Kulkmann´s Gamebox - Star Wars Monopoly

STAR WARS MONOPOLY

Author: unknown

Publisher: Parker 1998

Awards: none

EVALUATION

The Empire strikes back !!!

But this time it enters an open battle of production against the Heroes from the Rebellion. Both sides now try to acquire crucial planets in order to build shipyards there, contributing to a giant Armada ready to cause great economical loss to their opponents. Like in classic Monopoly, all players begin the race for the stars at "Start" with a marginal budget to gain planets and build spaceships. During the game, the players get more and more bases and start building ships there. But beware if another player is daring enough to visit a planet with an enemy´s fleet: This visit may prove to be a catastrophe since the defending fleet will cause great financial damage to the "visitor".

Star Wars Monopoly doesn´t introduce any new rules to the standart game of Monopoly, but its undeniable high fascination factor results from the new design of the game. The gameboard was rearranged to fit into the Star Wars Universe, showing sites on planets like Dagobah, Hoth, Tatooine, Yavin Four, Bespin, Death Star, Endor and Coruscant (the Imperial Capital). These planets are illustrated with scenes from the movies, thus giving a short "synopsis" of the Star Wars Triology. The Train Stations had been replaced by spaceships, and instead paying taxes players now have to pay landing fees to Spaceports or bribes to Bounty Hunters. The random event cards now depict scenes from Star Wars, so a "Princess Leia"-card will allow you to escape from prison or a "Traktor Beam" from the Death Star will pull you back 3 spaces.

Of great importance for the look of the game are the new playing pieces. Houses have become small plastic blocks depicting X-Wing Fighters ot Tie-Fighters (depending on the alignment of the player), and Hotels have become Star Destroyers and Corelian Freighters. Most beautiful are the figures for the players. Princess Leia, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, R2-D2, Darth Vader, Boba Fett and a Stormtrooper are included as finely shaped lead miniatures. And finally the game contains 5 Imperial Coins, each being worth 20000 Credits.

I think the game is a "must" for a Star Wars Fan ! It´s beautifully designed and it takes Star Wars into a grand new atmosphere of gaming.

G@mebox Special - Battle of the Stars

Here you have a possibilitiy to expand the rules of the game, making use of all these beautiful new playing pieces. Since players build spaceships during the game it should be possible to use this spaceships for attack as well as defense.

For this variant of the game, the basic rules remain nearly unchanged. So you have to own all sites on a planet in order to start building ships, and you have to distribute the ships equally among your bases. The only exception is that 1 Fighter may be built at any site, regardless of the ownership for the whole planet.

The new part of the game is the so-called "Attack Mode". Whenever you land on a site you own which contains spaceships, you may decide to send spaceships form this site (NOT from the whole planet) against another site in order to decimate ships there. Restricted by the number of ships available at your site, you may decide if you want to send 1, 2, 3 or 4 Fighters or a Capital Ship (Star Destroyer or Corellian Freighter). After deciding the number of ships to send, you chose a target site to strike against.

The arising battle is solved by the following rules: Both, attacker and defender, have to calculate their combat strenght:

Attacker: CombatStrength = Number of attacking Fighters (or a value of 6 if attacking with a Capital Ship) + 1 roll of the die - distance (see Distance Chart).
Defender: CombatStrength = Number of defending Fighters (or a value of 6 if defending with a Capital Ship) + 1 roll of the die (regardless whether he has any spaceships !)

Distance Chart
	Dagobah, Hoth	Tatooine, Yavin Four	Bespin, Death Star	Endor, Coruscant
Dagobah, Hoth	1	2	3	4
Tatooine, Yavin Four	2	1	2	3
Bespin, Death Star	3	2	1	2
Endor, Coruscant	4	3	2	1

The victor of the battle is the player who receives the higher result. A tie means that there is no winner.

If the defender wins the battle, the attacker has to remove Fighters according to the difference between his CombatStrenght and the defender´s CombatStrenght. If the attacker attacks with a Capital Ship and loses, any result will cause the loss of the WHOLE ship !
If the attacker wins the battle, the defender has to remove Fighters according to the differenve between his Combatstrength and the attacker´s CombatStrenght. If defending with a Capital Ship, the defender loses the WHOLE capital ship. If there is any damge left after removing the defending ships, the defender has to pay 1000 Credits to the Bank for any damage point (Up to a maximum of the site´s value). If he cannot pay or doesn´t want to pay, the site becomes neutral again.

Example: An attacker from Joda´s Hut at Dagobah comes with a Capital Ship to attack Jabba´s Palace on Tatooine which is defended by 1 Fighter. The defender rolls a "2", leaving him with a CombatStrenght of 3. The attacker rolls a "4", leaving him with a CombatStrenght of 8. The defender loses with 5 points difference. He removes his Fighter, leaving him with 4 points difference. For each remaining point the defender has to pay 1000 Credits to the Bank, which would mean he has to pay 4000 Credits. But since Jabba´s Palace is only worth 3200 Credits, the defender has only to pay 3200 Credits. If he cannot or doesn´t want to pay it, Jabba´s Palace becomes neutral again.

Long lives the Empire !


Looking for this game? Visit Funagain Games!

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

G@mebox Special - Battle of the Stars

Distance Chart