PLAAY CONNECT 03.26.24

Thursday Streamin' Football/Baseball Double-Header!

• IPFC Season-Opener, Cold Snap Canadian Pro Football, 5p: We'll kick off the fourteenth season of our own Canadian pro football league with the 2024 Interprovincial Pro Football Conference season-opener stream, the Vancouver Cougars taking on the Halifax Schooners! Both clubs finished runner-up in their respective divisions in 2023 with identical 7-3 records, so this will be an important game for early advantage in the divisional races. Join us at 5pm MDT (7pm EDT) for the kickoff!

• Big League Baseball "Opening Night," 6p: We're going live with our new 2023 Pro Season release, and what better way to celebrate than by getting the cards out on the game table! It'll be a Colorado/Boston double-header, game one in "express" with the new XL color set, and game two with the standard, full-play cards! First pitch at 6p MDT (8pm EDT)

Both streams can be viewed on the PLAAY Games YouTube channel!

Upcoming Video Activity!...

A classic Colorado spring blizzard forced us to shuffle around our March stream schedule, and our Game Lab VII segment (originally scheduled for 03.21.24) had to be bumped to April. After Thursday's double-header stream, here's our tentative April line-up of shows...

• 04.04.24 Highlight Maker Hoops College National Championship Game: This will be a play-through with our full-play hoops game module, showing you the final game components in anticipation of launching the wait list for our May release! The wait is ALMOST over! NOTE: Special time for this stream, 5p MDT (7pEDT).

• 04.11.24 Wrestling America Federation 2025 Commissioner’s Edict Show: We'll set the stage for the upcoming 2025 WAF card set, with a "fly on the wall" view from inside the commissioner's office using our "Commissioner's Edict" fast-action deck! Who'll get renewed? Who'll get "pushed?" Who'll have to wrestle and win to stay in? Who'll get (impolitely) shown the door? Even WE don't know! Watch it all unfold LIVE on the PLAAY Games YouTube channel!

• 04.18.24 Game Lab VII: Get a peek behind the curtain at several in-development PLAAY games, including a number of entirely NEW game ideas!

• 04.25.24: Century League Vintage Season Reveal: More information on this below in the “Coming Soon” section…

While we make every effort to stick to our announced stream schedule, sometimes we DO have to deviate—thanks for understanding!

WIS-Con '24, 04.27.24!

Wow, our Milwaukee-area meet-up is only a month away! Organized by PLAAY gamer Travis Jansen, join us Saturday 04.27.24 at Travis' FLGS ("Friendly Local Game Store") Oddwillow's Game Haven, Mukwanago, WI! A full day (and evening?) of games and camaraderie with PLAAY gamers from all across the midwest and beyond! This is not an "official" PLAAY event, it's more of a grass-roots get-together of like-minded hobbyists. With that in mind, here are a few guidelines Travis shared with me...

• Expected turnout: hard to pin-point, but we think there'll be at least a couple dozen people. Oddwillow's will comfortably hold about 50, so we should have plenty of space. Travis has run a couple of attendance-oriented polls on the community Facebook page, but if haven't participated and think you might attend, please reach out to Travis (or me) and let us know.

• Game Activities: Travis is theming this as a "pot luck" event, "bring something to share!" In other words, bring along a game that YOU want to play--and be prepared to PLAAY it! I will be bringing along a new head-to-head "pitch deck" variant for Fury Hardball that we tried out at Dice Tower West. If it goes well, I'll put together an on-the-fly Fury Hardball tournament, possibly with a draft/salary cap component, depending on the number of people interested. I'll also have the full-play hoops game in tow for sample games, and maybe some other in-development game ideas. Of course, I also hope to do some gaming with other people using the stuff THEY bring! (Golf, anyone?)

• Times: The store opens at 10am, closes at 10pm. We will do some sort of lunch/dinner break, but nothing is set in stone. In past similar events, we've rolled dice until about 5p, then headed out for dinner together somewhere. Not ruling out returning to Oddwillow's after dinner, it could happen.

• Hotel Accommodations: A number of us "out-of-towners" are staying at the Baymont by Wyndham, 945 Greenwald Court, Mukwanago, WI 53149, it's only a couple miles from the game store. The hotel phone number is 262-363-9970. (No discount code for this, sorry!)

• Friday activities: Some folks (including myself) will be arriving on Friday, many live in the area so won't be "arriving" at all but will/would be available for an informal get-together Friday evening. Again, let Travis (or me) know if you want to connect on Friday, and if something DOES come together, we'll let you know!

Countdown to the CON!

Less than 90 days until PLAAY-Dot-CON 2024! We're excited for our annual gathering and all the fun we're going to have, 06.20, 06.21 and 06.22.24! If you're already signed up, watch for the next e-mail update sometime in late April as we begin to firm up details. If you're not signed up yet, we still have room for about a dozen more people...here's information!

FREE!

