Games, Games, Games, Vol. 7

27:11Despite the name, this is not a frantic, timer-blaring party game. It's actually a clever, thoughtful puzzle game where you and your friends take on the role of a bomb disposal team. More brainy detectives than action heroes. So each bomb is really a bundle of small logic puzzles that the group works through together. It's a cooperative deduction game wearing a playful cartoon action theme, and it's far calmer and more thinky than you might expect. The box packs 66 different missions in it. They start simply, mission one, kind of teaching you how the game works, and then mission two, mission 10, mission 20.

27:51You can keep going. You're going to be matching shapes. You're going to be matching symbols. There's hidden information. You might be required to put numbers or icons in the right order. On your turn, you're looking over your own hand of cards. They're actually tiles, but they call them cards. And you only know really what you see in your own hand, but you're guessing what other people have, and you're trying to match what you have in your hand. It's almost like going fish and asking if somebody has a seven in their hand. So it goes back to the old game, go fish, but it's a lot more interesting.

28:20there are scenarios later in the campaign that bring a light real-time element so there's a little bit of a quick race to complete a small puzzle but for the most part again this is a thoughtful conversational experience and those missions is how it shines because each game resembles the previous one but they keep changing up the mix and adding again kind of like the game Dorf Romantic there are boxes that you unlock at different points that add some components or little new rule sets Anyway, I would say if you enjoy escape room style puzzles and quiet teamwork, games that deliver great aha moments and let you progress through them sort of a legacy campaign style, Bomb Busters packs it all.

29:03and each game takes around 25 minutes or so. So we're talking about a game, again, a weight of 1.94, and once you learn the rules, you can play it over and over with little tweaks and refreshing changes as you and your friends go. And yeah, it's generally fun to keep the same group of people playing from one session to the next, but you can also drop a player or add a player anywhere along the line. BombBusters is a winner, and I only wish that it were more available. We have had so much fun. I think we're on mission 29 in our family, so we haven't even played half of them, but we've already played 29.

29:40Actually, we played more than 29 times because, of course, when the bomb blows up, you can't take credit for that mission. You have to replay it, and it's still fun to replay because you're basically being dealt a new hand of cards each time you play bomb busters. All right, let's move on now to game number six. lord of the rings fellowship of the ring trick-taking game has a very similar weight 1.95 it costs 27 it's basically a card game it came out in 2024 lord of the rings fellowship of the ring trick-taking game plays one to four players and it takes the familiar structure of classic card game, so you can think hearts or bridge, where each player lays down a card and one card wins the round, but this game flips it into a cooperative experience, because instead of trying to beat each other, you're actually all working together, using your cards to help the Fellowship survive and move forward through Tolkien's classic story.

30:41So in this game, you and your friends play as members of the Fellowship, navigating key moments from the early journey. Yup, book number one, Fellowship of the Ring. In fact, there are two planned expansions, one called The Two Towers coming next, and of course the last, The Return of the King, the three volumes of Tolkien's Lord of the Ring. So this first game is focused just on that first book, Fellowship of the Ring, and each round, really each trick, because this is a trick-taking card game, represents a scene from the story. You're crossing snowy mountains, you're entering Moria, you're escaping the Nazgul, and how you collectively play your cards determines whether things go smoothly or push your group toward danger and failure.

31:25And yes, just like Bomb Busters, if you blow it, you can always just replay the mission and it'll feel different each time because you keep getting a different hand of cards each time. But when you win a mission, you progress to the next one. Now, you can't openly describe the exact cards in your hand, of course, and that creates of fun and subtle tension. When should you win a trick on purpose? Or when should you maybe lose a trick and let your friend, your other member of the fellowship, win that trick on purpose? When should you simply get out of the way? So each chapter gives you a specific objective.

31:59It mixes the characters who are playing, and each character has a different ability as you play your hand of cards. Every card you play becomes a small, meaningful decision. I think what makes this design shine so much It's just how neatly that fragile balance maps onto the structure of a simple card game. Should I win this trick or should I let somebody else win this trick? Trick-taking games are usually competitive, of course, but here you're cooperating. That's happened in a few other games I've loved, like The Crew and The Crew Mission Deep Sea. These are games I've talked about in the past in this series.

