PLAAY CONNECT: 08.07.25
Fun Stuff Ahead!! Pretty exciting! We'll TRY to keep it brief, Read on...
Launching TONIGHT: 2025 Pro In-Season PDF for History Maker Baseball
Welcome to another edition of baseball in-season fun! The 2025 Pro In-Season cards for History Maker Baseball make it possible for you to play along with the 2025 big league baseball season in real time. Play tonight’s game before it happens, and see how your result stacks up with the real thing! Pilot your favorite club through the “dog days” of summer and see if you can coax more wins from it the real-life manager does. Or, just enjoy your OWN brand of “baseball today,” however you’d enjoy it most.
• ALERT: We're going to debut this set on TONIGHT's Thursday Night PLAAY Space YouTube stream, we'll pre-PLAAY tomorrow's Colorado Rockies game against the D-Backs with History Maker Baseball “Express.” If the Rockies win, everyone gets the in-season PDF for FREE!! It’s Austin Gomber on the mound for Colorado, Zac Gallen for Arizona with a combined ERA of 11.62! Should be a slugfest!
• ALERT II: We're streaming an hour EARLIER than usual tonight, join us at 5pm MDT (7pm EDT) on the PLAAY Games YouTube Channel!
• ALERT III: With the release of the In-Season cards we're already planning our annual “Fall Classic Pre-PLAAY” where we fast-forward to the end of the season, conduct playoffs and crown a champion--all while the actual season is still going on! Read more about this below...
PLAAY Games at the Pro Football Hall of Fame!
We're excited to be making a return visit to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton OH for the 2025 Edition of Gridiron Games at the Hall of Fame! Presented by the APBA Football Club's Geoff Giordano, the event will be held Saturday and Sunday, 08.23.25 and 08.24.25. All football board games, past and present are welcome for this weekend of pure cards-and-dice tabletop football FUN!
We're planning on a playoff format with Second Season Express and the 1985 USFL (40th Anniversary!) team cards. So far, Tampa Bay, New Jersey and Jacksonville have been claimed but there are plenty of strong teams left to choose from (Houston, Birmingham, Oakland, Baltimore, etc.). Let us know if you'd like to save a spot in the tournament!
We're also planning to debut the new 2024 Pro Season release for Second Season, and are looking for coaches for our annual College All-Star Game! Would be super fun to play the game out, full-play, at the HOF!
Read MORE about the event here...
It's ON in Iowa, 09.13.25!
It's just too perfect NOT to go there, so we're hitting' the road to launch our new PLAAY NOW game "Truckin' '76" at none other than the World's Biggest Truck Stop, the Iowa 80 Truck Stop in Walcott, IA (just outside the Quad Cities IA/IL).
AND...(because we like to be efficient!) we're going to hold the finals of our annual History Maker Baseball "Fall Classic Pre-PLAAY" that night!
Of course, we want YOU to join us! We'll prepare a blog post about this special day in America's heartland in the next couple of weeks, but here's a first-look at how we're thinking this will go down...
• Meet at the food court of the Iowa 80 truck Stop at 1pm, Saturday 09.13.25. Our game plan is to secure a couple of adjacent tables and set up the game for whoever wants to play. It's free to attend, and everyone/anyone is welcome! We'll plan to hold a 15-20 minute live tutorial to explain the game, then pair up for as many two-player games as we can, with a run from Texarkana to Atlanta. The top two scores will compete for the title of Top Trucker with a coast-to-coast run from San Bernadino to Newark!
• Afterwards, we'll head back to our "official" event hotel, the Hampton Inn & Suites, Davenport (about 20 minutes east of the truck stop), the address is 5290 Utica Ridge Road, Davenport, Iowa, 52807. We'll switch gears to baseball in the hotel lobby/common area starting around 6pm, with our annual "Fall Classic Pre-PLAAY!" As we've done for the past dozen seasons, we'll use the History Maker Baseball In-Season card set to determine our champion a month and a half before the real thing. We'll figure out a playoff format depending on how many people we have in attendance! (Hint hint, let us know if you think you might be there!)
Special Stream, Special Time: 8.08.25, 8a (MDT)
• Wait, what!? WHY are we streaming TOMORROW at 8 o'clock in the morning!? (Tune in and find out!)