• 2024 IPFC Package, Cold Snap: Once again, Lenny LaFrance has put together an amazing package of Canadian football goodness, including draft notes, season previews, free agent players and more. This package will be used by the league's ten coaches for a full-season play-through, and you're welcome to join the fun with your OWN rendition of the 2024 IPFC season, either a single-team play-through of one of the league's ten teams, or the FULL season!

• 2024 ACCU Package, Cold Snap: As if creating a fictional Canadian pro football universe wasn't enough, Lenny has also created a side-by-side fictional Canadian COLLEGE football universe! There are 28 teams spread across four college conferences, with top players often drafted into the Interprovincial Pro Football Conference (IPFC). Includes team cards for all 28 teams, introductory notes, suggested conference schedules, instant results grades and more!

• College PLAAY-Down Craziness Grades, Highlight Maker Hoops: Steve Gorman created this collection of team grades for the 64 teams included in our College Hoops PLAAY-Down set, to be used with the "College Hoops Craziness" freebie we offered at the start of this year's NCAA college basketball tournament. Create your OWN personal college hoops bracket and conduct the entire tournament in about a half an hour!

• Opening Day 1940, History Maker Baseball: We posted this a few years ago, and recently realized that it's not included on the HMB "free stuff" page! So here it is: Cleveland vs. Chicago and the only no-hitter ever thrown on Opening Day, April 16th, 1940, in 40 degree weather at Comiskey Park. Read about the real-life game here!

NOW AVAILABLE…

• 2023 North American Pro Season, Soccer Blast: Experience the Messi phenomenon on North American soil, with this all-new card set that replicates last year's North American pro soccer season.

• 2024 Baseball America, History Maker Baseball: Create your OWN baseball history with our ongoing fictional baseball universe, now in its twelfth season! This year’s release is again offered in standard “generic” black and white (so you can create your own team identities), or jump into OUR baseball world with established franchises, cities, nicknames and team identifiers! Both versions offer the chance to try out our new “leap card” concept!

Coming Soon...

• 2023 Pro Season, History Maker Baseball: We're offering TWO versions of the big league cards this year! Our standard black-and-white set is the biggest card set we've ever released, nearly 1300 players, about 40 per team. The cards are set up so that you can quickly and easily tailor your card set to whichever presentation you prefer, opening day or pennant push rosters. NEW this year, an XL color card set, baseball trading-card size (2.5" x 3.5") and look, 24 cards per team, 720 cards in all. BOTH sets include umpire cards, batting orders and intro notes, both available in PRINT or PDF. BOTH sets available 03.29.24.

• Highlight Maker Hoops: PRIME TIME! Watch our 04.04.24 stream to learn more. We'll open up a "wait list" for sign-ups, with a targeted release date on/about 05.28.24.

• Soccer Blast EXPRESS: We gave a "sneak peek" during our recent soccer stream, this game will debut at PLAAY-Dot-CON 2024 and will be available for the PLAAY community in early July, along with the release of our new 2023-24 English Pro Season cards.

• "New" (old) Century League Season: We've been working on fleshing out the PLAAY fictional baseball heritage, and we're about to release the next installment, a vintage season from the original Century League. Join the continuing adventure of the likes of Go-Go Greatman, "Frying Pan" Poage, Cactus Ritter and others, and introducing a whole NEW crop of "next generation" Century League players. We'll reveal this card set on our 4.25.24 YouTube stream!

• 2023 Pro Season, 2024 Football America, Second Season: If you're a football fan, these days it's non-stop football year-round, with free agent signings, then the draft, then OTAs, training camp, exhibition games, and...BAM! Just like that, it's another season underway! We're scheduled to start work shortly on the 2023 Pro Season and the 2024 Football America season releases for Second Season. It's possible (but undetermined at this time) that we might have to bump these releases to August instead of our usual July release dates. But rest assured, we will be "ready for some footballlll!"

PHOTO FINISH

Jay Paulin sent along these photos (above) of a Bowl-O-Rama-themed bowling shirt that he got as an anniversary gift from his wife! Wait, what? Here's the story, straight from Jay...

"My family and I have been huge fans of your games for a half-decade now. Face to the Mat in particular has led to some of our favourite gaming moments. For my anniversary, my wife surprised me with something completely unexpected. Our anniversary gifts tend to be extremely personalized things to celebrate moments and things important to us. We play a lot of games. About 500+ plays per year, and I tend to win a fair amount over my wife and daughter, but I am awful at Bowl-O-Rama. Like, legendarily bad. Barely triple digits bad. Haha. As bad as I am at that game, I always seem to set a new low with Don Rhoda (from the Bowling America Congress). It became a running joke that whenever something was described as bad, I'd add, "Not as bad as me and Don Rhoda...

"Bringing this long story in for a landing, my anniversary gift was...drum roll...a Don Rhoda bowling shirt (see photos)! Thank you for making games that have brought us so much joy. I hope this message brings you a little bit as well."

Jay--it did! Thanks so much for sharing!!

That’s it for this month, thanks for taking the time to read! Hope to catch you on one (or more!) of our upcoming YouTube streams, and we’re really excited for the Wisconsin get-together in about a month! We appreciate everyone in this wonderful game community—PLAAY on!