Greetings from the World Boardgaming Championships!
Here’s a quick update on what’s going on with PLAAY Games this weekend, live at the World Boardgaming Championships at the beautiful Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Pennsylvania…
First of all, it really is beautiful here—what a wonderful space to have a board game event! I attended this event for a number of years a little more than a decade ago (2012-2014) when it was held in Lancaster, PA. Definitely a major upgrade having it here at the Seven Springs Mountain Resort. The amenities are amazing and the setting is spectacular.
Here’s a photo of our official WBC table space…
…I feel like it’s pretty good set-up for a single (checked airline) suitcase! Obviously, I wasn’t able to bring demo copies of ALL of the PLAAY and PLAAY NOW games, so the assortment I brought was a combination of games I thought people would most want to see and games which I wanted to play myself during the down times. Inevitably, there will be hits and misses. I did not bring a hockey game this trip, and had a request to see a demo of the game. I figured that there would be interest in soccer so I did bring Soccer Blast, but I think people have kind of “moved on” from the World Cup now. Oh well—like I said, hits and misses!
Speaking of hits, the Business Card Games have been a hit. I was only able to bring one all-new game, “Aces & Eights,” along with Bull Ride Hero which we had offered as a PDF download but never formatted for print. These two games joined our other four finished business card games: Pachinko, Forest Friends, Rugby Six, and MowMaster. We quickly ran out of Forest Friends (I should have printed more!), and I was surprised that MowMaster has some residual buzz from previous events—I printed extra but we’ve almost depleted our stock.
I wanted to post a quick rules update for Aces & Eights: (I forgot to include this in the rules, DOH!). The tie-breaker card is the Ace of Spades. That is to say, if both you and the opponent have the same hand (like a pair of eights), whoever has the Ace of Spades wins the pot. If no one has the Ace of Spades, the eight of spades is the tie-breaker card. (I’ve made this clarification in-person to people who have chosen the game but there are probably folks who chose it when I was away from the table and would naturally come to the website for clarification.) Anyway, I’m looking forward to showing this and the other business card games in an upcoming YouTube stream, stay tuned.
It was an active day yesterday…
I played numerous games of Fury Hardball in anticipation of tonight’s officially-sanctioned WBC Fury Hardball Tournament. Pretty much every one of them was tense, close and exciting. I had a number of demos of HMB, HMG, and Second Season. I played MowMaster with a couple guys and they were impressed that there was so much game in such a tiny presentation (kudos to Mike Fitzgerald and Ian Bach!) In what little down time there was, I got to play Trucking’ ’76—it had been a minute since I’d been able to get that one to the game table. My first run, I almost got fired—it all came down to whether or not the Fine China was intact, I needed the 30 points to nudge past 100 and keep my job, haha! And—YES! All was well in the payload bay, so I got to play again! By my third run, I was a candidate for the 1976 Trucker of the Year with a score of 1987 hauling a load of bean bag chairs. Super fun!
Today I’m hoping to get the Fury Football teams out on the table for an impromptu pick-up tournament, as promised in last month’s CONNECT. Depends on how many requests I get for other demos!
Tonight, it’s the Fury Hardball Tournament, 7pm. Many thanks to Andy Lewis who is “driving the bus” for this event and really went all-in, above and beyond. He created a “scouting guide” of all 36 Fury League teams, as well as a primer for game hints and tips. Well done, impressive. Last year’s tournament had 14 contestants, we think it’ll be bigger this year. I may jump in and play if there’s an odd number of contestants (although that might be a little unfair to compete against the game creator!)
Tomorrow morning at 9am we’re going to have a golf tournament—this was not on the original schedule, but there’s been a good amount of buzz about the game and Andy suggested we “wing it” and get a sign-up list going. We’ll play the iconic Pebble Beach course with people choosing to “caddy” for an all-time great golfer—hoping we get a decent turnout (it is pretty early!) it should be a lot of fun!
Headed back to Denver tomorrow afternoon, trips like this always go by too quickly. (BUT, there’s always the next one to look forward to!) I’ll try to remember to take more photos!—I am kicking myself for some of the photo opps that I let slip away yesterday, AGH!
