PLAAY CONNECT 11.13.25
Don't look now, but here come the holidays! We have a LOT going on, let's dive in...
TONIGHT: Holiday Sale Sneak Preview
"It's the hap-happiest season of alllll!" Our annual holiday sale has been a tradition since 2010, and we always try to make it special with freebies, discounts and fun. This year will be no different!...
• 10% off all previously-released printed products (games, card sets, PLAAY mats, etc.)
• 50% off all previously-released PDF products (card sets, add-ons, PLAAY now games)
• NO coupon code needed! Discounts will be applied at check-out, you won't see them as you're putting items in your cart. Don't worry, it'll be automatically marked down at check-out!
• Holiday Sale surprises! As always, we'll have a good number of Holiday Sale surprises. These will be found in the special “Holiday Shop” section of the home page. These will be NEW card sets, compliations and add-ons. And FOUR new games! (That’s right—four! One PLAAY Classic, one PLAAY NOW, two from Studio Sp1cy!) The automatic discounts WON’T apply to these items, we will price them with the discounts/savings “baked into” the posted sale amount.
• Holiday Sale FREEBIES! These will be available for free download all four days of the Holiday Sale, and then they'll disappear. You'll find them on the home page of the website, front and center--our holiday gift(s) to YOU!
Other things to know...
• Patience, Please! We'll be experiencing heavy volume once the sale begins, and we appreciate your patience. We'll be slower to respond with e-mails, and our order turnaround time will be longer. Rest assured, we'll work as fast as we can and as hard as we can to get all orders in the mail as quickly as possible.
• Free Shipping Threshold Reduced for Holiday Sale: For the duration of the sale, we'll reduce the threshold for free shipping to $25.
• Miscellaneous Purchases Paused during Sale: So that we can maximize our order processing capacity, we've temporarily turned off the "miscellaneous purchases" option until the sale is over and we've gotten everybody's package in the mail. We expect to resume on-demand product printing sometime in mid-December.
Again, join us tonight for our "sneak preview" YouTube stream where we'll walk you through the sale and show off a couple of the new goodies you'll find under the tree! 6pm MT (8pm ET) on the PLAAY Games You Tube Channel!
Next Week: PLAAY Games at BGG.CON in Dallas!
We're taking our show on the road, headed to Dallas for the annual (and impressive!) Board Game Geek convention, BGG.CON 2025! We're not just attending, we have a booth (#215, see map!) and will be there starting Thursday 11.20.25, heading back to Denver on Sunday (11.23.25). Many of the 3,000+ attendees at the Dallas Hyatt Regency Downtown will be experiencing PLAAY Games in-person for the first time after having read about us on boardgamegeek.com for many years, so we are excited about that! We'll host the final rounds of the 2025 Commissioner's Surprise Hockey Blast tournament, do a deep play-testing dive on a new sports-themed card game we're working on, and generally hang out, meet people and have fun! Hope to see you there!
NOTE: although we'll be in Dallas, our website and shop will remain open. Digital purchase and downloads will be processed normally, but all printed items ordered between 11.19.25 and 11.22.25 will ship on 11.23.25. Thanks for your patience!
Two Weeks: PLAAY Game Holiday Sale Begins!
We'll start the fun at 10pm MT (midnight ET) on Thanksgiving night, and the sale will run through 10pm MT on Cyber Monday. We'll cover all the pertinent information on tonight's stream, and there's a checklist above if you're not able to make it tonight. There'll be discounts on printed and PDF purchases, gifts for you waiting under the digital Christmas tree AND a healthy number of holiday-sale-only surprises including an all-new PDF game!
Three Weeks: Look Ahead to 2026!
Normally we do this stream the first week of January, but we're going to switch it up this year and give you the scoop EARLY. Learn what 2026 will hold for PLAAY Games in terms of products, events and innovations--we're mapping it out and spilling the beans, 12.04.25, 6pm MT (8pm ET) on the PLAAY Games YouTube Channel!