COMING SOON: 2024 Pro Season for Second Season Football
Apologies for running behind on this release, but rest assured, there WILL be football soon! All 32 pro teams rated based on the real-life 2024 pro season. As usual, there will be both full-color printed and PDF versions, you'll get all the usual goodies: intro card with season summary, injury Exemption List, Fringe Player ratings, and the 2025 College All-Star team featuring the top picks of April's pro draft preparing to make a splash in the upcoming pro season!
We'll be getting the product page up in the next day or two with more details, release date is 08.25.25! (Right after we get back from the Pro Football Hall of Fame weekend!)
COMING SOON: 2025 Pro Football FURY and GM Module for Fury Football
MORE football! Two NEW ways to play Fury Football, our "alt-sport strategy game." It definitely FEELS like football, but AMPED UP and intensified! You can play a full game in about fifteen minutes, each minute PACKED with impactful choices and big plays!
• The 2025 Pro Football Fury Card Set is along the lines of what we produced this spring for Fury Hardball. It's a look-ahead representation of the real-life 2025 pro league. You get sixteen players for all 32 teams, eight on offense/defense--over 500 player cards in all! Each player has been rated based on his anticipated 2025 contribution! Fast, fun, exciting--you'll LOVE it!
• The new Fury Football GM Module is something we debuted at this summer's PLAAY-Dot-CON. It's designed for head-to head or multi-player play. Each person gets an identical pool of players and strategy cards, each card has its own cost, from zero to fifteen points. You have fifteen minutes to craft your team operating under a 40-point salary cap--you'll have to pick and choose thoughtfully and strategically! Then, see if your GM brilliancy pays off! For solo play, you can craft your team and then run a solo-play schedule against opponents from any of the existing Fury seasons we have available!
Information coming soon about BOTH these new sets, we'll debut them next week on the PLAAY Space!
FREE Stuff!
• Gideon Eames' (new) Royal Portrush for History Maker Golf: With the (British) Open still fresh in the memory, here's a surprise new HMG course! Gideon created a version of this course back in 2020 (based on the 2019 Open), but this updated, new-and-improved version features many more boutique results and surprises. It also comes with some awesome liner notes and a card for Haotong Li, who did so well this year and eventually finished T4.
• Brian Hoxsey's 2026 Fictional Women's Hoops League for Highlight Maker Hoops: inspired by his daughter ("Hey, Dad--you should make a fictional women's basketball league!"), Brian out together this card set for PLAAY gamers to enjoy. Twelve teams, nine players per team, twelve free agents and twelve coaches. The download includes two versions of the set, one labeled with cities, and one with team numbers.
Derek Jones' XHL Co-Op League for Hockey Blast
You may have seen this on the PLAAY Games Community Facebook page, but I thought I'd mention it here: Derek Jones is running an XHL co-op project, and you're invited to join in! (I'm coaching the British Columbia team--yeah, I wanted SoCal and Nick Concannon but alas, Stephen DeLash snapped them up!) At last count, there were still eight teams available: Atlanta, Cincinnati, Houston, Kansas City, Memphis, New York, Phoenix and Toronto. Participation is designed to be NOT tedious or time-consuming, "express" play is allowed, only light stat-keeping, this is for the FUN of it! You can e-mail Derek directly at djones90@yahoo.com, or reach out to him on the community Facebook page.
OR, just sign up right now, doggone it!! Here's the sign-up form link...
XHL Mats are back in Stock!
For the ultimate XHL experience, you'll want the official XHL PLAAY mat! We just got a fresh shipment...
Community Shout-Outs...
I hesitate to mention another PLAAY project, because there are so MANY great ones going on, ALL deserving of recognition. But here are a couple notable milestones...
• Tim Havard just completed his tenth season of Baseball America (2013 through 2022), and is now starting the 2023 season. Tim uses all twelve teams, the generic version of the league, he has named each team himself. He sent me a PDF summary of the first ten seasons, if you're a Baseball America participant you'll enjoy looking it over, I think.
• Todd Barre just finished his 1995 and 2025 SCRAM Seasons with RWBR--he has now run a full play-through of every SCRAM season there is! (I guess I better make a couple more, huh?) He sent me an Excel sheet with standings and results (which doesn't upload well to our site or else I would), and it's quite impressive!
Photo Finish
I think this car might belong to Charlotte Challengers (Baseball America) star Winston Numbers?
That's all for the moment, but we'll see you again soon online: tonight's Rox/D-Backs with HMBX (if the Rox win, the in-season PDF is FREE!), and tomorrow (Friday) morning's streaming surprise...BOTH happening on the PLAAY Games YouTube channel!...