There’s a time and a place for bonding. For laughter. For shared experiences and warm memories. Board game night is not that time.

Board games are not about fun. They’re about power, psychological warfare, and the quiet thrill of watching someone you love unravel over a handful of paper money and a misused “Q” in Scrabble.

If you want to win—and we mean really win—you’ll need to throw kindness, subtlety, and emotional stability straight in the bin. Let’s begin.

1. Choose Your Weapon Wisely

The first step in any campaign of recreational devastation is selecting the right battlefield. Different games, different damage.

• Risk – A world conquest simulator dressed as a board game. Watch alliances crumble faster than your opponent’s fragile ego. Ideal for friend groups with unresolved tension and passive-aggressive tendencies.
• Monopoly – The ultimate test of capitalist cruelty. Pretend it’s just a light-hearted game about buying property. Actually, it’s about draining every last pound from your opponents while maintaining the smile of a well-fed loan shark.
• Scrabble – A game for word lovers. Also, for people who enjoy delivering psychological papercuts with obscure two-letter words. Use “za” and watch your opponent briefly reconsider every life decision that brought them to this moment.

2. Master the Art of Weaponised Rules Lawyering

You don’t need to cheat. You just need to know the rules so intimately that they become a weapon of mass irritation.

“Technically, in Risk, you can’t fortify from South America to Asia unless you control Europe, but sure, go ahead… if we’re playing the casual way.”

In Monopoly, wield the rules like a fiscal blade:

“Actually, any property not bought when landed on is immediately auctioned off. Shall we start the bidding at £1?”

The key is to say it nicely, while radiating the smug energy of someone who once read the instruction manual for fun.

3. Feign Innocence While Executing Ruthless Strategy

Smile. Laugh. Say things like:

“Oh no, I didn’t mean to land there!”
Then bankrupt them anyway.

In Risk, offer a ceasefire. Then invade the moment they turn their attention to Australia.
In Monopoly, pretend to be unsure about a trade—then flip the board with glee when they realise you’ve just completed the orange set and now own three railways and half of central London.

It’s not just strategy. It’s theatre.

[mid_ad]

4. Monopoly: The Quiet Horror of Watching AJ Wright Work the Board. Again.

Every group has someone who’s suspiciously good at one game. The person who doesn’t raise their voice, doesn’t trash talk, doesn’t even roll with particular flair—just slowly, methodically destroys you with devastating efficiency.

That’s untypicable’s very own AJ Wright in Monopoly.

They won’t beg. They won’t bargain. They’ll just sit there in saintly silence, quietly amassing properties like a Victorian landlord on a mission.

The orange set? Gone. The railways? Gone. The utilities? Somehow in their pocket too, and probably turning a better profit than British Gas.

By the time you realise what’s happening, they’ve got a hotel on Strand, and you’re mortgaging Old Kent Road to pay the rent. You try to offer Whitechapel Road and a utility in exchange for not dying inside.
They decline. Gently. Almost apologetically.

It’s like being mugged by someone offering you a cup of tea afterwards.

5. Scrabble: For When You Want to End Friendships via Vocabulary

Scrabble is a game for logophiles. And also for people who enjoy passive-aggressively undermining their friends’ GCSE English grades.

“Qi” on a triple word score? That’s not a win. That’s a hate crime in 17 points.

Best tactics:

• Use the word “za” and act like it’s just common knowledge.
• Casually ask if they’d like a dictionary. Not because you think the word is wrong, but “just to help.”
• Pretend “zoot” is a completely normal British term. If they challenge it and lose? Even better.

Bonus points for saying “You were so close that time!” when someone plays “CAT” for 5 points and cries a little inside.

6. Risk: Start Global. Get Petty.

You don’t really know someone until you’ve watched them throw their entire army into Kamchatka because you betrayed them in South America three turns ago.

Risk teaches geography, sure—but mostly it teaches grudges.

Top tactics:

• Form alliances with weaker players. Then destroy them.
• Pretend to forget who attacked who first.
• Say, “I’m just spreading out” while parking 20 troops on their doorstep.

War crimes? No. Just aggressive friendship management.

7. The Aftermath: Own Your Victory. Smugly.

Once the emotional dust has settled and someone’s flipped the Monopoly board (again), you must embrace your role as The Victor.

Things to say as you collect the final rent or claim the last territory:

• “That was so close!” (It wasn’t.)
• “I thought you had me at one point!” (They didn’t.)
• “Just lucky, I guess.” (You were not.)

Smile. Offer them crisps. Ask if they want to play again. Watch them wrestle with the desire to say yes just so they can destroy you next time.

8. Bonus: Rebuild Friendships with Something Cooperative… Then Ruin That Too

Just when they think it’s safe again—suggest a cooperative game.

Pandemic? “Let’s save the world together!”

Cue you refusing to share information, going rogue with your medic, and watching London burn to the ground while yelling “I HAD A PLAN!”

Friendship partially restored. Then razed to the ground. Perfect.

Winning Is Temporary. Humiliation Is Forever.

You didn’t set out to ruin friendships. But if someone can’t handle you financially dismantling them on Pall Mall, can you really call them a friend?

The mark of true friendship is being able to survive a 9-hour Monopoly session, three betrayal-fuelled Risk invasions, and an “XU” on a double letter score… and still share a bag of crisps at the end.

If they can’t? You win again.

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James Henshaw

James Henshaw is a brooding Geordie export who swapped the industrial grit of Newcastle for the peculiar calm of Lincolnshire—though he’s yet to fully trust the flatness. With a mind as sharp as a stiletto and a penchant for science-tinged musings, James blends the surreal with the everyday, crafting blogs that feel like the lovechild of a physics textbook and a fever dream.

Equally at home dissecting the absurdities of modern life as he is explaining quantum theory with alarming metaphors, James writes with the wit of someone who knows too much and the irreverence of someone who doesn’t care. His posts are infused with a dark humour that dares you to laugh at the strange, the inexplicable, and the occasionally terrifying truths of the universe—whether it’s the unnerving accuracy of Alexa or the existential menace of wasps.

A figure of mystery with a slightly unsettling edge, James is the sort of bloke who’d explain the meaning of life over a pint, but only after a dramatic pause long enough to make you question your own existence. His wit cuts deep, his insights are sharp, and his ability to make the surreal feel strangely plausible keeps readers coming back for more.

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