PLAAY CONNECT 10.10.25

It’s that magical time of the year when we have all four major pro sports active at the same time—baseball, football, basketball and hockey! That means that the holidays can’t be far away either, and we’re getting ready—read on!…

Commissioner's Surprise Hockey Blast Tournament is ON!

We do this every year, it's all about two things: community and hockey! Welcome to the 2025 Commissioner's Surprise Hockey Blast Tournament! It's like "March Madness" but without the seedings and structure, we literally draw the match-ups out of a hat. We're almost done with round one, but we have a few openings for round two and beyond. Get live updates on the tournament here, and let us know if you'd like to play a game!

Next Week: PLAAY Games YouTube Hockey Triple-Header

With hockey in our heads, we've decided to go all-in on next week's PLAAY Space YouTube stream. It's a Hockey Blast Triple-header!...

Part ONE: Commissioner's Surprise Draw and PLAAY! We'll pick the team logos out of a hat and set the match-ups for Round Two of the tournament. Then we'll get the second round started by streaming one of the games LIVE!

Part TWO: XHL Game of the Week, British Columbia Breakers vs. New Orleans Brass: We dropped the puck on our XHL co-op project last week and are excited to feature a game on the stream. It's "hockey like none other," with a pre-game shootout, two-point goals and more!

Part THREE: College Hockey "Nightcap" Game (teams TBA): Andy Lewis has again created an amazing collection of sixty-four division one college hockey teams based on last season's (2024-25) results. It's a FREE download (below), and we'll celebrate the sports game goodness by getting a game on the table.

Be sure to join us next Thursday (10.16.25) at 6pm MT (8pm ET) for our Hockey Blast Triple-header on the PLAAY Games YouTube Channel!

• Incidentally, we are less than 50 away from reaching 2000 YouTube subscribers! You can help us crash the two thousand mark by subscribing to our channel today!

Join us at BGG.con in Dallas!

We're headed to "Big D" the week before Thanksgiving for one of the biggest board-gamer gatherings West of the Mississippi, the annual Board Game Geek convention, "BGG.CON 2025." We'll be there to recruit folks to the PLAAY community and also hang out with those who are already part of it. We'll run the finals of the Commissioner's Surprise Hockey Blast Tournament, show people Draft Duel and Myth Mash, demo some new expansions for Truckin' '76 (see below) and more! If you're coming to the con, you'll find us at booth 215, adjacent to the massive game play area in the main concourse of the Dallas Hyatt Regency Downtown hotel. Let us know if you're thinking about coming for a day, or for the week/weekend, we'll set up a rendezvous-vous with your favorite PLAAY game(s)!

In the Pipeline: Truckin’ '76 Add-Ons

After our successful (and fun!) launch of Truckin' '76, we've got a couple of add-ons to share as soon as we can...

• Coast-to-coast "Cannonball Run" Expansion: we got so many e-mails from folks suggesting a "Cannonball Run" application of the game, and we're excited to oblige. If you've been following the game's development, you know that it started OUT as a "coast to coast" trucking run.

• Round-Trip Movie Variant: Technically, the "Smokey and the Bandit" movie script called for "The Bandit" and "The Snowman" to travel round trip from Atlanta to Texarkana and back. (Our game picks up with the beer already in the truck, "eastbound and down, loaded up and truckin'"). However, a couple of gamers asked about a variant of the game where you have to re-create the actual script--happy to oblige! Stay tuned...

• Two-player "Cops vs. Bandit" Variant: Similarly, several folks wondered whether there could be a two-player version of the game where, instead of a race between competing truckers the game could pit "The Bandit" against "The Law." I have some ideas about how to maybe make that happen, using the game's existing game materials and perhaps an extra movement chart for the law enforcement player.

We've had to temporarily set these ideas aside while we get ready for the holiday sale, but they ARE in the works. We're planning to playtest/demo these ideas at BGG.con in Dallas.

FREE Stuff!

OK, here we go--we know that THIS is the part of the e-newsletter you scroll past everything else to get to...

• Andy Lewis' 2024-25 College Hockey for Hockey Blast: You get sixty-four teams, skaters and goalies, in team colors. Andy's done this set for years, going back over a decade. Don't believe me? Here's his set from the 2011-12 season!

• Andy McEvoy's "Great Lakes Conference" (fictional) College Football for Second Season Express: Andy created this set college football conference specifically for "express," although it has more than enough detail to run full-play games as well. Ten teams, team colors, fun fun fun!

• David Gambrill's Pro Season Playoff Teams for Cold Snap Canadian Pro Football: The Canadian pro season is winding down, and the playoff picture is pretty clear. David created team sheets for the (expected) six post-season clubs, so that you can pre-PLAAY the playoffs on your game table, full-play Cold Snap OR fast-play Cold Snap “Express!”

Cole Makar Corrected Card

Long story short: our automated card finisher only has slots for FOUR hockey blast symbols. That works for 99.9% of hockey players--but not for a guy like Cale Makar! Unfortunately, a few cards escaped PLAAY HQ minus Makar’s fifth symbol, a penalty-kill circle symbol. You can download the corrected card here (or just remember that he has a circle symbol!). Apologies!

Gimpy Gamer Review of RWBR

Many thanks to Nate "The Gimpy Gamer," both for his service to our country (combat veteran, purple heart) and for a thorough review of Red White & Blue Racin' on his YouTube channel. He specializes in war games, but there's some overlap between that community and ours. We’re so pleased that Nate took the detour into sports games! Check it out, and introduce yourself!

PLAAY Holiday Sale/Online Christmas Party

Not much to announce here, except that we are busily working behind the scenes to get everything together for our big year-end holiday craziness! Watch for our annual YouTube "Holiday Sale Tutorial Stream," tentatively set for Tuesday, 11.25.25!

Photo Finish

Here’s Andy McEvoy—who created the amazing fictional college football conference freebie for this e-newsletter—getting ready for his run from Texarkana to Atlanta, “Truckin’ ‘76” at the World’s Largest Truck Stop in Walcott, IA last month. Note the guy in the background eating the ice cream cone—we have NO idea who that is, but he seemed to be enjoying being there!

That’s it for this month—see you next week for a night filled with hockey action! Thanks for being part of our amazing and growing community of gamers—we appreciate you VERY much!