Draft:Oneupmanship (game)

• Comment: Tip that is also useful when writing essays for school: Try to avoid using the word "you" or "your". For the gameplay section instead try using words like "The player", "Player", "a player", "they", or "their". Shadow311 (talk) 00:15, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

---

Oneupmanship: Mine's Bigger

"Show me a good loser and I'll show you a real loser."
Designers	Timothy Cataldo
Publishers	Oneupmanship
Publication	October 30th, 2013
Languages	English
Players	2-4
Playing time	90 minutes
Age range	12+
Skills	Trading, Auctioning, Negotiation, Strategy
Website	oneupmanship.com

Oneupmanship, officially called Oneupmanship: Mine's Bigger was a board game created in 2013 that was self-published and funded on Kickstarter as a "satirical game about money, power, ego and nerve". A partner of the game stated that the inspiration behind Oneupmanship was based around a competition between buying yachts, and wanted to transform the competitive betting and buying of items into a board game.

Description

Oneupmanship is a board game that plays similar to Monopoly. It has a square board with properties on it, several unique spaces on the corners, and cash. The goal of Oneupmanship is to "one-up all of the other players in the game".

Components

Oneupmanship comes packed with:

• 32 "money" cards
• 16 building blocks
• 12 "B" stickers
• 6 star trophies
• 6 company stock cards
• 4 real estate deeds
• 4 pawns
• 2 dice
• 1 20" by 20" game board
• Instructions
• Stock Market Indicator
• Oneupmanship money
• The bitter pills
• A "cheat sheet"

Gameplay

The player who has the most US money would go first. The player would then roll 2 dice to see how far the player would go, starting at his or her individual start place, and going in the direction that that properties' arrow is pointing. When a player lands on a regular property space, the said player must move the stock market indicator's arrow left and right by how many times it says on the property. If the player wants to buy shares from a property, the player can pick up a card from the company on the property and place it near them. If they don't buy it while on a regular property space, they must pick up a "money" card. The next player clockwise would then go. If a player lands on a "real estate" spot, the stock moves like the property spaces, however, the player could buy it for the price listed, and said player could build as many stories on that space, and any other player that goes on said space would have to pay as much that is listed.

If a player lands on a Shareholder Meeting property, the player must buy at least 1 more of that stock, and the said player must roll 1 die. Multiply the number of shares that the player has by the number on the die gives them how many shares of said company they have now. Passing a bonus space would give the player that much money listed on the space.

The Bitter Pills

The Bitter Pills were pills that the loser of the game could take. It would remove all properties of the one who took the pills, and set your cash to 0, and would also do this to the player that just won. The player that just won could not decline a restart of the game after someone took the bitter pills. Labels were placed on the bitter pills mocking players that would take the pills and would restart the game. The Bitter Pills apparently contained no nutritional information.

Reception

One critic expressed that he could not think "how any human being alive would want to play it."

Tom Vasel, from the Dice Tower channel, uploaded an infamous review about Oneupmanship saying that "this is NOT how to design a game", and leaving tips for future game designers about how to improve, also mocking the game by saying that "...why did you make everything so boring? Why does it look like you used [Microsoft] Word?", and especially commenting about the game about the bitter pills, and how that it is "the dumbest rule in board gaming dumbness, ever... ...and I think that rule may qualify for the "punch a friend in the face while wearing iron knuckles, multiple times.""

A blog on the Old's Cool Company site by Timothy Cataldo, designer of Oneupmanship would state that he had been "raped on the internet, figuratively speaking". He explains the troubles he had after his work got "publicly humiliated" after Tom Vasel's video of Oneupmanship got over 100,000 views. He would claim that the fanbase behind Dice Tower would make fake comments about Cataldo and his family. A thread would state that Timothy Cataldo was being called "recalcitrant, incorrigible, fatuous, and sophomoronic."

Michael Martelli said on the Old's Cool website that Oneupmanship "reminds me of Monopoly with a lot more depth, a lot more challenges, and a lot more nuance. If you like a fun, cutthroat game with an economic theme, then this is definitely a game you would enjoy. I highly recommend it!"

Supposedly, one customer played the game, and later burned it, and posted it on BoardGameGeek.