PLAAY CONNECT 03.27.25

We’re heading into the spring and summer season with a very FULL schedule of stuff! Read on…

Let's PLAAY Games at IndiCON '25!

We're excited to be in attendance at ST Patrick's debut sports board game convention, next weekend (Friday 04.04.25 thru Sunday 04.06.25) in Auburn Indiana. Friday and Sunday's activities will happen at the Tru by Hilton hotel, Saturday's games will happen 9a-5p at the Early Ford V8 Foundation Museum. Here's the link to official information. ST says "This is a 'Bring Your Own Game' event. If you are driving, you may want to bring two or three games that you want to show, play, or share." Any/all sports games are welcome.

There's no charge to attend, but lunch will be provided on Saturday and a donation box will be set up, if you'd like to help with expenses. Suggested donation is $20. If you are considering attending, please contact S.T. Patrick at SportsSimMagazine@gmail.com so he can get an official head count.

My (Keith here) main focus will be playing a game or two of my 1974 Southern California Sun World Football League season with Second Season (full play). I have a game scheduled with Kevin Burghardt (he'll be coaching the Philadelphia Bell), and probably could do one more--let me know if you're planning to be there and would like to play! I also have roller derby and Cold Snap on the schedule, so it will be a FULL day of sports games for me!

Let's PLAAY at Digital 2 Dice Con 2025!

We're equally excited to be in attendance at Dave Gardner's debut sports board game convention, Friday 05.16.25 and Saturday 05.17.25 at the Hilton Garden Inn, Preston, CT. Similar to ST's gathering, this event will be focused on sports games of all kinds, bring what you want to play. There will also be a flea market where you can buy used games from other hobbyists, or offer some of your own for sale. Plus, there'll be raffle prizes!

Same as IndiCon, my main focus will be playing a game or two of my '74 WFL project. I have a game scheduled with Vinny Manicini (he'll be coaching the New York Stars), and probably could do one more--let me know if you're attending and would like to play!

Here's the link for more information about Digital 2 Dice Con...

PLAAY Dot Con Update coming in two weeks

This will be our eighth convention, and our biggest-ever! The guest list is full, but if you'd like to get on the wait list, you can sign up here. We'll e-mail you if we have a cancellation.

If you're already on the guest list, we'll be reaching out in a couple of weeks for some information to help us make convention week run as smoothly and seamlessly as possible. Here's some of the info that will be helpful, if you'd like to be proactive and e-mail us before we e-mail you, that would be great!...

• Pre-Con picnic catering: Which sounds best: Chik-Fil-A, Chipotle or Jet's/Papa John's Pizza.

• Family Extras: Are you planning to bring wife, kids, significant other, family member or friend?

• Travel plans, airport pick-up/ride-share: When/how are you planning on arriving in Denver? In recent years, we've coordinated ride-shares from the Denver airport to the convention hotel with people arriving at similar times. If you need a ride or can provide one, it would be helpful to know this in advance.

• Dodgers/Rockies Game Attendees: The Rockies and Dodgers meet at Coors Field Wednesday evening and Thursday afternoon. We expect there'll be convention-goers who will be attending one or the other. If you think you'd might like to go and are open/would prefer to attend with other PLAAY gamers, let us know!

Also note that we'll hold out "Reel-Time Pro Fishing Game" Rules Refresher on YouTube this year, just before the convention--Normally we do this AT the convention, but we're hoping to sneak in an extra event this year in lieu of this tutorial.

STREAMING MONDAY: Baseball Season Opener!

History Maker Baseball is BACK, with the new 2024 Pro Season cards ready for a new season of tabletop fun! Once again we’ll have two versions of the card set. There's a "classic" black-and-white card set with extended rosters--every player with 50+ at-bats or 10+ innings pitched, nearly 1,200 cards in all! Perfect for that in-depth replay project. There'll also be a deluxe color "express" version, fewer players, bigger cards! You get each team's top 24 players (10 pitchers, 14 batters) in colorful, baseball trading card sized cards! The PDF edition will include BOTH versions!

