PLAAY CONNECT 10.26.23
Tonight! All-Hallows Eve Hoops!
It's our annual Halloween on-line meet-up with AFR's Steve Tower, it'll be all-hoops this time around! We'll start out by commenting on each others' Halloween costume, haha! (What will Steve be dressed up as THIS year? That alone is worth tuning in for!) Then we'll launch the new 2022-23 Pro Season card set for Highlight Maker Hoops with a Denver-Boston matchup. Next, we'll switch the the new Basketball League of America release--we've got some exciting news about that! After a quick tour of the new BLAM cards, Steve and I will each draft an expansion team from a pool of select college rookies and BLAM "left-overs," you can download these cards for free and follow along. Then we'll play a head-to-head game between our two expansion teams to close out the show.
Join us TONIGHT, 6pm MDT, 8pm EDT on the PLAAY Games YouTube channel! It's All-Hallows Eve, All-Hoops, All-IN!
Cooperstown Recap
We had an amazing time in Cooperstown, NY last weekend, from our prescient Fall Classic pre-PLAAY (which featured what turned out to be the real-life teams, Texas and Arizona, second year in a row!)and a memorable "Timeless Diamond" Tournament! Hope you've checked out our blog recap of the event, complete with photos and anecdotes!
Last Call for the History Maker Baseball In-Season Cards!
You can still pick up the in-season cards for another few days, we'll have them available until the end of the World Series. Watch for our official 2023 Pro Season cards early next spring.
“Cooperstown Complete” Cards for HMB
Huge thanks to everyone who picked up the new "Cooperstown Complete" card set, we've gotten amazingly positive feedback on these cards! I've told several folks who've e-mailed about the cards that I kind of wished we'd used the word "compleat" instead of "complete" because I'd really like to make more cards for the set. There are so many players who could be classified as "Footnotes," really EVERY player who's ever made a big league roster has a story to tell. It would be great to be able to make Cooperstown cards for more of them.
Anyway, as usual, some errata has slipped through(>>sigh!<<)--I'm appreciative of all who have reached out. (Nothing like getting a hundred sets of eyes on the cards to really work out the errors, right!?) Apologies for the duplicate Sam Crawford card—that's totally on me ("senior moment?") The "Footnote" Crawford card has been removed from the set. I've updated the "Timeless Diamond League" rosters, putting Kiki Cuyler on the Viscounts (from the Wanderers). There were a couple of other small "boo-boos" that I will get fixed as well, including mis-spellings of Sadaharu Oh, Turkey Stearnes and Andres Galarraga. Also, Zeke Bonura somehow got carded as a catcher instead of a first baseman (not that he’ll get much time on the Timeless Diamond anyway!).
It’s been pointed out to me that the liner notes indicate that there are thirteen “Exiles,” but there are only twelve are carded for this set. Explanation: originally, there were thirteen, but I re-classified Ed Taubensee as a "footnote." He was originally included in the "exiles" because they needed a catcher. But there was never anything controversial about him, except that he was highly over-valued went they traded him for Kenny Lofton!
If you’ve bought the set, rest assured I’m working on it and will mail corrected cards to all purchasers as soon as time allows. Thanks for your patience!
ETA for Hockey Blast Express
We've been getting a lot of inquiries about the upcoming express version of out hockey game, which we put through its paces in Winnipeg a few weeks ago. Many thanks to Rob Gallamore for his enthusiastic videos! (Rob was one of the dozen PLAAY gamers who participated in Hockey Day in Canada!) We're happy to announce that Hockey Blast EXPRESS will debut as part of out annual Holiday Sale, starting 11.24.23. Even better, we'll offer an express hockey PLAAY mat for those who want to amp up their hockey action even more!
Christmas is Coming...
OK, let’s just do bullet points on this...
