PLAAY Connect 01.31.23
It's the end of the month, which means it's time to connect! Hope your new year is off to a great start, let's get you caught up with what's going on in the World of PLAAY...
2023 Baseball, Happening NOW!
Ah yes, a brand new baseball season is upon us! Won't be long until real-life pitchers and catchers are reporting to spring training, with the first pitch set for February 24th.
Camps have already opened for the 2023 Baseball America Season (our fictional HISTORY MAKER BASEBALL universe), watch our training camp exhibition game stream to get a first look at the new rosters for all twelve teams. The new BA cards are available in THREE versions this year (color version with team identities, black and white “generic” version so you can add/continue your own team identities, PDF edition which contains both versions), read more about it here.
Our card stock version of the real-life 2022 Pro Baseball Season will be available when the real-life 2023 action begins (February 24th), we'll have the website updated shortly with the details. The 2022 Pro Season for HISTORY MAKER BASEBALL Big League Baseball Game will be offered in print and PDF editions and will include over 1000 cards, every batter with more than 100 at bats, every pitcher with more than 20 innings pitched!
RACIN' Season Starts February 13th!
We're going ALL IN for the new racin' season with our new Pro Season (NASCAR) and SCRAM card sets for RED WHITE & BLUE RACIN' Stock Car Action Game...
• The 2022 Pro Season was one of the most competitive seasons in decades, with nineteen different race-winning drivers and a championship series that went right down to the wire. Re-live this awesome season with RWBR knowing that any one of a dozen or more drivers could realistically and plausible walk away with your replay championship--that's how great a season it was! Click here to read more about the 2022 Pro Season for RWBR…
• The 2023 SCRAM Season card set will be our biggest and best-ever! Not only will you be able to create your own racing history, this year's set offers you the opportunity to expand the action to include the B-Series (Saturday) races in your personal racing universe! The SCRAM B-Series began in 2013 with a subset of "SCRAM-ateurs" included as newsletter "freebies." We offered a full B-Series card sets during the 2018 and 2021 Holiday sales, and the response has been so positive that we're making the series available at the start of the new season! You can order the 2023 SCRAM season by itself, or upgrade to the full package, SCRAM and B-Series, for just ten dollars more! Click here to read more about the 2023 SCRAM Season for RWBR…
Both the 2022 Pro Season and 2023 SCRAM Season cards will be available February 13th!
PLAAY Mats are Back!
Our holiday sale depleted our supply of PLAAY mats, but we're happy to say they're ALL back in stock! (Well, the shipment is arriving tomorrow, but we’re going to go ahead and make them available today in anticipation of them being here.) This includes SOCCER BLAST, SECOND SEASON "Express," BOWL-O-RAMA, and RED WHITE & BLUE RACIN' game mats, thanks for your patience in waiting for them!
PLAAY Games in Vegas, Baby! Dice Tower West
Just a little more than a month until we head to Las Vegas for the 2023 Dice Tower West board game convention, March 8-12 at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino! We just got word from DTW management that they've already broken last year's attendance record, and we're expecting to welcome lots of new faces to the PLAAY games community. We're also VERY excited to host the official debut of Mike Fitzgerald's brand new card game, Score Cards!
So far, we have two events on the official Dice Tower events schedule. Our Score Cards tournament happens Friday afternoon (2pm), with the winner of the tournament getting a special autographed, "gold-plated" edition of the game in an acrylic display case. The Vegas DTW Open Golf Tournament happens Friday night (8pm) with HISTORY MAKER GOLF, 8pm in the main gaming hall.
We'll also have informal demo and play-test events going on during the convention. Come join us! Event information can be found here.
PLAAY Dot CON 2023
We've been quietly working behind the scenes to begin putting together a tentative schedule for our summer convention, which will happen July 27th through 29th. If you've signed up for the convention, watch for an e-mail update coming in mid-February. Want to know more about the convention? Here's a recap of last year's event, and here's the link to this year's event! We'd LOVE to have you be part of the fun...
