Monopoly/Monopoly: The Mega Edition

Monopoly: The Mega Edition is a larger variant of Monopoly, published in the US in 2006 by Winning Moves Games USA. A British version followed the next year.

Equipment and Preparation

The board for the Mega Edition is 30% larger than a standard Monopoly board, incorporating eight new streets (one per colour group), a new utility called the Gas Company, and three new action spaces.

The new streets are as follows:

Colour group	US street	British street
Brown	Arctic Avenue	Elephant and Castle
Light Blue	Massachusetts Avenue	Edgware Road
Pink	Maryland Avenue	Downing Street
Orange	New Jersey Avenue	High Holborn
Red	Michigan Avenue	Aldwych
Yellow	California Avenue	Shaftesbury Avenue
Green	South Carolina Avenue	Saville Row
Dark Blue	Florida Avenue	Knightsbridge

Also introduced are:

• A new card deck, called the Bus Tickets
• Two new types of buildings called skyscrapers and train depots
• The money deck now includes ₩1,000 bills
• A speed die for faster play

The game is set up similarly to standard Monopoly, with the following differences:

• Each player receives ₩2,500 at game start – the normal ₩1,500 plus a ₩1,000 bill
• The Bus Tickets are shuffled and placed in their allocated spot on the board.

The Speed Die

See Monopoly/The Speed Die for details on how to use the Speed Die.

Bus Tickets

If you have one or more Bus Ticket cards in your hand at the start of your turn, you may choose to use one instead of rolling the dice. When you use a Bus Ticket, you may move forward to any space on the edge of the board you are currently on (corners count as the starting and ending spaces for an edge).

When a Bus Ticket is used, it is not placed at the bottom of the deck. It is instead placed in the box and is out of the game.

Some Bus Ticket cards have the words “ALL TICKETS EXPIRE, EXCEPT THIS ONE” on them. When such a Ticket is drawn, every other Bus Ticket drawn but not played (including the other Tickets of the player who drew the expiration Ticket) expires, removing them from the game.

New Action Spaces

Monopoly Mega introduces three new action spaces:

• Auction: This space is located in between Jail and Maryland Avenue/Downing Street. If a player lands here, they must select one unowned property, and that property is auctioned off. If no unowned properties remain, the player advances to the property that would charge the highest rent for them and pays the appropriate amount (if this is a tie, move to the closest one).
• Bus Ticket: This space is located in between Michigan Avenue/Aldwych and the B&O Railroad / Fenchurch Street Station. If a player lands here, they must draw a Bus Ticket. If none remain, the space acts like a second Free Parking space, so nothing happens.
• Birthday Gift: This space is located in between Florida Avenue/Knightsbridge and the red Chance space. If a player lands here, they may choose to take ₩100 from the Bank or draw a Bus Ticket. If no Bus Tickets remain, they must take the ₩100.

Buying and Selling Buildings

Buying buildings in the Mega Edition works as follows:

• Once a player has the majority of streets in a colour set (two for the brown and dark blue sets, and three for the others), they have a partial monopoly and may start buying houses and hotels for that set, following the even building rules of standard Monopoly. Unimproved streets in a partial monopoly have their rent doubled.
• Once you have all of the streets in a colour set, you have a complete monopoly, and rent for unimproved streets in that set is tripled.
• If you have a partial monopoly on a colour set, and you receive the last street in that colour set (by trade or by bankrupting someone) whilst you have buildings present on that colour set, then you must immediately unmortgage that street (if it is mortgaged) and build it up to follow the even building rule. If you cannot afford to do so, you must redistribute the houses between the streets to follow the even building rule (you may need to break down hotels to do this).

As said earlier, Monopoly Mega also introduces two new buildings, skyscrapers and train depots.

• If you have a complete monopoly on a colour set and all the streets in said set have hotels, you may upgrade the hotels and replace them with skyscrapers. The cost is on the title deed. A property with a skyscraper may not be improved further. You may sell a skyscraper to the Bank for half the cost price, reverting it to a hotel.
• You may build a train depot on any railroad you own for ₩100. You do not need to own all 4 to do this. Building a train depot doubles the rent for that railroad (this stacks with the effect of the ‘advance to railroad’ card). Train depots may be sold to the Bank for ₩50.