PLAAY CONNECT 02.27.25

It's no surprise that February has flown by--after all, it IS the shortest month of the year! But MAN! We are fully rollin' with spring sports stuff, so let's get after it...

TONIGHT: Baseball America 2025 Spring Training Tour!

Honestly, one of our favorite streams of the year as we take you on a tour of all twelve Baseball America training camps in anticipation of the new 2025 season! You'll get a look at the new season card design, discover what players have moved and where and get the skinny on what the experts thing of each BA team's chances. Join us LIVE at 6pm MT (8pm ET) on the PLAAY Games YouTube Channel!

COMING SOON: 2024 Pro Season for History Maker Baseball!

It was well-received last year so once again we'll offer the 2024 Pro Season baseball cards in two versions. The "classic" B&W version will feature around 40 players for each team, perfect for in-depth tabletop baseball projects. The XL color "express" edition will feature each pro team's top 24 players--ten pitchers and fourteen position players--in full-color, baseball trading card size cards. Each set will sell for $69. There will be PDF edition ($24) which will include BOTH versions of the set. Target release date is 03.20.25.

COMING SOON: 2025 Big League Projection Card Set for Fury Hardball!

Here's something entirely NEW for the upcoming baseball season! All 30 big league teams are represented by their starting nine position players and pitching rotation for our "alt-sport strategy game," Fury Hardball! This set is based on the UPCOMING 2025 season, and includes all the big off-season signings and trades. We scoured our go-to online resources for actual projected 2025 starters AND their projected 2025 stats for EACH club! We then "furiously" translated those numbers, resulting in a very cool and very unique card set! You will LOVE it!

We road-tested this set with a comprehensive Fury Tourney, which you can read about here. Not familiar with Fury Hardball? Read more about it here, and/or watch one (or several) of our numerous Fury Hardball YouTube streams, such as...

• 2024 Big League All-Star Game (July, 2024)

• Managers and Mercenaries Tutorial (February 2022)

• Fury Kingdom Hardball Gauntlet (April, 2020)

The 2025 Big League Fury cards for Fury Hardball will be available 03.06.25!

PLAAY Games at Dice Tower West

We're headed to Vegas next week for our annual pilgrimage to the Western USA's biggest gathering of board gamers, Dice Tower West! Online badge sales have ended, but you can still get day and weekend passes at the door. We'll be there Friday 03.07.25 and Saturday 03.08.25, with our annual Dice Tower West Open Golf Tournament set for 2pm Saturday. We'll be sending out an e-mail next week with details to all PLAAY Gamers who've let us know they're attending (so, let us know if you're attending if you haven't done so yet!)...

PLAAY Games at Indi-CON 2025 (April), Digital 2 Dice CON (May)...

We're also excited to be part of 2025's two NEW all-sports board game conventions, IndiCON and Digital 2 Dice CON. We'll be representin' at BOTH events with 1974 World Football League games for Second Season (I have a sign-up list going!), as well as general sports board game fun, PLAAY and otherwise! Let us know if you'd like to knock out a game with us in-person!

PLAAY Dot CON 2025

We're down to the final FOUR open slots for our annual gamer get-together in Denver, end of June. Read more about it here!

Coming this Spring from PLAAY Classic...

• Hockey! (Vintage) Pro Season, 2026 XHL for Hockey Blast: We're excited to offer an all-new "vintage" hockey season, we'll announce it on our 03.20.25 YouTube stream! There's also been rumblings about a return of fictional hockey--we made a reference to it in our posted PLAAY-Dot-CON schedule. Both of these sets should be available in early April, with the real-life hockey playoffs on the horizon.

• 2024-25 Pro Season for Highlight Maker Hoops: Our go-to hoops rater Michael Owens tells us this set should be ready to put on your game table just as the real-life pro playoffs are heating up so you can play along with the real thing! Stay tuned for a more firm release date...

Coming This Summer from PLAAY NOW...

We're making a concerted effort to get spend quality time in the PLAAY NOW corner of our game library!...

• Reel-Time Pro Fishin' Game: the boxed version of our holiday hit! All the fun of the fishin' and no clean-up! PLUS, new custom fishin' hole cards to add even more adventure to your tabletop fishing expeditions! The game comes back with a splash (see what I did there?) at PLAAY-dot-CON, and will be available to everyone else shortly after.

• Truckin' 76: this game has been on the drawing board TOO long--time to get it in print! Loosely based on Burt Reynolds' "Smokey and the Bandit" movie, you'll be tasked with truckin' coast-to-coast in 72 hours or less. How do you win? Well, it's based on a combination of driving efficiency, avoiding tickets, payload size and, of course, favor with the boss! More details (and a demo video) coming in May, we expect to release this late summer.

• 2025 Pro Projection Set, Fury Football: This will be the football version of what we're doing right now with Fury Hardball! All 32 real-life pro teams will be re-configured into our Fury format with projected ratings for the upcoming 2025 pro football season. Free agent movement and draft picks WILL be part of the package! It's like "espresso" football: compact, flavorful, potent and fun! Available in July.

FREE!

• John Bergeron's Hockey World Cup 2000 cards for Hockey Blast: Here's a six-nation, 156-player set that includes teams for Canada, USA, Czechia, Russia, Finland, and Sweden in national colors. Superstars like Lindros, Sakic, Jagr, Hasek, Forsberg, Bure, Modano, and many more are representing their nations as they likely would have if a Hockey World Cup had actually been held in 2000. John adds, "The disproportion between the top and bottom team is minimal enough to provide excitement over a short or medium-sized project, and great enough that over a longer project, the cream should rise to the top."

• Brian Hoxsey's "Five Not-So-Great College Hoops Teams" for Highlight Maker Hoops: Well, the title pretty much explains it, right? Fictional school teams for use with the College Hoops PLAAY Down cards: Upper New York Voyagers; Show-Me State University Pioneers; Whiskey River University Barrelmakers; Raleigh Pines College Timberwolves; Colonial Tories. Expect them to be crushed--except when they play each other! Includes color and (ink-jet-friendly) black and white versions of the cards (color graphics courtesy of Travis Jansen).

• Eight Not-So-Great Football Teams (2020 XFL) for Second Season Football: Inspired by Brian's offering, and also fondly remembering the promise of XFL 2.0 (cut short by COVID), here's an update to the 2020 XFL package we offered five years ago (Wait, what?! It's been FIVE years?!). The set proved to be a pretty accurate representation of the league (several folks did full-season replays). We've freshened up the "look" a bit and made a couple of minor retrospective player updates (P.J. Walker at QB for Houston, for example). The intro notes mention Johnny Manziel and Trent Richardson as being "notably" absent from the set (many hoped they'd join the XFL for its launch). Just for fun, I created two "alternate" team cards which add both players to the league, if you desire. Manziel is in Tampa Bay and Richardson is with Los Angeles. I already want to play this set myself...

Photo Finish

From PLAAY Dot CON 2021, Harvey Couch (right, Saints hat) and Keith Curtis square off for the Fury Football Championship! Harvey’s Vegas Bada Bings edged Keith’s Denver Wild Blue in a championship game nail-biter 27-26. We’re excited to be bringing back Fury Sports for the 2025 convention, BOTH football AND hardball!

That’s what we have for this month, let us know if we can help with your tabletop gaming in any way! Thanks for taking a few moments to read this, and for being part of our amazing community. Hope to see you tonight on the web!