32:35The concept of trick-taking games as cooperative is not new with this game, but it is done beautifully. with this game. And of course, Lord of the Rings fans are going to especially enjoy Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring trick-taking game for one to four players. Did archaeologists discover Noah's Ark? Is the rapture coming as soon as the Euphrates River dries up? Does the Bible condemn abortion? Don't you wish you had a trustworthy academic resource to help make sense of all of this? Well, I'm Dan Beecher, and he's award-winning Bible scholar and TikTok sensation, Dr. Dan McClellan. And we want to invite you to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where our mission is to increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and also to combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

33:25But you know, in a fun way. Every week we tackle fascinating topics. We go back to source materials in their original languages. And we interview top scholars in the field. So whether you're a devout believer or you're just interested in a clear-eyed deeply informed look at one of the most influential books of all time we think you're going to love the data over dogma podcast wherever you subscribe to awesome shows all right let's now move on to game number seven we're still under 2.00 weight that's my way of saying i think this year's list tilts a little bit toward light to medium strategy In past years, I've had some real heavyweights tipping my list toward heavy gamers.

34:11I would say this year, we're a little bit more light to medium. And sure enough, game number seven, Rebirth, continues in that same vein. Game came out last year, and it is designed by one of my favorite game designers living today. That's Reiner Knizia, past guests multiple times on this podcast. Reiner delivered this game last year. It plays two to four players, plays each of those ably, two, three, or four players, and this game costs about$42 if you're looking it up online. So game number seven is Rebirth. It's a refreshing spin, I would say, on tile placement. So Reiner Canizzi has designed a lot of tile placement games.

34:50This is Scrabble. If you know Scrabble, it's technically a tile placement game. As you lay out the letters, you are dropping tiles down on a board, and depending on where the tile lands, you might be triggering a double word score or a triple letter score. So that's the concept of tile laying and Reiner has done this with many different types of games and Rebirth is an excellent example. It's inviting players thematically to restore a post-collapse world and bring it back from nature, bring some civilization back. So that's the theme of this game, very positively presented, a quietly hopeful sense of rebuilding.

35:27But what you're really doing is you're drafting and placing terrain tiles. You're flipping up a tile, and you're going to now, you have a hand of one, so you're just basically picking up a tile, and when it's your turn, you'll be laying that tile down, trying to group it near other tiles that would cause it to chain together and score, either individually or towards shared objectives. This is a game that is rewarding sometimes short-term tactics, like I'm glad I picked up that tile right now because that goes perfectly there, or maybe you have a tile that you're playing setting up a longer term scoring arc in the game.

36:04So Reiner as the game designer is rewarding both tactical play as well as some strategic thinking as well. There are some shared objectives. There are different scoring conditions from one game to the next. So you're going to be presented a fresh puzzle each time you and your friends play Rebirth. I can't overemphasize enough perhaps just how simple turns are. You basically draft, you're going to pick up a tile, and then you're just going to place that tile. But there's a rewarding sense of carefully sequencing something that you're going to do on the board as you play through Rebirth. So this is, again, ideal for fans of other nature games.

36:41If you like games like Cascadia, we're going to be talking about another nature game coming up in a little while. This is another one of those strong sense of theme around nature, in this case as a thoughtful tile-laying game. Game number seven, Rebirth. All right, you still with me? All right, gamer, let's keep going. We're on now to game number eight, and yes, we've now tripped over the 2.00 weight parameter. We're now at 2.20 for the game of Forest Shuffle. This game has gotten a lot of play in recent years. I think it first debuted online at Board Game Arena. By the way, if you're a board gamer and you always feel like you can never find enough people to play games with you, check out Board Game Arena.

37:27It's acronym is BGA. To people who play all the time, they just say BGA. But For a Shuffle debuted as a playable game on BGA. At the same time, they started printing cards. So you can play it online or off. And by the way, that is true of so many games today. Many of the games I've already mentioned this week on this show, you can play online instead of buying a boxed version and playing with friends and family. Forest Shuffle is a great example of that. This game came out just two years ago. And by the way, this is one of the cheaper games on my list this year. This game will set you back about$23 when I checked online, which is pretty affordable considering how much play is in the box.

38:07It is a game also that has some mini expansions, each of which I think there are three of them now. I think they've finished expanding it, but each of those expansions is around$12 or$14. So all in, you'd pay about$60 for a full copy with all the expansions. But Forest Shuffle plays two to four players. The theming sounds a little bit like Rebirth, doesn't it? Because you're creating together, you're building a thriving forest ecosystem. But rather than rebirthing something centuries from now, which was the concept, I think, for Rebirth, This one is very much about the here and now. Every card you're looking at, these are actual flora, actual fauna, trees, mammals, insects, fungi, each with its own needs and costs, but also symbioses.

