Anti-monopoly is a game marred in much controversy. Originally released in 1973 as Bust or Trust, the game quickly changed its name to the Anti-monopoly we know today. The game was created as a stand against the Parker Brother’s Monopoly, a challenge to capitalism and monopolies. Ironically enough this challenge of the Parker Brother’s game led to anti-monopoly’s creator being embroiled in a 10 year legal battle over the marketing of the game which was eventually settled out of court.
Table of Contents
- Who Invented Anti-Monopoly?
- The Original Anti-Monopoly (1973)
- Anti-Monopoly (2005)
- Is Anti-Monopoly Any Good?
Who Invented Anti-Monopoly?
Anti-Monopoly was invented by Professor Ralph Anspach, an economics professor at San Francisco State University. Along with this he created original-opoly and wrote the book The Billion Dollar Monopoly Swindle which detailed his legal battle with the Parker Brothers.
There are actually two Anti-Monopoly games, the original was published in 1973. Later, in 1984, a new version was published called Anti-Monopoly II, which was then re-released in 2015 as Anti-Monopoly (without the II) – confusing I know. We’ll distinguish in the article by using the publishing dates.
The Original Anti-Monopoly (1973)
It’s actually quite hard to find prints of the original Anti-Monopoly, but you can find second hand versions on eBay and in thrift stores.
How to Play
The original game begins in a state of a monopolised board, like a completed game of Hasbro’s version. The monopolist companies are called “company cartels”, like the red auto group or the Green Oil magnates. Players take the role of Federal instigators using the law to break apart the monopolist’s illegal practices.
Landing on a Property
When you land on a property you can place a black accusation counter in a circle on that property for a fee which represents the court and solicitor fees for the action. When you have enough accusations against different properties for a group of company cartels the ‘CASE IS YOURS’ which prevents any other player placing accusations against that company.
You must have the following number of court cases to prevent other players challenging the monopolists you are in court with:
- Oligopoly – 2
- Trust – 3
- Monopoly – 5
Of course the harder the cartel is to topple the more credit points you get for succeeding.
Once you cover all the circles of a cartel you have toppled it and when players land on it they must pay you instead called a “surveillance fee” to ensure the cartel does not continue their monopolistic practices. The size of the fee depends on the tier of the cartel that has been broken.
If you land on a property that is already involved in the case of another player you must pay a fine as you are wasting the courts time for a case that is already being dealt with (the CASE IS THEIRS).
How to Win
The player who is most successful in applying the fair trade laws to the monopolists will be the winner. The score is determined by Fair Trading credit points plus and money at the end of the game.
Fair Trading credits are awarded in the following manner:
- Oligopoly: 450 points
- Trust: 450-1000 points depending on how many circles are covered
- Monopoly: 450 – 1750 points depending on how many circles are covered
While it might seem to be worth always going for Monopolies it takes 9 accusation counters to get the full 1750 points whereas against an Oligopoly you only need 3 accusation counters to get the max points of 450.
Extra Rules
The Original Anti-monopoly is a very long game, at least 2 hours, which increases in length for each player you add. To make the game shorter you may exchange accusation counters if another player has won a case with that player. For example, the red player may exchange two counters with the yellow player if both have won cases against different cartels.
Anti-Monopoly (2005)
The 2005 version of Anti-Monopoly plays more similarly to the original Monopoly game. This is the most common version of the game and still in print.
How to Play
The following section discusses how to play Anti-Monopoly 2005 edition.
Anti-Monopoly Rules
Here’s a PDF link to the rules of Anti-Monopoly.
What is difference between Monopoly and Anti-Monopoly?
Anti-Monopoly plays similar to its namesake, but in this version of the game players are split into monopolists and competitors. Each have different conditions for building upon properties.
Monopolists
Monopolists are only able to build on properties in which they have at least two matching sets and can only build three houses before an apartment. These players generally earn more from rent on properties, but also lose more.
Competitors
Competitors on the other hand are able to build on any property, whether they have a set or not and may build 4 houses before building an apartment. These players receive less money, but also lose less. In addition, it does not matter how many transport companies they own, they will always receive the same rent.
How Much Money do you get in Anti-Monopoly?
The Treasurer will give all players $1500 from the following bank notes:
- 2x $500
- 3x $100
- 2x $50
- 7x $10
- 5x $5
- 5x $1
How to Win Anti-Monopoly
There’s two ways of winning the game. First, you can bankrupt all other players, like in the original monopoly. Second, depends on whether you are a competitor or monopolist.
- Competitor – Be the richest Competitor after Monopolists have been bankrupted
- Monopolist – Be the richest Monopolist after competitors have been eliminated.
Is Anti-Monopoly Any Good?
Anti-Monopoly is more of a political protest than an enjoyable game. It takes a very long time to play and even longer to bankrupt other players. In almost all the distributors I checked it is not advertised as one of their featured games, like University Games in the US. A fair estimate would be less than 10 copies sold on AMZ a month according to jungle scout. In addition, it has a sad score of 3.7 out of 10 on board game geek.
However with a few house rules things can look better. The main gripe people have is that the rules are ill formulised. In Anti-Monopoly II If you adjust starting money between competitors and monopolists and adjust transport prices the game becomes fairer and a bit more playable.
If you’re a collector however, and you manage to get your hand on the original anti-monopoly, you might just have your hands on a piece of history. A game that challenged the best-selling board game in the world.
