PLAAY Connect: 11.24.21

Happy Thanksgiving! As has been our custom for many years, we're posting the November edition of the newsletter/CONNECT early, so that you'll be able to enjoy the freebies over the extended Thanksgiving weekend!

It's The Hap-Happiest Season of AAALLLL!

Ho Ho Ho! This is the tenth anniversary of our Holiday Sale, and it'll be our biggest and best-ever!

Like last year, this will be a two-part sale, for PDFs and printed games...

• All PDFs 40% off site-wide, Friday through Monday, use the code HOLIDAY at checkout. The discount will be applied at checkout! Every PDF season we offer, for every game--over 100 digital products in all!--all marked down 40%, Friday November 26th through Monday, November 29th! AND we have a trio of all-NEW card set PDFs which we'll debut at holiday sale prices!

• Among the sale-priced PDF offerings is the debut of a brand NEW PLAAY game, "HEROES and HEELS: Dodgeball World Tour!" (We announced/demoed the game on the Monday Night PLAAY Space!) This game is designed to create an experience akin to Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller's movie version of professional dodgeball, but presented as a touring road show, similar to professional wrestling. On the Dodgeball World Tour, an ever-evolving collection of teams travel from city to city, entertaining fans with a nightly program that features an escalating series of matches. There's no "regular season," it's ALWAYS the "playoffs." The championship is always on the line, every night, in the featured match. Like pro wrestling, the Dodgeball World Tour blends a strong story-line element with competitive sports action--good vs. evil, right vs. wrong. The script writes itself as you play the game!

• Printed games go on-sale for ONE day only, Monday, November 29th! It's become a PLAAY tradition for the past decade—starting at midnight Monday, you'll be able to purchase any/all PLAAY Games--our classic sports simulation board games, AND our next-generation non-sport/non-simulation board games--at 20% off! But like we say every year, "you snooze, you lose!" The sale is over Tuesday morning at 12:01 am!

• The return of LACROSSE BLAST Pro Indoor Lacrosse Game! In addition to all our currently available games, we’re bringing LACROSSE BLAST out of the vault for Monday as well! Dressed in an all-new sleeve and PLAAY Classic box, it will also be discounted 20% from its "regular price." ONLY available on MONDAY!!

• NEW! The Holiday Bargain Bin! This one-day shop will ONLY be available Monday, November 29th, and will include a selection of deeply discounted PLAAY Classic printed card sets that we no longer stock. Quantities are VERY limited—once we’re out, we’re out! Get here early to see what’s in store…

Click HERE for the PLAAY Games Holiday page link!

PLAAY Games 2021 Holiday Catalog

The idea here is, lots of sports gamer have loved ones who want to give them a hobby-themed gift but have no idea how to pull it off. You can print this catalog, circle/check the items you'd like, and when someone says "what would you like for Christmas?" You can help them out! The catalog includes complete instructions for the non-hobbyist to navigate the site for an easy, safe, and secure checkout.

• Download the catalog here! (It’s also at the bottom of the Holiday Sale page.) There are two versions: the PDF reader version can be forwarded via e-mail; the booklet-ized version can be printed front-to-back, folded, stapled, and either handed to your eager gift-giver or simply "placed in a conspicuous place," haha!

PLAAY-Dot-CON '22

Our annual PLAAY Gamer get-together is ON for 2022, at a new, more spacious and better-situated location! Join us July 29-30, 2022 at the Hilton Garden Inn, Highlands Ranch, for two-plus days of sports board game fellowship and fun!

Our new venue has a larger meeting area, twice the size as our previous space! (We can accommodate more gamers!) It's also better situated for food and fun, with restaurants, movie theaters, bowling and more all within walking distance!

This amped-up in-person experience creates lasting memories, friendships and fun—it’s why people keep coming back year after year! Your PLAAY pass gets you access to all of our convention activities, including (but not limited to)...

• Thursday Night (07.28.22) pre-con picnic at Redstone Park (we provide the food!).

• Fan-favorite organized events like the HMG PLAAY Gamer Open, HMB Time Machine Tournament, and more!

