Nerdy Board Games Rock #005

hour range. But we feel like my sweet spot now is like forty five minutes to an hour and a half, yes, with you know, with the kids or just other things that I've got I've got going on. I can't it's hard to spend four hours playing a game. No, it's true. So I've got another set of friends that I play with. Yeah, and you don't usually play with those dudes. You're taking it to a whole another level. And we we game

really hard. Um, but sometimes we'll get together and and play and play with our wives and stuff like that too. And I like to play with my wife. We play board games, and so we want to talk all about why we think they're important, Why we think why they're fun, what they teach us, and how they actually end up saving us money. So nerdy board games are actually kind of one of those. It's kind of got a lot of that yeah built in and it's one of those

small spokes in the wheel that we love. I like it. Yeah, Yeah. And so the last episode we we dove into investment properties and said this one we decided to kind of steer more towards something a little lighter. So if you're not like ready to drop thirty grand on a down payment on a rental property, that's cool. You can drop thirty bucks on a nerdy board game and have hours

and hours and hours of fun gameplay. Yeah. Every week though, we we crack open a beer up or as and we pour a beer so poor not poor, and Joel has a fantastic beer for us tonight. So Matt, we got lucky to find this one. I've only had I've had this beer one time in my life. You've never had, ever had it. I'm super stoked. I'm really excited to share it with you. I legitimately would consider this beer top five beers I've ever had in my life. And and I've definitely had upboards of beers in my life.

So this one, this one is one of those crown jewels. Have you really had that? Man? Oh yeah, easy, dude, look at my untapped different beers. And by the way, if you want to follow us on tapped, go to poor not Poor dot com and you can you can follow that because and I haven't logged all of them, but I know from basically what I've logged, and then what other beers I've had that I don't log and I don't know honestly what my count is, but I think I don't have that. Man, Actually, I know I

don't have that many. That's that seems like a huge number. But like, so think about it. I went to the Shelton Brothers Beer Festival and I probably tasted oh that's true, forty beers in one day, right, And there's like beer festivals like that where it adds up, it adds up. So yeah, and I get around you drink a beer a lot. Oh wait, So I don't even think I said the name yet. Okay, So the name of the beer we're drinking today is Wicked Weed Golden Angel. It's

a barrel aged American sour ale with Apricots. It's got that fruited sour again. Man, that's that's a good it's a good style. And so this beer is super hard to come by. Although now that Budweiser acquired Wicked Weed, they on Black Friday put out some of these beers in markets around the country where they where they distribute. And I was lucky enough to get my hands on a Golden Angel from you guys up on Peachtree. Yeah. So I got the same shot with my my peeps

of peach Tree package. They they're they're super kind and save me good beers from time to time. Treat you right, and they do. And this one, I'm so glad they saved it for me. I'm super pumped. So let me open it now and we'll do. Kate and I went up to the funcatori um up in Asheville, and I know I've had the Red Angel and I've had Black Angel. I don't know which ones of those I've had. I swear I've had one more Angel because the Angels like

a series. It's like some of their better beer. They have a framboot mort which is there like a raspberry Belgian style raspberry. I think spontaneously for mented beer. That's super fantastic. Not surprisingly, this is pouring a beautiful golden I'm glad it looks so good and I hope it tastes that good because this bottle, it was twenty and that's a lot. We like it beca This isn't a huge bottle. This isn't one of those seven fifties. This

is I believe. So we're each getting probably roughly so one point one point point nine ounce eight and a half ounces each. They use one pound of whole fresh apricots per gallon. That's a lot of fruit. Yeah, So you can go online. The episode post will have the picture up of the bottle there you can see that and the end of the beer in the glass, so you can take a look and Golden Angel is. Well, let's let's take a take a taste and then we'll get into the major tasting notes after after we finished

talking about nerdy board games. Oh man, that is like perfectly balanced. Oh man, it's my Is that is that annoying? Is that? Like? My? It's my my tasting catch phrase catch line. One of these days we're gonna put t shirts with your face on it, and it's just saying oh man, oh man, this is so well balanced between the I mean you've got that's that's heart tartness with the sweetness from the apricot. Really nice like carbonation to it as well. Feels Yeah, it feels great in your mouth.