38:54So the tone here of this game is earthy and alive. As your forest spreads, it begins to feel like a real habitat as you build out a tableau in front of you. So you're playing cards here to grow your forest. It's sort of an economic engine builder of a game. The cards empower each other, and especially noteworthy is that many of the cards you play in this game are just trees, many different types of trees, but the key concept of Forest Shuffle is that you can play a card on top of the tree, or below the tree, or to either side. If you think about what kinds of creatures are on tops of trees, well, birds are up there often, or butterflies maybe, and down below, you might find mushrooms or moles, things that dig in the ground, And of course, to the left or to the right, you could play animals, mammals, around your trees as you build out your forest.

39:43So each tree can support four cards around it. And then there's synergy from one card to another or from one tree to another. There's some cool layered combos you can throw down in this game. There's some card costs that you pay. You have to discard cards from your hand in order to play cards each time. That shouts back to a game called Race for the Galaxy, which came out more than 10 years ago. kind of the first really popular game that had you playing a card, but having to pay other cards in your own hand to play that card. So there's a nice tension about which one do I want to play, but if I play that one, I'm going to have to give away these others, and that's satisfying, even if it's somewhat frustrating, game after game.

40:24So Forest Shuffle provides a lot of fun card placement puzzles. Every decision feels consequential. Every forest grows in a uniquely satisfying way. That's game number eight, Forest Shuffle. And let's create what I'll call a nature trifecta then as we go on to game number nine, because we just talked about rebirth and for a shuffle. And game number nine, sticking with the same theme here, is Earth. That's right. That's the full name of the game, Earth. When you search Earth on Amazon, if you're looking for this game, there's a lot of other things that pop up when you type in Earth. So you might want to type in Earth board game just to find it.

41:02It's sort of bold for the designer just to name his game Earth, hoping that it would be found on online searches. And indeed, it has been. This is a game that came out two years ago. Its weight is now 2.90. So we're really bouncing up into the areas of four gamers only for this kind of a game. You're going to want to be an experienced player. You're going to be teaching this game to people who are going to need to listen to you speak for 20 to 30 minutes or more in some cases as you teach the game of Earth, which, by the way, retails for$40, which I consider a heck of a deal because there's usually some kind of correlation between how complicated a game is and then how much it costs.

41:42Often complicated games have a lot of components, a lot of rules or other accessories that are part of that game. And so usually as we start talking about these weightier games, they cost more. Well, this game costs just$40, which I consider quite a deal. So game number nine, yep, Earth plays one to four players. so yes that means it plays solo as well this is one of the most satisfying build it up strategy games to come out in recent years so imagine taking the raw materials of the natural world, plants climates, landscapes and then slowly weaving them together into your own thriving ecosystem for a shuffle, game number 8 had you doing this with your own little forest here you're now working across the whole of earth and its ecosystems This game looks beautiful on the table, by the way, but more importantly, it feels wonderful as your little corner of the world becomes increasingly vibrant and interconnected.

42:38So in Earth, every player starts with an empty board, and you gradually fill it with cards that represent different parts of the natural world. Think of each card like planting something new. So maybe it's a hardy shrub. Maybe it's a marsh. Maybe it's a rainforest vine. and then watch how it interacts with the other things that you've already placed. So you're creating a system here where each part is trying to support another part of the tableau in front of you. And the clever twist is that on your turn, you're actually going to choose one of four simple actions. You don't always just play a card every turn.

43:13There are four different things you can do, but everybody gets to do that action along with you that you chose. Now, you get a stronger version. After all, it's your turn. But a nice innovation here, and it's present in some other games too, is that everyone's playing each turn. Because as you make your choice to do your stronger version, we all get a weaker version. But we also benefit our own ecosystem, our own tableau, with every passing turn. So everyone stays involved. So you're growing out a little 4x4 grid of cards. And it's worth pointing out that cards in the same row, for example, can trigger one another, or cards in the same column they can chain together.

43:53So sometimes when you place a new card, you set off a whole series of small bonuses. It's like a miniature ecological domino effect. You're not just putting down pictures of plants, you're building something that works. This game is, again, highly replayable. It is a delight. It has an excellent new expansion. I think there's a second one on the way. there is enormous replay value in a box of Earth because no two ecosystems end up looking alike. Okay, that's the end of our nature trifecta. You know, games set in nature have been particularly popular. Think about games like Wingspan in recent years.