COLD SNAP Interprovincial Pro Football Conference KICKOFF 2023
The wheels are turning for a brand-new season of our fictional COLD SNAP Canadian Pro Football League, the IPFC! With the addition of two new expansion clubs (The Pacific Whalers and Manitoba Moose), the league now has ten teams! It also has a new commissioner, Jeff Tomlinson--many thanks to retiring IPFC commissioner Peter Miller, who under whose guidance the league completed nine consecutive cooperative seasons, every one of them concluded successfully and on-schedule. Wow. THAT is a major, major accomplishment. Well done, Peter--we'll miss you very much.
Many thanks to Lenny LaFrance for his continuing work in maintaining and updating the yearly IPFC rosters. The new season will kick off with the two expansion teams meeting each other in week one, we'll stream it live on the PLAAY Games YouTube channel. If you'd like to be part of the league, either as a spectator or coach, let us know, we'll put you in touch with Jeff and Lenny.
And, watch this space next month for the 2023 IPFC season package download--totally FREE!
ViDEO ACTiViTY!
We've seen so much great video content produced the last month or so, it's hard to keep up withe everything. For example, Marco Scola posted a couple of awesome videos, one for RED WHITE & BLUE RACIN' and another one demo-ing our "national emergency" game, "We Have A Problem, Mr. President." Steve Tower featured the 2023 Baseball America season-opener for the New England Minutemen with HISTORY MAKER BASEBALL, and will be presenting the championship game of the 1966 World Cup with SOCCER BLAST. And those are just for starters.
We also have our own stream schedule on the PLAAY Games YouTube channel, here's what's coming up in the weeks ahead...
• 02.02.23, "Score Cards" introduction, with game designer Mike Fitzgerald: Mike will join us live at PLAAY HQ to demo his new card game, and give behind-the-scenes designer notes and insights. We’ll be officially launching this game at Dice Tower West, so this is a chance to get a sneak peek before everyone else does! NOTE: SPECIAL TIME, 3pm MST (5pm EST).
• 02.09.23, Big Game/Pro Bowl Pre-PLAAY with SECOND SEASON "Express," Fury Football: Two games, two freebies! See below for more. It’ll be exciting to get these on the game table.
• 02.16.23, SCRAM 2023 season opener: Live from the sandy beaches of Wakiki, our SCRAM Season once again begins with RED WHITE & BLUE RACIN’ and the AVC “Hawaii Hundred.” Catch the first race of the Wayne Montana “Farewell Tour,” and get a first-look at all the new paint schemes and driver ratings.
• 02.23.23, 2022 Big League Baseball Premiere: Real-life spring training exhibition action opens on the 24th, so we figured we’d beat MLB to the punch with our own exhibition game (teams TBD) featuring the new 2022 Pro Season card set for HISTORY MAKER BASEBALL!
Click here to visit the PLAAY Games YouTube Channel!
FOOTBALL FREEBIES
• Every year around this time, we provide SECOND SEASON Pro Football team cards for "The Big Game," so that table top sports game fans can "pre-PLAAY" the game and see how close they come to the real thing. This year, we're doing something a little different. We've created "express" cards, designed to be used with the express version of Second Season. They include just the information needed to play the express game: ratings for the offensive and defensive starters, scrimmage grades for the quarterback, kicking grades for the kicker and a single run play grade. We're also experimenting with a new more visual style of displaying the players. Let us know what you think! (We’ve included two versions of Kansas City, one with red player jerseys the other with white…)
• Another "Big Game" tabletop option: Al Wilson has created a new enhanced team cards for Fast Drive Football, which now includes finder columns for passing and rushing touchdowns. Team ratings for the 2022 Pro Season can be found at the Fast Drive Football site.
• Pro Football All-Star Game Re-Imagined: You've probably seen the ads promoting the new "competitive games" iteration of the game formerly known as "The Pro Bowl." Well, we have our OWN re-imagining of the game, with our alternative football game, Fury Football! We've created cards for this years all-star players (as well as for some of the "snubbed" players), with the idea of letting you hold your own bona-fide all-star game! Choose your starters and line 'em up for truly "furious" football action!
Photo Finish!
Here’s a photo of the new IPFC Commissioner, Jeff Tomlinson, sporting his very festive sports board gamer Christmas sweater! Best wishes, Jeff, as the new Canadian Football season begins! (PS, pretty sweet game collection you have there!)
That's our update for this month, hope to see you online in the PLAAY Space sometime in February (maybe, multiple times!) Until then--PLAAY on!