It's not not too thick and surrupy. It's kind of it's still bright. It's almost got like a slight champagne like quality to this. Yeah. Absolutely, all right. We'll get into the specifics at the very end of tasting notes for Golden Angel from Wicked Weed. Man, thanks for going on and Graham, now that's great. I'm glad we get to taste beers like this. If you don't know, that's what we do, man, poor, not poor. We're all about pooring a good beer and a living of rich life

and drinking Golden Angel. Man, I mean that's where that and okay, speaking of rich life, what do we do today, Matt? That was awesome? Yeah, we uh spent some time riding around. We got loaded the girls up and went to a local brewery. Right, it has been terrible here in Atlanta as far as weather is concerned, and so being able to get out in shorts and hop on the bikes get the blood flowing or in your case, georgs, hey, you know, do we haven't pick it that we can

post on the website. I hope everyone wants to see what is man. You know, what his face looks like from the podcast artwork. But fine, if you you know, you get to see my shorts, my short shorts. But everyone else wants to know what your chicken legs look like, George. If they want to see that, that's that's fine. We might throw that up there then, all right, maybe for your viewing pleasure, keep checking back, check the website. I don't care. Sometimes you just want to just throwing some

shorts on. And that's just what's at the top of my top of the drawer. That's what I had. There's paint all over. Those are those, I mean, they're work shorts, thrilled jeans. And I cut him, trimmed him down into shorts, and now that's just what I wear sometimes in public. They look fantastic. I was proud of you boring them. And so we had a just a wonderful ride, just a few miles each way, and Tocal Brewery gets to order. A couple of beers hang out outside in the sunlight.

The girls are having a blast room, meeting neighbors that we've never met before, seeing old friends, seeing old friends as well, catching up unplanned. That is that's life. I mean, if I could do that every every weekend, agreed, Yep, I think that's that's my idea of a perfect weekend. And so I'm so glad that we got to We get to do that, have a lot of fun riding bikes. And our buddy got he came along with us as well.

And he actually he's got a podcast, poem cast poem cast, So if you are into or into lungs and how they work function, check out his everything pulmonary related. You're gonna want to check out poem cast. Yeah, that's something he puts on there at at his hospital. But he's the man, some of the guys. Yeah, inspiring. Great dude. Also shares our affinity to bikes and beer, so he and podcasting came along. Yeah, the trifecta. So that's what

we were up to today. Uh, and feel free to if you guys were not on your bikes, and he took awesome pictures tweet us not poor Joel, not poor Matt on Twitter and uh and let's see what you were up to. And if you pull off George better than Matt, feel free to tweet us those two those pictures. I want to point out to you that I mean, there's somewhat ironic George's It's not like I'm I didn't grew up in Florida, not at all. It's totally Yeah.

Any guy in Florida wearing them, that's that's straight up. He thinks it looks good. Yeah, oh yeah, he's all about it. I wanted to mention to you earlier mentioned untapped our accounts. If you get the content our contact page on our website at poor not Poor dot com. There there there's links up there to everything we've got.

We've got our page up on Facebook, We've got a group up on Facebook, we've got our profiles on untapped, in our Twitter accounts, on our Instagram, so everything is up there if you're kind of wondering where where to find us. And and by the way, we're about to get into the subject and hey, in we're talking nerdy board games today on the podcast. If you want some more meaty material, the last podcast was about investment properties.

Feel free to go check that out. And we just posted an article too about how to save money on insurance. So there are a bunch of ideas about how I think you can save literally hundreds of dollars a year. That you know that Geico commercial of saving fifteen minutes, Well really, I really think that reading through this thing and using some of these strategies can easily help save you hundreds of dollars a year on car and home insurance. So so check that check that article out if you

get a minute. That's good stuff. Actually, I just thought of something from the brewery from even Tide. Yeah, I was paying with cash. Oh yeah, that's weird. The only reason I had cash in my wall is because it's right. I mean it's not ra after Christmas, but i still have Christmas money from from family, and I've got a birthday in December as well. I don't ever use cash though, I just I just never think about it. I forgot how to even use cash because the girls like, do

you want to pay now or start a tab? I was just like, well, I've got I've got cash. Do I turn this into tokens to then pay you with? I don't know. So I mean my entire life literally literally starting in high school. I started using a credit card and I, you know, I keep up with it and pay it off. You know how I am. I'm a nerd. Yeah, I tracked all that I want to tell you, and you would you would be so happy. Emily and I talked about our budget right before we

came over here tonight. So yeah, we sat down and went through heck. Yeah, man, we got the spreadsheet out. I'm very proud of you. Yeah, we're killing it. I mean yeah, when was the last time you paid cash for for something? Especially, I mean even beer. It almost never happens. And but I had the same experience actually today using cash, but only because I've been selling things

on the Facebook yard sales site. So I've been saying, like decluttering, getting rid of some things, making some extra cash, I'll pay you in cash on there usually or or Venmo whatever, then more the cash Appum. Yeah, I much prefer that totally. I love those things. But why do you seem so dirty? Yeah? It kind of wet and germs all over. I'd much rather you pay me digitally, did you? Yeah? Did you pay for your beers with cash?

I did today because about because people have been paying me and but again it was it is this weird thing that I'm almost never paying and I like never have cash in my wallet for any reason. So these guys are probably like, what are these guys doing rolling up with bills in their pocket pockets George and cash. These guys must be drug dealers. These guys are from like the nineties. These are guys from Florida in the nineties.

