for the Cup Winner.
If the Cup is won by a team from 3rd or 4th row, the owner gets 4000 Money or one additional spectator stand for the Cup Winner.

If the owner of the team choses additional spectator stands, he may place those ignoring the normal placement rules. Thus he may place for example an additional stand at the blue nation Brasil without owning Germany.

In addition, the owner of the stadium in which the World Cup takes places gets 500 Money.

I think these rules make it interesting for the players to keep "good" teams without owning other teams of the same colour. To win the World Cup means a great financial aid for a player, and the possibility to build stands on the Cup Winner makes the game even more fascinating. It even becomes easier to fix an ending to the game: Just say that the game should end after, for example, 8 World Cup Tournaments.

Go for the Cup !!!


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Kulkmann@aol.com Copyright © 2006 Frank Schulte-Kulkmann, Essen, Germany