All card sets will be available after Monday night’s "all-star game" stream featuring the color cards. Join us Monday 03.31.25 at 6p MDT (8pm EDT) on the PLAAY Games YouTube channel!

NEW Vintage Hockey for Your Game Table!

We sprung this on the community last week, an all-new previously-unannounced hockey card set based on the 2005-06 Pro Season for Hockey Blast! With all the buzz around Alex Ovechkin closing in on Wayne Gretzky's all-time record for goals scored, we thought it would be fun to hop in the sports game "Way Back" machine to his (and Sidney Crosby's!) rookie season. Meticiulously rated by PLAAY gamer and hockey fan John Bergeron, this set will let today's hockey fans experience Ovechkin performing alongside an entirely different generation of pro hockey stars (Modano, Lemieux, Yzerman, Robitaille, and many others!). Now available, printed and PDF!

Are You Ready For Some (three-down) Football? IPFC 2025 is ON!

It's the sixteenth season for our fictional Canadian Pro Football League, the Interprovincial Pro Football Conference (IPFC) for COLD SNAP Canadian Pro Football Game! Engineered by PLAAY gamer Lenny LaFrance, the IPFC has found strong footing in the community with an annual ten-game (plus playoffs) cooperative league season. The league added two new franchises for the 2025 season, as the St. John's Saddleback Seals and Yukon Gold Rush became the eleventh and twelfth members of the IPFC. All twelve teams are coached by a different PLAAY gamer! If you'd like to follow the league, let us know and we'll put you on the weekly news release list!

Best of all, you can create your OWN personal IPFC play-through! Here's the official 2025 IPFC package, which includes team cards for all twelve teams, a league schedule, express and full-play score sheets, alternate field, plus other league-specific documents (constitution, AI play-calling, etc.)

Many thanks to ALL the members of the IPFC, and especially Lenny, for making this such a long-lasting, consistently FUN football experience, now closing in on TWENTY years!

FREE Vintage College Hoops!

We featured this on last week's PLAAY Space YouTube stream, a vintage college hoops card set rated by PLAAY Gamer Dan Garlick, based on the real-life March 1983 college basketball tournament. We displayed the set and re-played the national championship game (spoiler alert: our version did NOT produce the historic upset that the real-life '83 game did!)

• Since the release, we uncovered a couple of missing ratings on a handful of cards, which are corrected here...

As we mentioned on the stream, the '83 college field included 90 players who went on to play in the pro league, eight of whom eventually made it into the hall of fame! Remember, these cards can be used with either/both versions of our basketball game, highlights or "Prime Time" full-play!

Many thanks to Dan for all the hard work in rating these cards!

And MORE Free Stuff!...

• Al Wilson's 2025 Baseball America for Fast-Inning Baseball: These cards translate History Maker Baseball's 2025 Baseball America season cards for use with Fast-Inning Baseball! You don't need to own the '25 BA set to enjoy these cards with Al's game--it's FREE! Al's quick-play baseball game can be found at https://www.3d6-gaming.com, along with a plethora of other colorful, fast and FUN sports games and add-ons! (Be sure to check out his 3-d scoreboards!!).

• Rob Gallamore's 2025 Four Nations Hockey Series for Hockey Blast: There was a good amount of chatter on the community Facebook page about creating these cards--turns out, Rob had already made them! USA, Canada, Sweden and Finland--PLUS, as a bonus, Rob also made a Russian team! (Five Nations Hockey!)

• Brian Hoxsey's Insant Results for 2024-25 BLAM, Highlight Maker Hoops: Brian has created an in-depth analysis of each of the Basketball League of America's twelve teams, and produced an instant results module that generates winners AND the winning score.

• George Rousos' Basketball League of America Age Finder for Highlight Maker Hoops: George uses this chart to determine the age of a player when he first appears in his BLAM universe. "Once I obtain his initial age I simply add one to it if he appears in the next season's cards."

