PLAAY CONNECT 06.10.26
(thumbnail photo credit: Omar Ramada, pexels.com)
World Cup Buzz is Everywhere! We're riding the wave with a healthy dose of world soccer content...read on!...
Tomorrow Night: Soccer Host Nation Triple-Friendly: US vs CAN vs MEX
We'll get our World Soccer Projection card set on the game table with Soccer Blast Express and hold a casual "host nation" event for continental bragging rights! USA vs. Canada starts off the triple-header stream, Thursday night 06.11.26 at 6pm MT (8pm ET) on the PLAAY Games YouTube channel. Winner will play Mexico (IF there is a winner--if it's a draw, we'll roll the decider die!). Mexico plays the other team in game three. This will be a recorded stream with live chat--join us for a fun warm-up to the World Cup tomorrow night (06.11.26), 6pm MT (8pm ET) on the PLAAY Games YouTube Channel!
See You In Eau Claire Next Week for PLAAY-Fest!
Road trip! We're looking forward to connecting with friends old and new, playing some games and watching LIVE local sports together in-person! Here's the itinerary...
• Old-Time (cards and dice) Baseball: Friday afternoon at the spacious Riverview Room of the LB Phillips Library, downtown Eau Claire. Dustyn ‘MadDog’ Dubuque of the Menomonee Blue Caps vintage base ball club will help us drill down to the essence of old-time baseball. Then, we'll play-test the first draft of the proposed old-time version of HMB using cards of legendary players from the 1880s to 1910s.
• Northwoods League (real-life, on grass) Baseball: Friday night at Carson park, the Eau Claire Express and the Duluth Huskies, first pitch at 6:35! We'll have a sizable group of PLAAY gamers in the stands--come join us!
• Reel-Time (cards and dice) Fishin' Tournament!: Most Saturday morning fishing adventures begin at the crack of dawn--but not THIS one, haha! Join us starting at 9a at The Bridge for all the fishin' fun, no experience required!
• Arena (cards and dice) Fury: We've created Fury Football "draft night" version of the Arena League, which boasts an Eau Claire franchise, the Axemen. We'll conduct a single-elimination tournament featuring all eight of the league's teams, YOU choose your roster (abiding by our mandated salary cap, of course!). Can the tabletop Axemen win it all? (Can the real-life Axemen win it all?) We will see!!
• Arena (real-life, on turf) Football: The real-life Axemen take the field at the Sonnentag Center against the Iowa Woo for LIVE indoor football action!
• Northwoods League (real-life, on grass) Baseball: Saturday night at Carson park, the Express begin a two-game series vs. the Willmar Stingers, first pitch at 6:35!
There’ll be open gaming both Friday at the library and Saturday at The Bridge! There’s no admission charge, just show up! For more information about PLAAY-Fest, click here…
(If you haven't already reached out) let us know you're coming so that we'll have enough game materials on hand to accommodate! Questions? Ask!
• Delivery Hiatus While We're in Wisconsin
Just a heads-up, we'll be unable to ship orders while we're in Wisconsin. All orders for printed products received after 4a (MT) Wednesday 06.17.26 will ship Wednesday 06.24.26. Thanks for your patience! Digital delivery of PDF products will be unaffected.
PLAAY Games at the World Boardgaming Championships!
We'll be on-location Wednesday evening through Saturday morning, we'll have our own exhibitor table and we'll be looking to meet up with PLAAY gamers old and new! We'll have more on this in next month's CONNECT. Let us know if you're planning to attend!
“Mystery Box” Experiment!
We like to innovate, so we're going to give this a go in a couple of weeks. Inspired by the towering walls of mystery boxes at Denver's recent Fan Expo--it's definitely a "thing"--we're going to offer our own version of this popular phenomenon. Still working on the details, but it'll go something like this...
• YouTube stream which will show some/most/(all?) of the goodies that will be up for grabs. We'll just parade them across the screen like they do cars at an auto auction.
• (After the stream) We'll put the Mystery Box on the Miscellaneous Purchases page, at a (super low) price to be determined soon. There will be a limited quantity of boxes, probably about 50? When you purchase one, you can specify your favorite game or games (or specific items that you saw on the stream) and we'll try our best to align your purchase with your preferences. BUT--no guarantees! No promises, "you get what you get." However, we'll make sure that the price is LOW enough that everyone gets a bargain.
More details coming SOON! This will be fun!
FREE Stuff!
• 2026 World Soccer Extra Extra Cards: These are super late additions to the real-life rosters, 19 fielders and two keepers. As we've mentioned before, the cards were necessarily created long before the final rosters were set. (And, honestly, the fact that we're only needing to add fewer than two dozen players in a 1000+ card set, I feel like that's commendable!)
• World Soccer “Host Nation Friendly” Freebie: (Included in the above download in the interest of efficiency, no need to download twice!) We're providing a free download of the teams we're using for tonight's stream, CAN vs MEX vs USA. You can conduct your own Host Nation Triple-Friendly!
Coming Soon...
We've mentioned these projects before, here are the latest updates...
• Fury Hardball, Fury Football: we've hit a delay with Fury Hardball but are still aiming for a June release. The Fury Football game will be ready, running a little behind with the additional card sets.
• 1966 Baseball Alternative Season: Smaller progress than we'd like, but we're committed to making this set available in the next several weeks. We'll launch the set with a 1966 Baseball Alternative All-Star Game, Continental League vs. Century League.
• 2025 Pro Football Season: Good progress here, we are in the proofing process for the final team cards. I'm confident we'll have this out on-schedule, mid-July.
• 2025-26 English Pro Soccer Season: Again, I think this will fit our previously-proposed release schedule, sometime in July.
• Business Card Games: I was HIGHLY energized with news of a recent Kickstarter campaign that echoes this concept and which was successfully supported. (Yes, I supported it myself—can’t wait to get it!) That said, I am running behind on development of the print assets for our own one-card/business card games. There are four entirely new business card games in the works: Starship Captain, Laser Tag, Zombie Chase, and Flip-It/Disc Golf. We will have these at the WBC (assuming I can get them ready for print), and I have numerous ideas about what to do with them afterwards. Stay tuned!
PLAAY Games in the Basement!
We were honored to be asked to make a guest appearance on Marc Unger's "Boxscores from the Basement" YouTube series last night (06.09.26), the theme of the show was "Every Game Has its Language!" We talked about PLAAY games’ mechanic of using key words instead of numbers, and a wide range of other topics. Many thanks to Marc Unger and his crew for letting me be a part of the show!
Photo Finish
From our recent visit to Pittsburgh, hanging out at the legendary Primanti Brothers Restaurant and Bar, look what they had on the TV—ESPN8 The Ocho!! They were showing the Extreme Archery Championships, USA vs. Canada, kind of like laser tag but with bows and (blunt-tipped, soft-impact) arrows! Remember, we had our own Ocho Sports Series at last year’s PLAAY-dot-CON, featuring Corn Hole, Tackle Bee, Speed Ball and more—we might have to put together another package with an all-new lineup of Alt-sports!
Well, I can't resist closing with today's (06.10.26) proverb from the One Year Bible Online, from the New Living Translation...
We may throw the dice, but the Lord determines how they fall. (Proverbs 16:33)
(Yes, that is actually in the Bible!)--So true! So good! Thanks for reading AND for rolling the dice with us--we appreciate you!