I think it felt different, and I know, like you read that how you know, it feels different when you're actually spending money. But what I liked about it was that I didn't have to sign it. I mean, I just gave the money and it was close enough and I could I just walked away. Yeah, you know, yeah, it felt kind of cool being able to do that and not like sign something the receipt. You know, it's easier when they use like the iPad thing and they flip it around for you to sign it with your finger.

That's nice and quick. Yeah I dig that. So okay, we both used cash today randomly who knows, and it almost never happens. Okay, So last episode we talked about what I do for a living, right, and but we when we need to talk about you a little bit too. Um, do you want to tell folks what you do for for a nine of five? Grave Digger? Yeah, that's where you get all that, is it? Grave Robber? Is that what you steal all these? Oh yeah, then that'd be

that'd be a different ooculation. I can do both at the same time though, So uh no, I work in radio. So my my boss. If you're interested in other podcasts about money. His name is Clark Howard and he has been hosting a consumer advice radio show for thirty years now, the original podcast Radio. And you can find him on podcast too, so he's usually high up there in the business section rankings. And uh he's also been podcasting for twelve years, so he's been doing the podcast thing for

longer than most people have been at it. And so yeah, we're newbies here, but if you and Clark, well you can call us news. But you're the one that's got I mean you've been doing You've been in radio for so I wasted ten years now, right, yet I've been I've worked with Clark for eleven so I've been radio up a little bit longer than that. That's awesome. And so yeah, I love what we talk about. I love the medium of being able to talk to people long

form and and help them too. I think that's actually literally the coolest thing about my job is we help people every day. Yeah, people call in, they ask questions, They get help with their finances, with money issues, with you know, buying a house, saving for college. I mean all sorts of stuff, right, he feels all sorts of questionge variety of questions. So it's really really fun to get to work on that every day and get to

help people. And so I just inspired me. Like, you know, I've got a similar philosophy in a lot of ways to Clark, but we also live life a lot differently. And so Matt and I love bearing talking about money, and uh so we're gonna use this platform on poor not poor, hopefully to do something similar and reach a different audience. Eleven years of talking on the radio, man, that's why everyone was wondering why Joel has that silky smooth voice. Well that's that's why it's true. Yeah, it

just gets better. You know, as you talk more on the radio, your voice just turns into pure gold. And uh that's a good thing. Is that? Why might sounds like crap? You'll get there buddy, you'll get there, you know, whereas Evan spent in ten years not talking to people and just looking at looking at pictures, looking at a computer screen, have to learn how to talk again. Yep, you're you're doing great, You're doing great. Sweet. All right, let's get into the subject at hand. It's board games.

We're to talk about why we love them, and the first reason because they're fun. Yeah, instead of sitting around and watching TV or playing games even online, just the

different video games that folks are doing. I listened to some soccer podcasts and they all they talk about it on the show, how they get together not in real life but through through the different and they play each other, they play you know, in FIFA whatever, and still like, that's fun and that's great that you're actually playing against someone else and not a computer. However, it's just not the same as the true, you know, in person hanging out,

when you're talking to somebody. There's so much nuance and everything else that's missing from It's like it's like getting a beer over Skype. Sounds terrible. Yeah, I do not want to do that. No, I'm not into that. Yeah, board games are so much fun. I think if some of the Like literally last year, when Emily and I at the beginning of SEEN we were making our goals.

There were kind of two goals that I had for that year, and one was to play more disc golf and the other was to play more board games with my friends. Because those were just two things, I thought, well, what are the there are two of my favorite things to do that I don't do enough of, And so last year I didn't do as good about playing disc golf, but I did do a better job about playing board games one or the other. You know, a lot of people choose I want to try to lose weight for

their new Year's resolution. You know, I'm just felt, dug, I don't need that. Instead, you're like, oh, I want to play more Yeah, exactly what dude, that's a I think it's a good thing as long as both of those things for me are usually spent like time spent with other people. So it's community. I'm that's true. Yeah, I'm literally We've never met a more extroverted person than me.