• "Sneak Peek" Game Lab session with hands-on advance looks at in-the-works PLAAY projects!

• Awesome Swag Bag (it's BACK for 2022, by itself worth the price of the convention!) that will include new, not-yet-available PLAAY Games releases, raffle tickets and other PLAAY goodies!

• Raffle for over $300 in prizes! We’ll have a selection of cool sports game prizes, you distribute your raffle tickets among the ones YOU want to WIN! Earn additional raffle tickets during the convention by winning tournaments, in-game achievements, and more!

• Open game sessions where you can play YOUR favorite games with friends old and new! (They don't have to be PLAAY games, either!)

• Dodgers vs. Rockies at Coors Field, four game home stand! Thursday-Friday-Saturday nights and Sunday afternoon! Oh yeah!*

PLAAY-Dot-CON 2022 PLAAY Passes will go on-sale during the Holiday Sale, starting Friday, November 26th, for the early-bird price of $57! (regular price, $79--save over $20!) Don't miss it! *Rockies tickets not included with PLAAY pass.

HOOPS UPDATE

Things continue to come together for our soon-to-be-available pro basketball game! We're very close to wrapping up the finished game components for both the fast-play and full-play versions of the game, and are excited to get them on your game table! As of now, we're still on-target for a January pre-order, assuming we don't have any supply-chain issues (we've been as proactive as we can be on that front!). Join us for an official "Hoops Update" YouTube stream on Monday, 01.03.22 to get all the details, including a look at the finished game components, pre-order purchase and estimated delivery dates, card set availability, and general release date information.

ViDEO ACTiViTY: PLAAY Games YouTube Channel

• We highlighted a couple of community cooperative projects during the November PLAAY Space Series. We spotlighted Neil Maitland's 2021 English Pro League Delphi Forum co-op with a SOCCER BLAST match-up, Southampton visiting Burnley 11.15.21, and the exciting final race of Travis Jansen's PLAAY Gamer Kart Series with RED WHITE & BLUE RACIN' was featured on 11.18.21!

• Our three-part FACE TO THE MAT Pro Wrestling "Commissioner's Edict" Series was SO much fun, and laid the foundation for the new 2023 Wrestling America Federation card set. Find out who'll get "pushed" in the new season, and who's getting terminated!

• “All Hallow's Eve with AFR Steve,” our fifth annual edition of Halloween fun with Steve Tower. We picked up where we left off with our FACE TO THE MAT "Throw Down" Series, matched hockey coaching wits in a Commissioner's Surprise tournament game (Arizona vs. New York), and wrapped it all up with our alternate "Fury Series," Boston vs. Los Angeles in FURY HARDBALL.

• For our Veteran's Day Army/Navy Game with SECOND SEASON Football, we again had USMC veteran Steve Tower as our special guest coach of the Navy squad, as we reprised our roles from last year's tabletop edition of the classic 1963 game, regarded as the best-ever game in the long and storied Army/Navy series. (Download the teams in this month’s FREEBIES section!)

BLOGGIN' IT!

• Will Spring Football Only Work for Sports Board Games? The idea of an off-season pro football league was introduced in 1983 with much promise, and many contend it would have worked if given a little more time. Since then, however, spring football has flopped in five consecutive incarnations (WLAF, NFL EUROPE, XFL 2001, Alliance of American Football, XFL 2020). With the "new" USFL set to begin in 2022, and XFL 3.0 scheduled for 2023, it's reasonable to ask: is there any hope for success?

• Ron Arnst's Aleron Baseball Congress: Ron's been a fixture on the PLAAY Games Delphi Forum for decades, and regular updates on his fictional HISTORY MAKER BASEBALL league are a forum staple. In this guest blog post, Ron details some of the challenges of maintaining an ongoing fictional league, and some of the things he does to keep everything fresh and interesting.

