PLAAY Connect 12.28.22

“Welcome to 2023” Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

Happy New Year! Time for some Time Off!...

We are closing the PLAAY HQ offices for the final few days of 2022 to get a little down-time and re-charge for what’s going to be a very busy New Year in 2023! All orders received prior to 10am MST 12.28.22 will be shipped today. PDF purchases from both PLAAY Classic and PLAAY NOW will be available as instant downloads, all orders for printed products received after 10am MST 12.28.22 will ship Tuesday 01.03.23. Happy New Year!!

PLAAY 2023 Look-Ahead, New Year’s stream Thursday 01.05.23

We’ll survey the horizon from a New Year’s vantage point in our first video stream of the new year! We’ll map out a tentative new product release schedule (including an update on our full-play HOOPS game), detail our live event schedule (some very exciting news there), mark out a couple changes to the way we do things, etc. Always and exciting show, don’t miss it!

“Classic” Look for PLAAY.com

Hey all, just a heads up, as the year winds down, we're making some changes to our web presence. We've taken down the old PLAAY.com site and will be replacing it with a new SquareSpace site in 2023 (long overdue!). For the time being, when you go to PLAAY.com you're going to see the PLAAY Classic site, but that will change in the new year. We’ve already heard from some folks about the “free stuff” content from the old site. Some of it will re-appear on the PLAAY Classic “free stuff” pages in the coming days and weeks, we’ll come up with a plan for the rest of it in the weeks ahead. Honestly, some of this content has outlived its usefulness and won’t be brought back. We'll have more on this in the New Years Stream 01.05.23 on the PLAAY Games YouTube Channel.

Last Chance at "Early Bird" Passes for PLAAY Dot CON 2023!

Save $20 if you get your pass before Tuesday 01.02.23! Two-plus days of board game camaraderie and fun. Special guest and featured speaker is the original “Strat-O-Matic Fanatic” Glenn Guzzo! We’ll also have S.T. Patrick from Sports Sim Magazine and a host of PLAAY Community “heavyweights!” Read more about the 2023 convention here...

PLAAY Games in VEGAS, Baby! Join Us at Dice Tower West 2023

We’ve heard from a handful of folks that they’re thinking of joining us at Dice Tower West in March (03.08.23 through 03.12.23)--I totally recommend this!! Just having access to the DTW game library ALONE is worth the trip, I think. Even if you’re exclusively a sports board gamer—the DTW library has dozens of classic/vintage sports game titles that are hard to find (and expensive), which you can check out and play to your heart’s content. And that’s not to mention the thousands of OTHER games you’ll have access to, and a couple thousands fellow gamers with which to play them!

Anyway, me and Sam will be there Thursday through Sunday, we have a booth in the vendors area and can arrange table space for any kind of PLAAY tournament that folks might want to partipate in—I’m thinking golf would be fun. We also have a new game release tied into DTW—but more on that in our New Year’s stream!

Here’s the link to the Dice Tower West site with much more information, and please do let us know if you’re thinking about being there.

PLAAY Dot CON ’22 Featured in Sports Sim Magzine’s November Issue!

Shout out to ST Patrick who featured our summer convention in the November issue of Sports Sim Magazine, a really in-depth article with lots of personal touches. If you’ve never been to our annual PLAAY Gamer get-together and you’re wondering what all the buzz is about, this is a must-read. Get the November edition of Sports Sim Magazine HERE! And, yes, ST will be joining us again in July!

Soccer Blast World Cup Pre-PLAAY on Board Game Geek

Not sure if you've caught this, but Board Game Geek featured a pre-PLAAY of the World Cup that featured John Bergeron's awesome World Cup Projection card set for Soccer Blast. The results were EERILY similar to real life! (Thanks to JP Rich for bringing this BGG thread to my attention!)

It’s FREEEEEEE!

• Paul Fay’s 1966 World Cup cards for SOCCER BLAST: you may have seen these talked about on the PLAAY Games Facebook Page, Paul did a very nice job both of creating the cards for this memorable cup event AND of of documenting the players, teams and historical action! Also here's a link to Paul's latest "Fast Action Sports Desk" video, which contains the World Cup Final of Paul's own '66 Tournament. He's conducting a contest in where you can win a free SOCCER BLAST PLAAY mat--just watch the video and answer two questions for a chance to win...

• Lenny LaFrance’s 2021-22 English "League One" cards for SOCCER BLAST: Lenny's been making home-brew card sets for PLAAY games for a long time, but this is his first soccer effort. All 24 teams from the 2021-22 season, created using the "how-to" guide--note that the cards are a bit different from the "official" Soccer Blast cards in presentation.

• North Pole vs. South Pole Roller Derby "Snow Bowl" for ROLLER RUMBLE: We released this at the end of the Online Christmas Party--I still haven't had a chance to play this year's "Snow Bowl" on my game table.