So I recharged spending time with other people. And I really love board games, really love disc golf, and so either either way, I'm going to be hanging with people doing something I enjoy. It's like a torpedo right in the center of my personality. Is perfect. Yeah, it gets to play game and socialized to hang out. Yeah, the community so not much more fun than that. And my wife and I we love to do to to play nerdy board games together too. But first let's let's tell

people what we mean my nerdy board games. So we've kind of used this phrase. We've talked about board games. We're not talking about candy Land here. I mean, maybe you are mad. I don't know, Maybe that's the candy Land and ladders. You know all my favorites from as a kid growing up. Did you play games growing up? Yeah, we totally played like Sorry, oh man, I remember, Sorry,

but Yatsie. My parents loved Yatze. We played a lot of Yatzi, but they didn't have maybe they I guess they did have a couple of these kind of games. But now that they've proliferated, it's a much different Yeah, it's a different ball game. Yeah, it's kind of like the way craft Beers proliferated from what it used to be. Sorry, in Monopoly, they're still around, but now we've got these other games, like, maybe it should we just say if

you something, yeah, it might be the easiest way. I think the first one, the gateway drug if you were into nerdy board games, is Settlers of Catana. Settlers of Catan is the marijuana of yeah, board games. So you've probably seen like celebrities now posting that they're playing Settlers of Catan or something like that. It's it's gotten to that point where everyone knows about it. It seems like if you have no idea what Settlers of Catan is, look it up on Vazon or whatever. Settlers Puerto Rico,

if these is a big one. The popular one d A. Gricola is kind of an old school one ticket ticket to Ride super popular. I feel like it's a little more classic. Has it been around longer we should? Yeah? Yeah, and Ticket Ride has been around quite a lot. It's got I gotta I'm sure it has a wiki page, right, yeah, oh yeah, totally dude. Yeah. So in general that this is what we're talking about, these kind of games. I don't even know if like Monopoly kind of counts. No,

I don't think so. Risk risk is on the edge, just on the outside edge. I would say it's close but not quite. Well, it's definitely before that what I would call the I'm gonna make this up. Maybe it's a real thing, the board game revolution. Yeah, that I feel like happened in the nineties. Yeah, of course everyone

knows about that. Down the hatches didn't coming in American history. Man, it's more like world history because all these games come from Germany, right anyway, But so that's what we're talking about. So yeah, I would. And besides using the term nerdy board games, the best other term I think I can use is strategy board games. Strategy board games to board games. I think the reason they I'll take a long time

to play. Yeah, I think the reason something like Monopoly and Risk don't make the cut is because they're way too chance oriented. They're they're almost completely chance oriented. There's some skill involved, but these ones, I guess if you're looking at it like a pendulum, Risk is going to come down on the side of it's more chance based. And the strategy board games we're talking about, some of them more or less, but they're gonna come always come

down on the side of it's more guild based. Right now, the decisions you make through the course of play definitely affects if you're gonna win or not compared to you know, play Monopoly or Risk or something like that. You can be you can play and then a seven year old could win. Yeah. Yeah, not that seven year old is not smart. It's not what I'm saying. However, I know more than that seven year old, and I'm gonna rub it in their face. That's totally your attitude when you

play with kids, and it's disheartening to watch. I gotta say, so, why else, then, why do you like these books? Obviously they're fun? Yeah, I think so. For me, there are a chance to get to hang out with friends or my wife and get to do something that is different instead of the default. You mean, maybe to like sit down in front of the TV and you know, flip

flip over to Netflix or something totally. We try to We try to do that rarely, you know, once a week maybe, And this is that perfect thing, especially at home after we put the kids down, if we're tired, it's okay, cool, let's play a game for an hour. We can do that. We can you know, engage your minds and we can talk to one another while we're doing it. Yeah, that's one. That's one of the reasons Kate likes it so much too, just being all the talk. Yeah,

and with family as well. I mean, we love playing these games like over the holidays, like catching up with family and kind of hanging out because you know, sitting down and just talking about stuff, it's you can be kind of intense. So having you know, if you're working on a plane playing the game you like the pro Trump and the anti Trump and you're like, oh, let's just move on from It's kind of ease the tension here. You play Take It to Ride, uh since specifically, Yeah,

that's one that we introduced to my dad. He never played before before this uh this past Christmas, and you know he's just like one about carcass Ow and like Larder that one last year, and I think he was ready to play that, but we taught him how to play Ticket to Ride and he he he loved it. He won one. Uh second night we were playing. Yeah, Bryan,

way to go, Tim. It took me out. But yeah, that's one of the things Kate loves is just being able to kind of hang out in person, face to face catch up some but it's not such like an intense time, you know, you've got that gang going on, you've got the third like a third party sort of distraction in a way. But at the same time, it's not like a football game where if that's on, that's all it's gonna do is just steal all of your

attention and stuck your energy. If it's on, you can't pay attention to them talking, You're not You're not hanging out and talking. You're just kind of all doing that instead. I completely agree. So board games, nerdy board games are super fun. That we've defined them now, you know, kind of some of the ones that are popular. At the end of the episode will kind of tell you some of our favorites, and on the website will list out

five or ten of our top favorites too. Another reason I think board games are so awesome is that they save you money. Some of these board games, I will not lie, are really expensive. You might even drop sixty dollars for one of these board games if you get super hardcore into it and want one of the expensive ones. Some of the more basic ones we're talking about probably start in the high teams. Probably twenty bucks, there's like thirty bucks or something like that. Yeah, probably twenty to