44:30I think this in some way goes together with a lot of, in some cases, concern or great interest in our planet. So I think all of these games are feeding off of an increasing human interest in planet Earth, how we can do our best taking care of it, its beauties, its eccentricities. There are a lot of games these days. If you go to a gaming store, even Barnes & Noble has a lot of board games. I went in one just over the break. Happy to see my book Rule Breaker Investing in the Barnes & Noble there in West Hartford, Connecticut. But anyway, there are a lot of games these days, even in big bookstores, and a lot of those games have nature as a theme.

45:10So I think that's why I creeped in to my Games, Games, Games Volume 7 this year. Three left, and for these final three, if you're still listening and if you're hearing me right now, clearly you still are, this must mean you are an avid gamer, because we're about to go heavy. Let's go to game number 10, the weight now up to 3.20. This is one of my favorite games of all time that just came out in a brand new final edition this year, and I was so excited when Innovation Ultimate arrived earlier this year, a 2025 release of a game that first came out years ago, but they kept adding new expansions, and then they decided to reprint the whole thing and tweak some of the rules and proved a lot of the clarity around words on cards.

45:57Innovation Ultimate is available, I think I saw it as$67 on Amazon. It plays two to four players. This is a big, wild, wonderfully unpredictable card game about the entire sweep of human history. If you've gotten to know Rule Breaker Investing over the years, you know that I love innovation. Innovation is often, for me, what I seek in the stocks, industry by industry, that I recommend or purchase. I'm always asking, who's the real innovator in that industry? I love innovation, so yeah, I love the game Innovation Ultimate. Now, instead of marching armies or moving pieces on a map, Innovation is a pure card game.

46:38It asks, what if civilization were just a giant tangle of ideas competing, colliding, and occasionally blowing up in your face? This is a bold game. This is a chaotic game. This is a very tactical game. It's hard to have long-term strategy going on as you play Innovation Ultimate. For some people, that'll sound like a lot of fun. For others, they'll think, I like chess. Why would I play this game? I think the reason I love this game is all of the chaining together that happens. There is electricity on a game table with Innovation Ultimate set up on it. So the premise is simple enough. You're guiding your civilization.

47:16You start at the Stone Age, and you're going into the modern world and even beyond. And in front of you, you're building out a tableau of cards that represent inventions, breakthroughs, ways of organizing society. You know, everything from pottery to later democracy to later than that, robotics. Each card does something unique. Playing one often gives you a new ability or power. Every single card has its own thing going on. But the twist is those same ideas can spill over and help your opponents too. So each person is building out their own tableau with their own innovations, but you start to affect each other.

47:54This is a game that definitely has some take that going. You can force an opponent to have to discard their whole tableau if you've nuked them, for example. There are lots of chaotic things that can happen in the game of innovation. The heart of the game, of course, is the way the cards interact. Each card has symbols on it, and if you have more of a symbol than your rivals, then your abilities are going to fire off at full strength. If you have fewer, you might actually get swept up in someone else's dominating invention. You're just constantly adjusting as you push into new eras. you're strengthening your symbol counts you're timing big plays to leap ahead every card in the deck is different and did I mention, I think I did briefly there are five separate expansions in a box of Innovation Ultimate each adds either let's say historical figures or historical artifacts or the world's cities each of these adds something new to the mix Innovation Ultimate is incredibly dynamic one of my favorite game designers Carl Chudik is the genius behind Innovation Ultimate.

48:56You might be behind one moment, but the next you trigger a card and you flip the entire table's fortunes. So it's a rare strategy game where brilliant moves and I would say hilarious disasters can live side by side. If that sounds like fun to you, well, it's a lot of fun for me. It's a card game that feels alive. So fast thinking, surprising twists, the spirit of invention, of course, celebrating innovation as you play. this game truly delivers you a unique ride through all of human history. Innovation Ultimate, game number 10. Alright, on to game number 11, Dune Imperium Uprising. It came out a couple of years ago.

49:37It costs$55, which I consider a pretty great deal. It plays 1-4 players. Yep, it plays solo as well. There's also a 6-player mode that some people enjoy. I would say it's probably best with 3 or 4 The weight of this game is 3.51 This is about a 3 hour game in our experience And I absolutely enjoy every hour of it If you enjoy strategy games with real tension Games where every decision feels like it matters I would say Dune Imperium Uprising is one of the very best out there today It takes the original formula from Dune Imperium This is a game I've talked about in years past on this series really an award-winning modern classic, but Dune Imperium Uprising sharpens it.