• Ron Arnst's SCRAM "Breakthrough Series" Schedule for Red White & Blue Racin’: Ron and I talked about this back in February when the SCRAM and "B-Series" cards came out, I've always felt like the "B-Series" title was a little TOO generic! Ron came up with the idea of "B" standing for "Breakthrough"--genius! Icing on the cake, he created alternate race names and lengths for each of the "day before" Breakthrough Series races.

Community and Game Odds N' Ends

• As I was processing packages last month, I randomly observed that I was sending out a good number of packages to Hilliard, Ohio. A visit to our database shows that we have six PLAAY gamers who live there. I wonder if they know each other? It's not that big of a town, about 35,000 people. I was curious, discovered that it's a suburb of Columbus. We have about a dozen PLAAY gamers with a Columbus mailing address. Hmmmm...

Thinking maybe a fall PLAAY event on-location in Columbus might be in order? “Hey, Ohio!”...

• Rob Gallamore checked in after having watched a show hosted by Laurence Fishburne on the History Channel, "America’s Greatest Mysteries," with this particular episode focused on the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. "Of course it made me think of your game, Aviatrix '37! They provided many different scenarios. The ones that seemed to be the most plausible is that she may have either gone down on the or near the Marshall Islands and was captured by the Japanese as a possible spy. Or that she may have gone down on Gardner Island. They found two remnants from her type of plane. Gardner Island is basically a sandbar, inhospitable."

As I shared with Rob, there was quite the conspiracy theory going at the time that her "round the world" flight was hub-bub basically a cover for a government-sanctioned spy mission. There were photos (reportedly of her) circulated that suggested she had been captured by the Japanese, as it sounds like the show talks about. There were also stories that the whole disappearance was faked (as part of the spy mission) and that she was given a new identity and lived out the rest of her days under a different name in New Jersey. However, I do feel like most/all of these were debunked over time. Most likely, she just ran out of fuel and crash-landed in the ocean. (Just like the game presents it!) Because they didn't bring a life raft or survival gear/supplies in the interest of weight/fuel savings, they didn't survive very long.

• Steve Ewasyschyn is jazzed up about his new project with Dodgeball World Tour! "I've started out with four teams to begin so that I could learn the game. I have two co-ed teams, one all male and one all female. Having a ball. The best part of it is setting it up and world-building. This tournament will take place at AMD Dodgeball Paris (a real place). My favorite player is 'Licorice' Ramirez, a fiery Latina who loves to eat licorice and is sweet off the court but a hot mess on the court! Then there's Father Beard, the Catholic priest who is fire on the court. He blesses the court with holy water and a prayer before the game...WHAAAAAT??! Ha! I love to flesh out these characters.

Photo Finish

TWO photos this month! Dave Jackson sent the above photo on the left, "We had a game night with our students a few weeks ago, and I brought in 'First Contact' and taught two of my own team members to play it. Katie (on the left), Crystal (in the middle) and I succeeded in ridding our town of aliens, even with the shortened clock that came with having three of us playing together. We actually accomplished it in just five hours, and only two buildings on the grid. (What's left on the grid are the two buildings and one human that we knew was a human. We did have a lot of humans in the grid, as you can see by how full our hands still are, but a lot of them were low-rated in one trait or the other. We figured out how to maximize them (and some lucky rolls helped!). Anyway, Katie and Crystal took to the game very quickly and both loved it! I wanted you to see how appreciated you are for your work."

The photo on the right was sent in by Scott Johnson, who was perusing the (vast!) game library at Dice Tower West and came across a copy of Score Cards, the edition we debuted at Dice Tower West in 2023, now published by RNR Games. Wow, hard to believe it’s been two years!

That's our update for this month, hope to see you in the chat room Monday night for our baseball season-opener! Or, better yet, at IndiCON next weekend! Thanks for reading/watching/PLAAY-ing games, and just generally being part of our incredible community of board gamers!