forty for most of them. But the great thing is they save you so much money because there's so much

replayability to some of these good games. An infinity amount of games can be played after once you actually get the game and learn how to learn how to play it, well man, instead of renting a movie or no one rents a movie anymore, I guess, but instead of like red Box, red box R I guess, like, yeah, you run one off of Amazon, or even if you're considering going out and just like wow, maybe we can just stay in Boom. You've got the game already, You've got it,

got tons of choices. It's always a different Yeah, totally, And I love the idea. I don't know about if your your mind thinks about it like this, But like when I bought my bike, I've been kind of keeping track of the miles. I've got a little o dominter on my bike, and so I'm kind of waiting to hit that point where I've hit the amount of miles where we're basically I passed the It's cheaper, it's like a dollar a mile, right, So I'm thinking, Okay, I

spent thirte dollars on this bike. Once I hit that mile marker, I've hit the dollar a mile and then I'm like going down, down down from there, it's even cheaper and cheaps. That's the kind of way I think about board games. So basically, the more you play it, the cheaper it is. Exactly per play, you're like, man, this is getting cheaper every day to play, Like, I've

only played that one six times. I need that You'll play that one a few more times to start to get my get my value, get my money's worth out of it. So that's the great thing about these board games is you know, some of these games. We've played some of these games, Emily and I probably played fifty

or sixty times, and the replayability is still great. And you know, maybe you know what, we haven't played it for six months, but we'll come back to it because it's such a good game, and we'll play three times in a week. Um. So yeah, that kind of that facet to the game is you buy something one time. You know, maybe you can get it used whatever, that's cool, that's even cheaper. But you buy it one time and then you've got all this replayability and you can trade

it with friends, you know, we've tried. I've got one version of Ticket to Ride and you've got another, Matt, and we can you know, I got the European version we can swap, which is great. How did you get started playing some of these these nerdy board games? So was it? Was it actually settlers for you? Yeah? The first one was because it was and it was with a friend and they were just like, hey, you want to get into this? And I was like, this is

this like Dungeons and Dragons? Man, I don't question is that. It's it's like their propositioning you tobe, like like they knew that you were going to get addicted. Its like, hey, are you sure you want to get this? He said it in that underhanded voice, you know, he you want to do this? Like I don't know, I'm young and impressurable. Yeah, that was definitely so for for me it was post college and is when I was broke living up in

North Carolina. That was the first time I remember first the first time playing it and and for that reason it was awesome because we didn't have any money to go out. Literally, we would just like chop wood for fun. I probably because we did it for for the in your George, not my joy. I was actually probably wearing the jeans then that are now all right. I hang on the stuff a long time, a long life cycle

for those. But yeah, I didn't have any money to go out to a movie or whatever it was folks were doing, and so we would, I mean we'd hang out, hang out at at the Red House, that's what we called it. And because it was purple, right, you know it? And we mean when we played a ton of specifically Settlers, I don't I don't even think we got into anything else because we had just learned it and loved it,

loved it so much. Yeah, well until I think, you know, Settlers like went so far when you first learned it and went so far. I remember for a couple of years I had like birthday parties where we like play Settlers. Yeah I remember remember that. Yeah, and it just had so much replayability to tournament. But there's a turning point, Yeah, once you get one or two games past that. I mean, we haven't played Settlers in like five years now, probably.

I yeah, I literally can't remember the last time. It's it's been a while. Yeah, because like once you get it. But okay, so did you grow. It would be good to go back to it, though, because a lot of games don't have that. There's a there's a human element and settlers specifically, and we're referring to the trading aspect of it, that you can really antagonize each other and

make enemies or you know, make people like you. But a lot of the other games don't have that aspect true, which is something I kind of miss, Yeah, because I like there's a there's a certain human human element that's kind of fun to kind of poke and product people with your ridiculous trades. Yeah, that one's got going on. So okay for you? Did you grow up playing playing

board games? Yeah? Yeah, well, I mean you mentioned sorry that was one I want to say that was honestly one of the early because that's what is that like a counting game, right, like you religious and then that's essentially what it is. And there's something in middle school years and stuff middle school, high school? Did you did you play more of those kind of like getting into that more little more strategic. Not really, I mean that was like the air of middle school especially. That was

that was I was just outside playing. I grew up in Augusta, so I was playing golf literally every day. I mean we come up from school play like five holes. I didn't play any games, I think in in middle school or high school, and not even college either, because college is all about hanging out and that's true college. Yeah, none for me. We'd played poker, that's about it. Yeah. Yeah, I never got into poker. I had some had friends that they would get together and do the Texas holding night.

