That’s right folks, the only meaningful industry is bacon! At least, that seems to be the premise of Bacon-Opoly, where you’ll make or break your fortune on the profitability of pork.
As the name implies, this is one of the many Monopoly variants. Given how prolific Monopoly is, I don’t feel I need to go too deeply into the mechanics, but for anyone who hasn’t played, a brief overview: dice determine movement. When you land on a space, you play out its effect; if that space is a property and it’s unowned, you may choose to buy it, while if it’s already owned by someone else you have to pay them rent. If you have all the properties in a color-coded set, you can develop them (houses and hotels in Monopoly, pounds of pork and smokehouses here) to charge more outrageous sums for your product. You can also mortgage your properties in a pinch, when you need more cash. The goal is to bankrupt all the other players… or survive until everyone else gets bored and forfeits. That’s usually how I win!
This game took the bacon theme and went “how far can we run with it?” Instead of $200 for passing Go, you get $200 for passing Sizzle. Jail is Burnt, visiting is Just Crispy. There’s a card where you have to say the Pledge of Allegiance… to a bacon-eater’s guild. Our most frequently used player tokens are the skillet, the bacon strip, and the pig. And the properties are all some sort of bacon. Which, I mean, some of them sound good – Bacon Wrapped Filet, Cheesy Bacon Popcorn, Bacon Bits… and then there’s the more questionable enterprises. Bacon Floss. Bacon Bandages. Chocolate Covered Bacon On A Stick. And Bacon, Ohio, which is an actual place, and while that’s not a problem, I have no idea how you’re supposed to buy and own a whole city. Or loan it. Why is it only $22 to rent?!
The photo above has been fondly titled “Many, Many Mortgages.” It’s what one’s side of the board looks like when they are losing. On the bright side, though, the mortgage face of each property has a snippet about the product! Or city, in Bacon, Ohio’s case. Some of them are more informative than others (while the Bacon Bandages description just reminds me of Sokka from Avatar: The Last Airbender) but they’re all fun to read. There are also a handful of (multiple choice) bacon trivia cards in the Cured & Smoked deck, which are surprisingly educational! …and the fact that I’ve played this game enough to have them all memorized is possibly a little concerning, but oh well. Bacon!