PLAAY Games Online Christmas Party, 11.16.21

We're still polishing up the details on this on-line party, our goal is to make it as interactive as possible! We're planning to have a "game show" style segment, akin to our PLAAY Jeopardy feature at PLAAY-Dot-CON '21, and--not 100% on this, but working on it--a call-in segment where you can spread the holiday cheer in your own voice! Like last year, we'll offer prizes for the "ugly sweater" contest (post a photo of you and your sweater in the community Facebook page), AND we'll have a cool FREE GIFT for everyone who attends! Thursday 11.16.21, 6pm MST, 8pm EST! Hope you can make it!

COMMUNITY CO-OP PROJECTS

• Commissioner's Surprise HOCKEY BLAST Tournament: we wrapped this up at our live in-person event 11.13.21 at Game Train USA, with Winnipeg hoisting the Commissioner's Surprise Cup after a decisive 4-1 throttling of Tampa Bay. Recaps of every game, from the PLAAY-in game to the Cup Championship, here.

• UEFA Co-op Project with SOCCER BLAST: James Cast and Paul Salzgeber conducted this, along with a host of SOCCER BLAST fans, using the free 2020 UEFA cards created by Phil Dorn. The championship game--Belgium vs. England--will be featured on the PLAAY Space LIVE, December 6th, 6pm MST, 8pm EST.

• PLAAY Gamer Kart Series with RED WHITE & BLUE RACIN’: Congrats to Paul Salzgeber, who earned the points championship with a 11th place finish in the season finale race at Mount Evans Scenic Raceway, streamed live on the PLAAY Games YouTube channel. Paul survived a stuff challenge from Dash Wyatt, whose third place finish drew him to within 13 points of Paul! Many thanks to Travis Jansen who kept this project on-track, pun absolutely intended. Travis is already planning a 2022 edition of the series, watch for details here and on the PLAAY Games Community Facebook page!

FREE STUFF

• 2011 Thanksgiving Hockey Showdown, Boston vs. Detroit: For many years we've featured a classic holiday football matchup in the Thanksgiving newsletter, but this year we thought we'd switch it up and do hockey! The inaugural Thanksgiving Hockey Showdown game--played Friday afternoon, 11.25.11 and televised on NBC--featured defending champion Boston against their long-time rivals Detroit. The network went all-out to make the telecast special, miking up referee Kelly Sutherland and they recruited the players themselves to announce the starting line-ups.

• 1963 Army-Navy Football Game, SECOND SEASON: Widely regarded as the best-ever game in the long and storied history of the series, we created these cards last year and brought them back a couple weeks ago for our Veteran's Day YouTube stream.

• 1975 Pro Lacrosse Season, LACROSSE BLAST: PLAAY Gamer and lacrosse fan Rick Lawes finished this set just after we retired our pro lacrosse game in February. Since we'll be bringing the game back (for one day only!) during our holiday sale, we thought we'd post Rick's awesome set now for maximum traction. It features all six teams from the '75 pro league, as well as extensive notes and a full league schedule.

• Commissioner's Edict Cards, FACE TO THE MAT: Our Commissioner's Edict Series was highly entertaining and these cards set the tone. The idea is, each of your pro wrestlers steps into the commissioner's office for his/her annual review. Drawing a card from the deck determines the wrestler's future with "the company." Will they be "golden," and get a "push" in the new season? Or will they be shown the door, contract terminated?

That’s All for THIS Month…

At Thanksgiving, we're reminded how thankful for this community! Here's wishing you a restful and reflective day Thursday, and a wonderful start to your holiday season!

Photo Finish!

Our live event at Game Train USA certainly showcased the creativity of the PLAAY Games Community! Pictured below are a couple of impressive game add-ons/enhancements…

Glen Oberhauser has created a rotating line-changer gizmo (above) for HOCKEY BLAST--you place the cards in the plastic housing, and then turn the crank to get to the next line! Definitely some SERIOUS engineering skills on display here. PS, Glen 3-D prints this line-changer as well as several other helps for various PLAAY Games--if you're interested in getting one for your own tabletop, let us know and we'll put you in touch with him!

Meanwhile, Dave Kauffman's Riverside Resort Jai-Alai Fronton (below) is designed to house all eight player's cards for a given jai-alai match, with the look and layout of a real-life jai-alai court! (P.S., the pizza at Game Train USA was delicious as it looks!)…