Always felt a little like, oh man, this kind of sucks. I'm not part of that. But I didn't want to play. I would just didn't have any interest in it. Just seems you didn't. Yeah, it seemed like a good time to get together, like the social aspect of it, but the actual game, it's just it's cards. There's some card games that are out there that people love, I know, But so I would play I would play Risk in high school with my buddies, and so I really liked

games like that already. Um and like I said, Risk is probably the closest one that's just on the other side, and so I was kind of already into that stuff. And and then you know, finding these other board games was has just been such a fun outlet for me and a great sense of you know, you find people that love what you love and and they are into it like that, and you find this little community that you don't know existed, just like the craft beer community

that we're into. So it's kind of it's super fun in that way. Yeah, you can go pretty hard into anything that you want. Yeah, but I would encourage you if you're looking for a hobby that's going to save you money, this is This is one of those things because really some of my friends have these like shelves with like forty board games on them. You know, I've got like eight or nine board games that I love that I absolutely love, and then I play with other

people that have other board games too. But it's not a very expensive hobby, and the amount of replay ability that you can get from it is freaking fantastic. So I would say if you're looking for a cheap hobby, this is a great one to kind of waite into. One of the reasons I love these board games is that they teach you so specifically. What I mean is that for me, they kind of trained my mind to think in ways that are strategic that can be applied

to real life. And so if you're sitting there. Again, if you're sitting there playing a video game or watching TV, you don't really think. You don't use your brain in the in the same way that you do when you're When you're playing these games, you're really passive as opposed to active. I feel like that way with anytime there's a screen involved, it's passive. You're just looking at the pretty picture completely. It was like pretty colors and cool

graphics and whatever, you know. I was just thinking that this morning as my eldest daughter, who's four and a half, was sitting on the couch and she had this piece, big piece of plastic that was about the size of an iPad, and she was pretending that it was an iPad, and I dud Evie does that too. We don't let

them have screens, and so it was. I just thought it was amazing though, that her brain was active and when she is in front of a screen like a television, because that's what she like, talking and playing with it and doing different stuff like beat. It was so awesome to see her mind engaged like that, sitting there zombed out watching Moana, Because if it was actually an iPad, she would not be communicating or doing anything fun. And I love to see her brain work because and and

that's why we avoid screens. We can talk about that another time, but it's so cool to see that, you know, you're right, you're actually completely passive in front of one of those. And the same thing applies with with with these games is that so not only your brain is working while you're doing that, but I think you literally

learned strategies that can be applied to real life. Right, And so you've got typically you must always have a limited resources, and you're playing these games and you have to make decisions, right, there's trade offs. It's like I'm either going to go this route or I'm gonna go this route, you know, like this sort of the strategy I'm gonna try to play to win the game, or I'm gonna go with this other strategy. And that's life, you know. It's it's just whether it's like, am I

gonna go You can apply it to anything. Am I gonna go for the job that's got the big paycheck? And that's that's gonna mean I'm gonna have to sacrifice some maybe some other things. It means I'm gonna have to go into debt. Now we're talking about the game of life. Oh wait a minute, I remember playing that. That one didn't even come up. It's a strong one. Oh, that's so funny. That's totally true. Like do I go to college or do I go straight to the job.

You're literally making those decisions in the game. But but I mean that's so that applies. I think so well though, from these games directly directly to life. Yeah, I completely agree.

I think that these games are sharpening my brain as I am thinking through different strategies and I have to I have to keep a lot of things in my head at one time, especially with some of these more intricate games that I like to play, and so having to think about, Okay, what could possibly be coming up, and what do I have in my hand depending on what the game is, right, and what resources do I have at my disposal? And do I want to like use all of them now? Probably not, I need to

have some for two rounds from now. And there's all those sorts of things that go into your head, and I just I think it's so yeah, a really fun way to exercise your brain that is super active and super interesting and really fun, and my brain gets that in some ways in other parts of life. But there's something specific about playing these nerdy board games that my brain doesn't work like that in any other time. I

don't like. Yeah, it condenses an entire lifetime. And so say a one hour or two hour game, right, and so you're starting off and then kind of building this thing. Well, that's what we're doing. Our entire life is, you know, trying to build up whatever it is that we're you know, our goals are. So it's gratifying in that way. Obviously if you win, it's more gratifying. But it's true. And

and I want to say this too. It's hearing you describe it, it almost sounds a little bit stressful, but it's not because it's a game and when you're done, you're done with it. It's not like real life where something is just still hanging over you. If you if you know, if some if it's something that you haven't addressed, it's something that once you once you're done playing with it, all right, done, Yeah, box back up on the shelf or put in the cabinet in if it does come on.