50:22More drama, more conflict, more clever decisions packed into every turn. It helped, of course, that the game designer could see what he'd done really well and what could be improved in his first version of the game and then came out with this new standalone follow-up sequel to the game and created, I think, something that's even better. They're both, of course, great. Here's the basic idea, as you might expect. you're one of the leaders vying for power on the planet Arrakis that desert world from Frank Herbert's famous novels the one where spice is everything alliances shift constantly, no one stays on top for long the game blends two concepts in a way that even newcomers I think can understand pretty quickly first there's a deck building aspect again, we're at the point of this podcast where a lot of you still listening already know what deck building is but I feel some compulsion to briefly explain it for those who don't So think of it like drafting a small team of cards over time that within the game itself gives you better and better abilities.

51:23Your abilities keep augmenting over the course of the game. So you're drafting an ongoing team of cards, but then secondarily, there's also worker placement, which is just a fancy way of saying you choose where to send your little pawns, your agents on the board. It's almost like placing pieces on a map, and based on placing it there, you get to take a certain action or claim a certain opportunity. If you'd placed it somewhere else, it would be something different. So there's a great interaction between the deck-building aspect of this game as you build out your deck of cards, and then the workers that you're placing on the planet Dune itself.

52:01Your cards are telling you what spaces you're allowed to visit and what you'll get when you go there. It's just a great dynamic for a board game. and each round builds to a conflict. It's kind of like a showdown at the end of each round. You're going to decide whether sending troops to fight for valuable rewards is worth it this time, or maybe you hold back for future rounds. And Uprising itself, as I'm highlighting this game this year, adds a few new layers to Dune Imperium, the original. Uprising, for players familiar with Dune Imperium, adds giant sandworms that now influence the board, factions stirring rebellion, bigger, more dynamic conflicts that encourage bold moves.

52:42Of course, there are more new types of cards as you refine your deck. That's part of the fun. Of course, removing weak cards from your deck, adding powerful new ones, building the combos. There's just a constant process of engine tuning as you play a game of Dune Imperium Uprising. And I think what makes it shine is just how seamlessly it mixes that personal puzzle of planning your actions with that shared drama of what's happening on the planet, on the board, the battle at the end of each round. So this is a game just full of interesting decisions. I said it takes three hours. That's usually how long it takes us.

53:18But the time really feels like it's flying by. You're deciding when to commit, when to retreat, when to take a risk, when to play it cool. Everyone's competing for key spaces and key battles. So there's rich interaction. But I would also say it's not a mean-spirited game. So if you like strategy games that have depth, that have narrative flavor, of course, if you're a Dune fan, well, that too. And those memorable, I can't believe that just worked or that just happened moments, Dune Imperium Uprising is a standout. That is game number 11. And finally, we get to game number 12. Now, there's a little caveat for this one, because when I went on Amazon, I could not locate this game, in part again, because of its extreme popularity.

54:05This is a game over the last year or so that for very serious gamers, people who love to play games that take more than three hours, who love to spend an hour reading a rules booklet or spending that same hour having somebody else explain how the game works for them, If that's you, then with a weight of 3.81, SETI, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Of course, SETI is the acronym for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. That is game number 12. I really love this game and have admired it since I first played it earlier this year. It retails for about$70. Again, I mentioned I didn't really find it on Amazon, but if you go to Board Game Oracle, you'll see that it is on many sites.

54:51And in fact, it's right there on the publisher's site. And I think if you fall in love with this game or the idea of this game, you should be able to get it in time for the holidays. Asmodee, which is spelled A-S-M-O-D-E-E, Asmodee, the publisher, has it right there available on its website to ship to you. So I'm still including it, even though this game isn't conveniently found on Amazon. So let's talk about game number 12, SETI, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, which, by the way, plays one to four players. If you've ever looked up at the night sky and wondered, what might be out there?

55:26This is a game that lets you step into that question in a big and thoughtful way. So it's combining real science, every single card in the deck, each of which is unique, and there are dozens and dozens of cards in the deck in the game Seti. There's flavor text on each one that just gives you flat-out science that teaches you more about our search for alien life, but it combines that fact-finding, real science aspect with, of course, satisfying decision-making that strategy gamers love. This is a quiet game, this is a methodical game, but it's suspenseful too. And when you finally piece together a true signal from the stars, it feels like a breakthrough.

