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Strategy board games online: why trading is where a property game is really decided

Ahmed Moaz ·

Strategy board games online usually promise that your choices matter more than your luck. In a property game the dice move your token, and that is all they do. What decides the game is who ends up holding which cities, and the only way to change that on purpose is to trade. After building Property Rush, I am convinced that trading is the strategy layer, and everything else is the setting it plays in.

What does one trade actually change?

It changes who can build. Hold the full set of cities in one country and the base rent of each doubles at once: in Italy, Venice and Milan go from 10 to 20 and Rome from 12 to 24. You also gain the right to put houses there, and nobody else does. Hold two of the three and you have neither.

So a lone city is a small thing. It collects a little rent, and mostly it blocks. The final missing city of a country is a big thing, to whoever completes it. That gap between what a city is worth to its holder and what it is worth to a rival is what every deal is made of.

What kinds of trade are there?

I see three, and each has a different purpose.

  1. The completion swap. Each side finishes a country, and both come out ahead.
  2. The refusal. You keep a lone city precisely because it stops a rival from building, and you ask a high price to let it go.
  3. The rescue. Your cash has run out, so you sell a city to a rival who wants it. The rules help here: a player below zero can still trade.

An offer can hold cash, cities and pardon cards on either side. One rule limits it. A city cannot be traded while any city in its country carries buildings, so you must sell those first.

How do you know what a country costs you?

Price the rent you will pay later. Boardit lets you read every rent ladder on the board before you decide, and the ladders are steep. On Giza, three houses lift the rent from 6 to 270. Cairo goes from 8 to 300.

Now add traffic. In my run of three million single-token turns, Egypt's three cities drew 6.8% of all stops. Put three houses on every one, and the rents average 280, so each turn you take costs you about 19 on average. With hotels the figure is 38.73. Sell a rival Egypt and, over twenty of your own turns, you can expect to hand back several hundred.

That is a floor for your price, not the whole story. The rival also gains a country to build on, and the bank starts with just thirty-two houses and twelve hotels. Someone who builds first can leave the others waiting for pieces.

When is yes the right answer?

I use three questions.

If the answers are good, say yes quickly. Offers can be made at almost any time, so a slow answer can be overtaken by a rival's better one.

Why does this make it a strategy game?

Because nothing is hidden. Every holding and every cash total is in the open, and the dice are the only unknown. The deals are the part of the game that luck cannot take from you. A player with poor rolls and a sharp offer can still end up with the country that matters.

A property trading game also gives you a reason to talk. Trades happen between people, so the fun of it is reading a rival's need and finding the price that works for both of you.

What goes wrong at the table?

Three mistakes are easy to make.

  1. Selling the final missing city to the leader for a modest sum.
  2. Completing your own country by overpaying so much that you cannot afford a single house.
  3. Letting a good offer sit while you think about the dice.

Where to practise

Property Rush is an independent Monopoly alternative, free in a browser, and a fine table for practising the art online with friends. Start with one honest swap that finishes both countries. Everything else in the strategy is a refinement of that.

Boardit is not affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro.

Ahmed Moaz builds Boardit, a free browser game site.