PLAAY CONNECT 01.14.26
Welcome to another year of the PLAAY CONNECT! We will be leaning more on our monthly "what's happening in the community" blog post this year. So, if you want to know what's going on THIS is the place to check FIRST!...
NEW! The PLAAY NATION Podcast!
We're excited about this all new, all-PLAAY audio effort helmed by Al Wilson, Harvey Couch and James Cast! It'll be a a twice-monthly podcast focused on PLAAY tabletop sports simulation games and PLAAY NOW board games. The show features gameplay discussions, strategy analysis, community showcases, and monthly interviews. This audio-first podcast seeks to offer a deep-dive into PLAAY game discussions, the stories behind the games, and the experiences they generate.
The first episode is set for release 01.23.26 and will feature Keith Avallone as the guest (the first of many regular appearances!) The PLAAY Nation podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts! Here's the link to the podcast home page so you can subscribe now and not miss a single episode!...
SABR Wants Your HMB results! Here's How To Share Them...
The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) is conducting a research/survey project in which they are documenting the various replay projects attempted by the baseball simulation community. Their ultimate goal is to summarize and present this information (games used, types of replays, historical or user created, correlation to real stats, etc.) to the baseball community at large.
SABR's Andy Palomino is heading this effort and says "It would be great if we had participation from the PLAAY/History Maker Baseball community! if you could distribute the link below to your customers, that would be terrific." The survey is an opportunity to promote the game and also gives the participants an opportunity to publish summaries of their replays on our website if they so desire.
Ready? Here's the link. Note that you are NOT limited to posting only results based on actual historical seasons: the Century League/Continental League/Baseball America fictional (or as we like to call it, "alternate") arc is fair game!
PLAAY Games On-Location in 2026
We're still firming up travel itineraries but we are planning to hit the road again bringing PLAAY Games to a game table near you! We'll start in April at IndiCON 2026 in Auburn, IN and have several other road trips planned including representin' at Digital 2 Dice CON in May and a long over-due return to the World Boardgaming Championships in late July/early August at the Seven Springs Resort near Pittsburgh, PA.
Here are links for more information about each of these events...
• 2026 World Boardgaming Championships
We're also planning a "PLAAY-centric" on-location event in June, at a location to be revealed in March (we have to wait until then to finalize the plans)! This will be all-PLAAY, all-weekend--stay tuned!
NOW AVAILABLE
• 2025 Pro Golf--Men's AND Women's! Get on the fairway with the biggest stars in pro golf--men and women--with these two new card sets for History Maker Golf!
• 2000's Golf Stars: This was the original base game card set when History Maker Golf was launched in 2017, replaced by the 2010s Stars cards a few years ago. We had a number of requests to bring back this set, so we're offering it again as a Decade Set, complete with its own decade-centric golf course, the Chaska Executive Golf Course (based on the pro course in Hazeltine, MN).
• Basketball League of America 2025-26 Season: It's the latest installment in our alternative pro hoops league, featuring twelve pro teams and its own galaxy of players, coaches and referees! Available in generic (black and white cards) team form so you can create your own personalized experience, OR roll with our full-color universe with cities assigned: Baltimore, Buffalo, Cincinnati, Florida, Kansas City, Las Vegas, New Jersey, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, San Diego, Seattle and Vancouver!
COMING SOON
• 2025 Pro Season for Red White & Blue Racin': We've teamed up with Jerry Minks to re-create last year's exciting season on your game table--the cards are ready, we're just waiting to get a LITTLE closer to the green flag at Daytona! 52 drivers represented on 56 cards, 27 track cards (including the Mexico City track used for last year's International race) and liner notes. Available 02.09.26!
• 2026 SCRAM Season and B-Series for Red White & Blue Racin': It wouldn't be racing' season without new cards for our alternative pro racing circuit, Stock Car Racing America--SCRAM! Once again we're offering the top-tier SCRAM cards and cards for the second-level "Breakthrough Series!" The SCRAM saga continues--starting 02.09.26!
• 2026 Baseball America for History Maker Baseball: Won't be long before pitchers and catchers are reporting for spring training and another baseball season will have begun! Our alternative big league baseball outfit will be ready for another exciting season, with the new card set available 02.26.26! We don’t have the product page ready quite yet, check back soon!