Four Weeks: PLAAY Games Online Christmas Party!
This has become a fun tradition, where we all get together online and celebrate the season! Once again, we're holding a White Elephant Gift Exchange--we invite you to be part of it! It'll be Thursday, 12.11.25 starting at 6pm MT (8pm ET) on the PLAAY Games YouTube channel! We'll have interactive chat, games, prizes and lots of holiday CHEER! PLUS--the annual White Elephant Gift Exchange!...
White Elephant Exchange Rules…
Here's how it works. YOU mail us something sports or board-game-themed from your attic, basement, closet, crawl space or whatever--(please DON'T buy something! It wouldn't be a White Elephant gift if you bought it!) Examples from past exchanges include football mini-helmets, books and magazines, sports figurines, out-of-print games (sports and non-sports), sports trading cards and more. Everyone who sends us a gift will GET a gift in return, we'll draw gifts randomly during the online party.
We'll go in reverse order of gift receipt: the last gifts we get, those people go first. The early-birds get to go LAST. Remember, when it's your turn, you can opt to "steal" an already-opened gift from someone else rather than pick a new one from under the tree. There are ALWAYS some pretty sweet goodies under the tree--seems the old maxim is true, "one man's trash is another man's treasure!"
• Please mail your White Elephant gift to us NO LATER than 12.01.25, so that it will be sure to get here before the party and we'll have time to wrap it. If you need the mailing address, just e-mail us (or check the enclosed letter from a recent order!). Thanks!!
If you don't have a gift to send, no worries! You can still participate--we'll have extra gifts under the tree and will choose random participants from the chat room the night of the party!
See you there, Thursday 12.11.25, 6pm MT (8pm ET) on the PLAAY Games YouTube channel.
FREE Stuff…
• Al Wilson's 2025 Football America for Fast Drive Football: Al out together his annual FDF update of our fictional football release and it's ready NOW for you to download and PLAAY! (Note the new colors for the New York franchise--we figured they needed SOMETHING to get excited about!)
• Harvey Couch's 2025 Second Tier US Pro Sampler for Soccer Blast: Harvey has a relative who plays pro soccer for Louisville City in the USL Championship, which is the US pro league that's a level below MLS (similar to the Championship in England). "It's been awesome getting to see him play regularly. There's great support for the teams and the level of play is really quite good!" Louisville City is the class of the league, so Harvey decided to create cards for them and three of the other top clubs: Hartford, Loudon and Charleston.
• Michael Balch's 2025 Arena League for Second Season Football: Michael was one of the folks who had NOT forgotten about our Arena Football League variant (included as one of the half-dozen "Forgotten Freebies" we featured last week on our PLAAY Space stream, see below)! In fact he'd created and completed a season play-through of his OWN fictional "American Arena League." Twelve teams and liner notes, PLUS we’ve added a special arena field for the express version of Second Season (fewer zones = more scoring!).
Blog/Video: Forgotten Freebies
In case you missed it, we went DEEP into the archives to find a half-dozen "forget freebies," things we offered as free downloads a decade (or more) ago! Here’s the link to the video, and you can find the blog post here!
Photo Finish
(In addition to sending us the awesome Arena Football Freebie this month!) Michael Balch sent us this photo of a cool souvenir he picked up at KeyBank Center in Buffalo while attending a Sabres game--it's a replica of the National Lacrosse League Champions Cup (won by the Buffalo Bandits)! Michael was asking if our lacrosse game will make its annual cameo appearance during this year's holiday sale--(tune in tonight to find out!)
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Thanks for reading! We're SO thankful for this community! Ordinarily we'd send out Thanksgiving wishes a little CLOSER to the actuall holiday but our trip to BGG.CON has thrown us off our groove a little, haha! Early or not, we DO wish you the happiest of Holiday seasons! Thank you for being part of the PLAAY Games family...