Monopoly anyone?

After a month of home isolation in support of keeping away from Covid-19, I was flabbergasted when Christine suggested we try a game of Monopoly – this has never happened before! But wait, this isn’t the old Monopoly that is banned from SBGA for the reasons you know – too long, and players being ousted from the game with nothing to do. This is Monopoly Here & Now World Edition.
It retains many of the features of the old Monopoly, but there are quite significant differences – some of you might be familiar, but it was a surprise to me. Here is a summary of what it’s about:

– There the same number of squares around the board, but labelled with city names from around the world.
– There is a maximum of only 4 players (or teams)
– The familiar Monopoly money is still used, but only in $20, $100 and $500 denominations.
– Chance is still there with similar penalties and bonuses.
– Community Chest is replaced by Here & Now cards with different actions, and they’re kept till needed.
– There are no railway stations or utility squares, but there are a couple of airport squares that allow you (for a $100 fee) to fly direct to any other square and buy it.
– There are no real estate cards, instead there is one plastic token per property, the more valuable the property, the larger the token – and this counts in reaching the end game and winning.
– There are no houses or hotels.
– Each player has a “passport” which is a plastic holder for property tokens. As one buys properties, the tokens are slotted in order into one’s passport.
– As usual, landing on someone else’s property incurs a rent payment, and the rent is doubled if the owner also owns the rest of that colour group.
– There are 4 “first class” squares on which one can buy a first class stamp token for $100, these count in building up one’s passport.
– There are two dice, and one of them has its “1” dot replaced by a handshake symbol. If that symbol is rolled, one can elect not to move one’s piece, instead, one can swap the last token added to one’s passport with the last token of anyone else.
– Here’s the biggest difference: as one collects properties and first class stamps, adding their tokens to one’s passport, the first player to fill that passport is the winner – game over! …and much more quickly than classic Monopoly. Note that more valuable properties with larger tokens fill the passport more effectively than less valuable smaller tokens.

We played it as two players, and it finished far too quickly, a simple race to buy properties which are plentiful for just two players. We then tried it as doubled – two passports each and double the money at the start. That was much more interesting, as there are just enough properties to almost fill 4 passports, so more turns are needed to finish.

We could consider this as a backup teams game – I think it’s too short for a main game.