• College Hoops PLAAY-Down Scoring Grid for HIGHLIGHT MAKER HOOPS: We've put this grid on the HIGHLIGHT MAKER HOOPS “free stuff” page, so it can be located more easily. You can use it with any college teams, real OR fictional!

• 1949 Shamrock Bowl for SECOND SEASON: The final game of the All-American Football Conference, before its absorption into the NFL. We posted this as a freebie ten years ago, includes background information on the game along with the Cleveland and AAFC All-Star teams who competed that rainy afternoon in Houston. (As mentioned earlier, we're going to start re-posting some of the free content from the old PLAAY.com "free stuff" page at PLAAY Classic...)

• 2014 World Stock Car Racing Championships for RED WHITE & BLUE RACIN’: This was released in 2014, sort of a "what if stock car racing was an Olympic Sport" sort of thing. 60 driver cards, eight tracks and an intro sheet.

2022 in Review…

I remember at the start of 2022 thinking, "Wow, this is going to be a landmark year!" And indeed it was. Here are a FEW of the highlights...

• In January, we signed on the dotted line for a five-year lease of printing and finishing equipment, bringing in-house all our printing and finishing work. It would be hard to overstate the significance of this decision. For one thing, it gave us the ability to create and offer some cool new products like ’61 Continental League, 2022 Baseball America Deluxe cards, 75 Hoops All-Time Greats, College Hoops PLAAY Down and much more.

• In March we made the trip to Las Vegas to exhibit at Dice Tower West. This was a long-term goal of ours, to get PLAAY games in front of the general board game crowd at a high-profile gathering. We met many new friends and learned a LOT about the hobby! We can't wait to get back to Vegas in 2023...

• In July we held PLAAY-Dot-CON 2022, our biggest Convention ever, with nearly 50 PLAAY gamers in attendance. We moved to a better-situated venue with almost three times the meeting space and adopted a looser, more casual schedule that focused on friends and fun while maintaining the signature events (PLAAY Gamer Open Golf Tournament, HMB Time Machine Tournament, Friday Night Guest Designer Showcase) and adding a couple of new ones (Dodgeball Tournament, College Hoops PLAAY-Down).

• In August, we made the trip to Phoenix to be part of the ConSimWorld Expo, an annual war gaming conclave. We met so many great people and embraced the established relationship between sports gaming and war gaming.

• In October, we held our "Hoops in Hartford (CT)" event at the Bradley Airport Hampton Inn, "officially" ending the COVID-era live events drought! Lots of new faces, and a number of long-distance guests made this a really warm and rewarding weekend.

• In November, we had our "locals" get together at PLAAY HQ, during which the holiday tennis game and fictional college football sets were given the final "green lights."

• We put the exclamation point on the year with our annual Online Christmas Party (12.15.22), something we started during COVID and, well, it just keeps getting bigger and better! We had a live audience of over 100 folks, and had great fun opening the "white elephant gifts" sent in by PLAAY Gamers across the country.

• Looking back, we introduced more new games in 2022 than ever before, including quicker-playing games like Highlight Maker Hoops, History Maker Baseball Express and "Let's PLAAY Tennis," along with Red White & Blue Racin' Turbo. "Planet Flipper" was released in June, from Daryl Durston, the first PLAAY game not designed by Keith or Sam. We also re-introduced Dodgeball World Tour (last year's Holiday game), First Contact: YOUR Town, not to mention a set of free "Business Card Games" (on the PLAAY NOW site, handed out for free at live events): MowMaster, Rugby 6, Forest Friends, Pachinko and Bull Ride Hero! That's twelve new games in twelve months!

• The most rewarding aspect of 2022: so many wonderful NEW people in the community (to go along with the wonderful people we already had!). We saw growth online and in-person, and really, it's all about people. Thank YOU for being part of the community in 2022!

New Golf Sets NOW AVAILABLE!

These card sets kind of sneaked in under the radar, so I wanted to get the word out before we turn the lights off for 2022. We commissioned PLAAY Gamers to create the ratings for these sets (using our “How-To” guide, of course) and we’re really pleased with the results. Justin Bryant rated the 2022 Pro Golf Season set, which includes over 180 pros from the real-life tour. Christian Reismann did the work on our fictional golf franchise, the 2023 Pro National Golf Tour, which features 162 PNG Tour regulars and 36 “fringe” golfers. This is Christian’s third PNG card set, having also created the 2019 and 2021 cards for us. Well done, both Justin and Christian!

Photo Finish

Lenny LaFrance sent along this photo of his son Colton, mashing up his home-brewed History Maker Baseball cards with his “Baseball Guys” action figures! Pretty awesome! (Note the three-inning games!)

• Enjoy the rest of 2022, we’ll see you on January 5th!