by Jules Lister

Created on: July 08, 2009

Having grown up in the age before everything came on a Play Station or some form of far eastern hand held electronic game device, we spent our time in the world of card and board games to entertain ourselves. As with many millions of people we played the traditional version of the classic Monopoly but we did find some other versions that were excellent alternative versions that perhaps not many people are so aware of.

As we know there are many versions of the classic Monopoly but there are three in particular that we came across that we're very much better than the normal themed ones and if you are a board playing type of person then you may very well be interested in hearing about them.

Growing up on a Farm many years ago we were enthralled to find the the then successful Ford Motor Company, who also made very commercially successfully tractors actually released a board game amongst all this way back in 1973. The game was called 'Agrihazard' and was a Farming version of the game were the player's buy and sell farms, stock them with sheep, cattle and tractors, grow crops and sell their produce at market and each circuit of the board represented a full year. Unfortunately I have not been able to find anywhere that stocks or has this brilliant version today, which is a great shame.

The second version I came across which was better known was called 'Poleconomy' a much more advanced version of the traditional game. Here the players bought companies on a double circuit board. The game actually had three levels starting with the basic, (Very straight forward and easy to play) followed by the full basic and then finally advanced, In the latter you could form political parties and control the inflation index which raised or lowered the value of the properties in the game. I still have this game and many people who have been round and we have dug this out find it much more entertaining than the normal Monopoly, although it is better if there are three or more players involved as two can become a little one sided!

Finally a friend of mine gave me a different version that was called 'Anti-Monopoly and as the title implies this game is about breaking the big monopolising companies rather than building up properties with houses and hotels as per the original game. Takes a bit of understanding but once you master the idea of the game it is extremly good fun and different to play.

I could expand out on the rules and objectives of the games but then there are various resources out there in the big wide world of the Internet where you can go and have a peek for yourself, or even better pull a little cash from your wallet and set about having a go with them yourself.

If you are interested then you will be pleased to know that both 'Poleconomy' and 'Anti-Monopoly' can still be bought today from places such as Amazon but regrettably I think only those of us who found ourselves lucky enough back then will have the pleasure of playing the 'Agrihazard' version.

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