If it does sound a little stressful to you, I would encourage you to start off with some of the easier board games. Yeah, that's true. And so let's talk about some maybe the easy ones that we would recommend. The gateway drugs if you will into strategic board games, and we already mentioned Settlers of Catan. That's probably literally the number one that you should start off with. It you'll get years and years of gameplay out of if you've never played any of these games before, that's when

you should really start off with. And it's just fun again, like I mentioned that human aspect of it, just trading from one person to another and people get mad at each other and it's just fun. It's just fun to be a part of. I think, start throwing beers at each other. Whatever. Yeah, I think another easy one then

two is Carca San Yes, I was gonna say that. Yeah, I think Carcasson might even be easier to learn than, uh than Settlers, because you don't have to memorize what your resources you're trying to get to build whatever thing you're trying to build. Carkson is a little more of a a tile laying game, yeah time, which is super fun. Yeah, We've we've gotten a lot of plays out of that. Settlers is sort of a tile game, but really it's

a board game. Like you use the tiles and you build the board, but then you're playing on that board the whole entire thing. Versus car Carcoson. It's yeah, it's a tile laying game where you're building games. Of all the games that I own, I think Carcoson might be the one I've played the most things. Oh, because you can knock out I mean you and I can knock out a game of carcass I mean we do this on vacation minutes. Oh man, you remember, uh, I just thought of when we got yelled at for playing on

vacation because we played like eight rounds and one night. Yeah, it was like two or three in the morning. This was down in our wives, like when are you coming to bed? It's coming full circle. This is when we're down in Florida and when we get on vacation together, which isn't all the time, but we try to go

on a trip with you guys once a year. Yeah, once a year or so, we try to bring a couple of games, right, or maybe focus on one that we just hit real hard the whole week, but that that year it was it was Carcassone and I remember, you know, we went hard. We just bat duking it out, man kept one back and forth. Uh. But yeah, that's that's one. That's a great sort of starter starter board game to pick up. I think Splendor is another good one.

That's pretty quick. Is that that the jewels? Yeah, card flipping and you're coloring claring coins to buy more cards too to win the game. Uh, And that's a good that's a good easy one. And Ticket to Ride is another, I would say easy one. I would recommend that you can these. By easy, we mean shorter time frame, easier concepts, less to hold in your mind while you're going through it. So it's just the principles of it are more basic in elementry. Yeah, and for whatever reason, those are the

ones I like. So yeah, so you can read into that whatever you'd like. So it's some of the some of the medium level board games. So I think that one that Emily and I've been playing a lot, and we introduced you guys too recently was viticulture. Yeah, where you are basically making your own winery and you've got you've got a vine, your and you're you're planting grapes and you're making lines and you're filling wine orders. It's

really really fun game. And I will say one of the other elements of these games that I love is the artwork. They're beautiful games, So many of them are beautiful, and Viticulture in particular is probably the most beautiful game that I own, and I love to get out of the box and I love to play it because it's just so dang pretty. Every time I open it helps you relax, you feel like you're in Italy or yeah, a little bit man, where is it supposed to be? Yeah? Yeah, yeah.

So a lot of these board games, I think we mentioned it earlier, but I think almost all, not all of them, but a lot a lot of them are German, and for whatever reason, the Germans like making these kind of the supply chain sort of efficiency driven games where you have to figure out these, you know, the most efficient way to build whatever it is that you're trying to build. I guess it's not surprising now that, yeah, you start talking about you're like, oh, that makes sense.

That sounds like the Germans. That sounds like them, But they always sound like the names of the guy that created it. On the box too, and it's always like Hans Jurgen and all these names that we laugh at, but now we now we kind of want to meet them now where they're kind of our idols in a way, we're getting to be ultra nerds. Another great medium level game that I love is a game called a Choir.

I would say it's probably between easy and medium, uh, And that's really really fun, super easy one to learn, I feel like, but you have to keep a little more in your mind the whole game, so you have to kind of try to keep track if you can, what other people have in their hand card wise, which is kind of fun, but it's also a little more more intense, more intense to try to remember all those things.

What about I was gonna say, what about Agricola? Where do you consider that to be the more more complicated one. I say that gets into that gets into hard pro level thing. I think it gets in a little bit harder, but you can it's got like two thousand pieces. There's there's a lot of pieces, a lot of little chips

and cards. So as you can imagine by the name of Gricola, like literally you have like an ancient farm and you're got animals and vegetables, and you're basically building a family and a farm, probably set in I don't know, like the fourteen hundreds. Yeah, I don't know, something like that, so in like Surfdom Days or something. But it's really really fun and Emily and I've gotten a lot of play out of that game too, because some of these

games you can play two players. Some of them require more, yeah, three or four players each, but a greatly you can play with two players, right, yeah, and that's great, and that's that's one of the reasons we love Carcassone as well. You can play that obviously you were talking about you and me playing that, but take it to Ride to you can play two players. Yeah, I haven't played it with two players. I think that's what's great about some of these games is that the rules just change a