56:09And sure enough, you will discover two alien species in every game of Seti. It ships with five different species, each of which pops up in the latter half of the game and presents new rules and new strategies and new ways to score points. So in the game of SETI, you're basically running one of several global research agencies trying to be the first to detect that intelligent life beyond our planet. The decisions you make each turn are very thoughtful. You're going to have limited resources, the funding coming in, power needed to power your facilities. You're going to want to have expert advisors as well.

56:46You've got to decide how to use them. And you're always going to want to do more than you have resources to actually be able to do. So one path might focus you on scanning for radio signals. But then again, instead, you might dive deep into astrobiology. There are different research tracts that act like scientific skill trees in this game, which is going to let you customize your approach and chase the kind of breakthroughs that fit your strategy for that particular game. And when you play the next game, there might be different aliens, you might have completely different cards, and a completely new strategy then necessary to play a game that sometimes has taken us as much as four hours to complete.

57:26But again, just like the game of Dune Imperium Uprising, I don't really ever feel like this game outstays its welcome. So if you enjoy science and mystery, if you enjoy worker placement, a concept I mentioned with the previous game, actually there are a lot of different game systems interlocking to make Seti as great as it is. I highly recommend this complex strategy game. I probably would play it with two players the first time that you play in order to keep it a little shorter and just sort of learn the rules together. But this is an example of a game that's going to be played years from now.

57:58It is, I think, another modern classic, and yes, it already has its first expansion on the way available broadly in the year 2026, and I've already pre-ordered the expansion. This is a fantastic epic strategy game. Seti, game number 12. Well, there you have it. I'm briefly just going to call out the names of the games in order, and then let's close with a thought or two. The games I just shared with you for Games, Games, Games, Volume 7, in order, Wavelength. Dorf Romantic Dungeons, Dice, and Danger Far Away Bomb Busters Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring Trick-taking Game Rebirth Forest Shuffle And of course, it's several expansions There's a new standalone version of that game out, by the way, Forest Shuffle Dartmoor.

58:50It's built along the same lines. This is a modern recurring theme where it kind of happened with Dune Imperium Uprising where a popular game is designed and sells really well, and then the designer or publisher decides to make a second version that will stand alone, in some cases correcting problems with the first one, in other cases integrating with that game. Anyway, if you're a huge Forest Shuffle fan, you should know that Forest Shuffle Dartmoor, which brings sheep and other things to Forest Shuffle, is available as well. But am I losing track of my list? That was game number eight. Let's close out with the final four, Earth, Innovation Ultimate, Dune Imperium Uprising, and SETI, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

59:36Let me close with this. I think you know this by now. I love games. Long-time listeners know I often talk about losing to win. That's one of my favorite themes in life, one of my favorite sections of my book, Rule Breaker, Investing, Losing to Win. And, you know, people assume, and I would say quite rightly so, because I own hundreds of board games. I think at last count I have 674. I must be really good at them. But I'm actually not. I routinely get beaten by people of all ages. I'll teach someone a game I've played for years, and they'll sometimes beat me the first time that they play. But, you know, as I've aged, what I've started to feel is that winning and losing just isn't actually the point for me.

1:00:19I just love the play of the game Shakespeare once wrote The play's the thing And I completely agree So yeah, cooperative games Many of us didn't grow up in a world where such things existed But these days games like Dorf Romantic Or a past game I've talked a lot about Pandemic Legacy These are all games that now enable us to play together Where we win and lose together But the three games that I love most The ones I hope we all get better at together are, of course, the games of investing, of business, and of life. Investing has always felt like an amazing game to me, and I love keeping score.

1:00:57We've done that for years now with our five stock samplers on this podcast, for example. Business, too. So many of you are working in business. In some cases, you're owners of small or large businesses. I feel personally blessed to be an entrepreneur myself, to have built something, and to be able to invest in the creations of others. That game, the game of business, will always fascinate me. And then there's life. And when you think of life as a game, one where you can actually keep score, but where the big secret is it's actually a cooperative game, when you think of life as a game, for me anyway, it becomes even more joyful.

1:01:37Business isn't dog-eat-dog. Buyers and sellers work together every day. We actually help each other. That's the real game of life as well. And by the way, not the Milton Bradley version with those plastic pink and blue pegs and a spinning wheel, but the one we're all playing right now, the Game of Life. So I led off with five I-C-Y-M-I games. I then gave you my 12 games by weight that I favor here at the end of 2025. But then, of course, there are those three games that I hope you love too, that we love. I hope in some small way I'm helping you get better at each of them. Well, I guess it's not too early to say it, is it?

1:02:15Happy holidays, Fool on, and game on.