• The PLAAY Games Annual Holiday Sale will be Friday 11.24.23 through Monday 11.27.23. Don't miss our "2023 Holiday Sale, Un-Wrapped" video stream on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving (11.21.23), we'll give you a run-down of the sale details, including door-busters, bundles, discount codes and sneak previews of new-for-the-holidays goodies!
• Our annual Online Christmas Party is set for Thursday evening 12.14.23, 6pm Mountain Time, 8pm Eastern Time. Once again, the stream will feature a White Elephant Gift Exchange! We'd love for you to join the fun, we'll have more information soon!
• The Online Christmas party will be our last stream of the year, we'll be ramping everything down for the last two weeks of 2023 in anticipation of cranking things back up after the first of the year. We'll map out the course for 2024 in our annual "New Year Look-Ahead" stream, scheduled for 01.11.24.
Three...Two...One...Happy New Year, 2024!!
We're already making plans for a busy year in 2024, including another trip to Las Vegas in March for Dice Tower West! Any/everyone is invited to join us in Vegas, We have a handful of PLAAY gamers who have already made plans to be there! Check out this link for more info on Dice Tower West! This is an amazing event, highly recommended. I know that there are a lot of “sports-sim-only” guys in our community, you should know that the DTW library contains dozens of vintage sports board games, many of them out of print and hard to find. You could literally spend your entire time playing them. On another note, the grass-roots Wisconsin PLAAY gamer event has been moved from February to April. We'll have more details about ALL of this in our "Look Ahead" stream, 01.11.24.
Hoops! New Pro Season, BLAM cards Available TONIGHT!
We'll make these cards available after tonight's All Hallow's Eve Hoops stream. Both the Pro Season and BLAM cards will be available as printed and PDFs, full details on the PLAAY Games website.
FREE Stuff!
• 2023-24 BLAM Expansion Pool for Highlight Maker Hoops: You can download this now, look it over, then provide draft advice from the "peanut gallery" during tonight's All-Hallow's Eve Expansion Draft! Then, use the cards to supplement your own BLAM season, either with expansion teams of your own or as added depth to the standard twelve team league.
• In-Season Fall Classic Teams, History Maker Baseball: Here are the two teams that made it to both our "Fall Classic Pre-PLAAY" in Cooperstown and the REAL 2023 World Series, Arizona and Texas. These cards are from the standard in-season set, we made the post-season roster adjustments outlined in our 10.06.23 blog post to get the teams in-line with their actual playoff rosters.
PLAAY Games Hot List
Here's a new feature for the monthly e-newsletter, a throwback to my previous career as a top 40 radio DJ, where a regular chart of the week's hottest hits was a radio industry staple. We'll chronicle the top twenty PLAAY Games each month. Where does YOUR favorite game land on the list?...
(For the 30-day period ending 10.26.23)
TW (LW) game title
1 (1) Let's PLAAY Tennis
2 (2) Second Season Football
3 (4) History Maker Baseball
4 (10) Face to the Mat
5 (8) Second Season Express
6 (12) History Maker Baseball Express
7 (5) History Maker Golf
8 (15) Highlight Maker Hoops
9 (3) Red White & Blue Racin'
10 (7) Soccer Blast
11 (9) Hockey Blast
12 (6) Score Cards
13 (13) "We Have A Problem, Mr. President"
14 (--) Dodgeball World Tour
15 (--) Let's PLAAY Jai-ALai
16 (11) Fury Football
17 (16) Demo Derby Smash-Down
18 (14) Roller Rumble
19 (17) Aviatrix '37
20 (18) Fury Hardball
Photo Finish!
The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum has so much to see, more than you can see even in a day-long visit! So we all had to prioritize, and THIS was the display that was at the top of MY list of things to see at the hall—the baseball board game display, which now encompasses fantasy baseball as well. We presented a copy of History Maker Baseball to Adam Halay at the hall—hopefully, someday, it’ll make it into the display!
That’s it for this month, hope to see you tonight for our Halloween Hoops Extravaganza! We’re VERY glad to have you in our awesome community of gamers!