little bit with two players. They some of the options aren't available right like they would be if if you have three, three or four players exactly exactly. And so I would say one of my like probably my favorite game right now, and it's one of those that we joked about, but literally it takes like four hours to play with and I don't think you can't play with two two people, So I play usually with a group of guys. Uh. It's a game called Nations. It's amazing,

like Risk on Crack. It's kind of like you're literally running through all of history and you're building a civilization. It's incredible. That sounds like Pandemic. Uh did you play Pandemic? Yeah, like Pandemic. Pandemic is one of the rare ones where you work together, which is kind of fun. So you're not competing against each other, you're actually work man together. That's true. That that's why. That's why I don't like that. Yeah, because it doesn't feel like you win because it's like

there's no enemy. Oh we all want well and then none of us. Yeah, exactly. You want to You want to be able to beat somebody that you're looking at. It's true. Yeah, that's all I am. I'm I don't know, I'm more competitive now I am too. I like to win, man. So yeah, working together it's like, okay, we beat It's like beating the computer. It's like beating the game or something that's like, well, that's to me, that's not as fun as Mario Kart, where you're facing off and you know,

attacking each other. True. Yeah, So we'll list some of our favorite games are top five up on the web post the show notes, and we'll also linked to I would say one of the best websites for you to learn more about these games to get more interested is a website called board game geek dot com, and they kind of rank these games, and those rankings are constantly changing. It's like it's like untapped, but for board games, right exactly exactly, it's if you want to go way down

the rabbit hole. Uh. And one of the things I would recommend to you if you're interested in these games is looking at YouTube tutorials. Sometimes the rule books can be really lengthy, and so watching a YouTube video where someone watchs you through the steps of how to play the game can be super helpful. Can take you ten or twelve minutes as opposed to thirty minutes to an hour trying to read through the books. Yeah, and then

remember at all. So if you actually get to watch someone play through it a little bit or explain it to you and show you the basics of gameplay, it can kind of really help speed up things as you're as you're getting into the games, or obviously I mean if you've got a friend that knows how to play, man,

that's just that's always the best way to learn. Just have them over or next time they invite you over, take them up on it and sit down and play, and it will be a much better experience than for for people that sit down to play and they've never played before. I can take a long time and maybe not be the most fun. So we mentioned YouTube two podcasts in a row. So if you need to fix a water heater YouTube, and if you need to learn how to play a dorkeyboard game YouTube. It's kind of

the best. It's pretty great. And they've got the YouTube TV now they're like trying to take over. It's true. She's actually, yeah, trying to knock out the cable companies and some of the other other content providers. Yeah, I'm all for it, man. And if you need like puppy videos YouTube just to make you feel better, I don't. I don't watch many many puppy videos. I mean either, no, I mean yeah, I mean neither. Man. What you're talking about puppy videos? Yeah? Those are lame? Uh Yeah, So

let's let's get back to the beer man. What do you think about this Golden Angel. It's pretty freaking awesome. It's super heavy on the apricot. It's really it's got like I said earlier, it's got a little bit of that like kind of champagne vibe to it, like a white wine champagne apricot sour. I think maybe it might be one of the reasons I that I like it is that it does kind of taste like all these things,

and the apricots to me, isn't crazy noticeable. Maybe to me that I just don't notice apricots that much as well. But to me, it's like a blonde sour ale or something like, you know, completely yeah, some of these other beers that are heavy on the fruit, it's just a very distinct flavor and that's kind of all you taste, whereas the apricot it kind of blends into this sort of golden blonde flavor profile that I mean, I would like to think that I would be able to be like, oh, yeah,

that's an apricot beer. But see, but I think when you bite into an apricot, it's got kind of in a cidic quality to it, and I think that's what I love about it. I think that's yeah, and I think that's exactly why they're perfect for something like this. Yeah, in these kind of beers. So I yeah, I'm a huge fan of this beer. It tastes phenomenal. Um mad props to Wicked Weed. This is one of my favorites.

So nice sour, good amount of funk and there's Well we'll have to get more in the Angel series as we progress, as Matt makes more money so we can buy fancy beers. Well, yeah, yeah, you're the one with the nine to five with the man. You've got a pension, right, don't you have a pension. It's true, Yeah, I do, one of the old school. I do almost nobody to your job. Who yeah, who has a pension? I don't almost No. Yeah, it's a good job man, It's true.

So Golden Angel highly recommend it if you have twenty bucks you want to spend on a fantastic beer and can actually slash Yeah, or if you're even lucky enough to come across this because it's it's really good, get it. But yeah, Joel, thanks for getting this beer. Thanks for drinking it with me, buddy, Thanks so much for listening. Everyone. Our home on the web is how to Money dot

com be sure to check it out. We'll have our show notes up there for you, and don't forget to hit the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to this show. Until next time, Buddy, best friends, best friends out, What are the rest to