COMING (umm)…LATER…
First, I want to apologize for the absence of the 1985 Pro Season release for Second Season Football. I mentioned this in our look-ahead stream late last year, and indeed I had very much hoped to have the set available in time for the 40th anniversary of the memorable Chicago championship team. Alas, I wasn't able to bring it together in time. However, the heavy lifting has been done and the set WILL be forthcoming. At this point a release at the start of next year's football season seems to make the most sense.
We do have four MAJOR projects for 2026, three of which I'll outline here, briefly...
• College Hoops PLAAY-Down for Highlight Maker Hoops: this will be the most ambitious sports game release I've ever attempted. It'll cover the entire fictional PLAAY college basketball universe, nearly 200 schools in XX conferences and an additional group of "independents." Create your own college hoops project, everything from a tournament "Final Four" to an entire-season PLAAY-through of EVERY school's full schedule (which will take the rest of your life, probably...). Watch for more details about College Hoops PLAAY-Down 2026 coming in February. Target release date for the set is early March.
• PLAAY at the Races (Horse Racing) Boxed Version: We have gotten so many e-mails asking about this, we've decided to expedite the release to happen just before this year's "Run for the Roses" at Churchill Downs, Saturday May 2nd. We're also working cards for a new "vintage" horse racing season, to be released with the game.
• World Cup Projection Cards for Soccer Blast: I'm having a hard time believing that four years have flown by since our last World Cup Projection Set release, but here we are. Once again we've recruited John Bergeron to research the teams and their players and create the data set that we'll use in laying out the print files for the cards. The real-life World Cup starts in mid-June, so we will plan to have our projection set available in May so you can pre-PLAAY the whole thing on your game table!
AND...(as if that weren't enough!)...we have one OTHER project that is in the works which we are going to keep under wraps until sometime this summer. HINT: It's baseball-oriented.
Yup, We Got FREE Stuff…
As always, we've got some great free stuff for you, much of which was created by our amazing community...
• John Bowen's 2025 Season College and 2025 Pro Football Playoff Teams for Second Season Express: John's put together 2025 college and pro playoff team collections so you can get extra mileage out of the annual New Year's Football Frenzy! Rated primarily for the "express" version of Second Season (starters only), John also includes suggestions for adapting to full-play Second Season if desired.
• Brian Hoxsey's "Hoosiers" Cards for Highlight Maker Hoops: What sports fan hasn't watched the high school hoops classic "Hoosiers?" Brian created player/coaches cards for the characters/players from Hickory High, as well as a number of teams they played in scenes from the movie and others mentioned in the movie original script--23 teams in all! Plus a special 55-point high school scoring grid.
• Harvey Couch's 2025 USL Championship Teams for Soccer Blast: The USL sort of the "Triple A" of professional soccer, with a burgeoning presence in smaller sports markets. Harvey's rated all 24 teams for Soccer Blast, fielders and keepers.
• 2026 Basketball League of America All-Star Game for Highlight Maker Hoops: Same as last year (sigh!) we've released our fictional pro basketball league cards in the middle of the real-life season (THE 2026-27 edition will be ON TIME, this fall!). So, it makes sense to kick off the car set with the mid-season BLAM All-Star Game! We've included cards for the top eleven stars of each conference and an all-star coach--works with Highlights or Prime Time!
Photo Finish
We took Sam and his GF Alex out to dinner just before they left to drive back to Pittsburgh, a little place in Englewood called "Moe's BBQ," a fantastic barbecue restaurant AND they have their own bowling alley, about a half dozen lanes! Anyway, we were waiting for them to arrive and, like most places, there's sports on the TVs scattered all over the place. I could NOT believe what they had on, though--ESPN 8 The OCHO! We watched the World Pillow Fighting Championships (shown in the photo, apologies for the resolution)…
…and then "The Slippery Stairs" competition. More followed. I vowed right then and there that there WILL be an encore release for the PSPN Ocho Series that we debuted at last year's convention, with DIFFERENT Ocho Sports events! Stay tuned!
Oh, and just in case you thought I was making this up…
Thanks for checking out the CONNECT! Our game plan for 2026 is to position the CONNECT e-newsletter in between the bi-monthly PLAAY Nation Podcasts. Listen for the first podcast next week (01.23.26), which technically occupies the "second" position in the month. It'll be on its normal schedule starting in February: Podcasts will happen on Friday 02.06.26 and 02.20.26, with the PLAAY CONNECT blog post sometime the week of 02.09.26. Until then? PLAAY on!....