PLAAY Connect 3.28.22
New Chapter of PLAAY Begins Today!
Our printing equipment is (finally) scheduled to be delivered today: a Biz Hub C659 high speed digital printer and Duplo C618 finisher. Of particular note is the Duplo, you probably already know how a high speed digital printer works. The Duplo is designed for FINISHING printed products. That is, it does everything EXCEPT print. Here's a video that shows you the kinds of things it will be doing for us in the years ahead.
This is a five year commitment for us. Really, it's a five year commitment to the sports board game hobby. We plan to be around for awhile, and we feel that moving printing and finishing in-house is something that we HAVE to do at this point, to stay in business.
The survival aspect was affirmed late Friday when we learned that our go-to, day-to-day print provider is now unable to fulfill our print orders--they are out of toner, and have no ETA for getting re-supplied. Frankly, they might be down for the count.
In any event, today's delivery of our printer and finisher couldn't be more timely. There will be a slight to moderate delay in delivering some already-ordered items (2022 Baseball America card set, recently-released card sets for RED WHITE & BLUE RACIN' are a few that come time mind) while we get the scoop on how to print in-house. But we will be able to move forward, no longer reliant on our previous printing firm. We’ll plan on a YouTube video tour on the PLAAY Space as soon as we’re comfortable with the equipment!
HOOPS Pre-Order in the Rear-View Mirror
We're excited about the buzz surrounding HIGHLIGHT MAKER HOOPS! I'm pleased to say that, aside from a few copies that we're holding off shipping for one reason or another (and are in communication with the gamers in question), all pre-ordered games have shipped. You should have gotten a shipping notice via e-mail--if you did not, let us know and we'll give you the status of your order.
All in all, it was a pretty smooth process, but we did have a few hiccups...
• We assembled the games in batches of 24 and one of the early batches was missing the FAC discard/Unusual Results/Final Minute board. We discovered it early enough, only about 10 games shipped without the board. I'm pretty sure we've accounted for all of the people who were missing the board, but please let us know if we missed you and we'll send it right out to you.
• Some people either did not get or did not notice the printed sticker containing the download URL for the 2020-21 Pro Season PDF. If that's you, just e-mail us and we'll send you the file.
• There were a handful of errors to fix. On the 1995-96 Pro Season intro sheet, the suggested scoring grid usage was incorrectly labeled as the 1973-74 Pro Season (the usage suggestion itself was correct). Jim Lynam was incorrectly listed as a Vancouver coach in the '95-96 coach cards--he is the Washington coach. A couple of players got filled-in stars instead of filled in circles for usage (a throw-back to baseball).
• The "How-To" guide is missing a section on how to rate players for experience. Experience isn't used in the highlights game, so it won't affect any home-brew game play right away. The ratings scheme is similar to what we do for the baseball game. We will most likely issue a re-print of the guide for people who pre-ordered it, and send it out this fall when we launch the full-play HISTORY MAKER version.
Now that the pre-orders are out, here's some information about what's next...
• We've tentatively set Monday, May 16th as the "Official" HIGHLIGHT MAKER HOOPS release date. At that time, we'll make the game and all card sets available again. Not 100% sure what we'll do about the how-to, I'm leaning toward holding off until we can send corrected guides to the pre-order folks.
• Along with the game and card set release, we'll also make available the HMH PLAAY Mat, which will be super cool (more on that soon) and a set of cards for the '73-74 ABA, so that you can have inter-league play for that historic season along with the previously-released ‘73-74 NBA season cards.
• We do not yet have an official release date for the full play game. We'd prefer to set up a wait list and do our initial print run based on that, but based on the interest in the highlights game, we're now thinking it might be smart to do a pre-order for full-play. We'll make those decisions sometime this summer.
Thanks so much for the encouragement and enthusiasm surrounding the game, and for your patience in its delivery!
BINGE WEEK RACIN' Re-cap
Our "Binge Week: Racin'" event far exceeded our estimates, wow. We sold out of the PLAAY mats within twelve hours--and, frankly, are a little embarrassed about that, given that we had the same thing happen last year during our "Binge Week: Bowling" event. We thought we'd ordered more than enough mats, but, well...we were wrong. Our shipment of new game mats should arrive within the week, we will ship them out IMMEDIATELY!
Going forward, we are going to double-down on our estimates for third-party products. This includes the upcoming hoops game mat, which we will apply a revised formula to determine how many we should have printed.
We were also astonished at the interest in the SCRAM-thology card set, it completely exhausted our supply of yellow perforated TV card stock! Indeed, interest in SCRAM seems to increase every year, it's pretty cool. We're thinking about doing another "vintage" SCRAM set, maybe something from the 1980s or 90s, as well as another "B Series" set at Christmas.
Baseball America: Three versions for 2022
It's the tenth anniversary of Baseball America, and we're celebrating with three different versions of the set.
The standard card set went on sale Friday, in printed and PDF versions. The standard card set is presented in the classic HMB format, each card (players, parks, umpires) is marked with a 10th Anniversary logo. NEW for the '22 set, we've included delta and sigma ratings for players.
(NOTE: if you ordered the 2022 Baseball America printed cards over the weekend, shipment will be delayed a couple days; ;see the above note on toner issues with our day-to-day print outfit.)
In addition, we've created a deluxe, commemorative 10th Anniversary set with standard baseball trading card size cards. You can click on the product page to see a few examples. For this special, limited edition card set, each of the twelve league franchises is assigned a city, nickname/mascot and team colors. This set features the same players as the standard edition, over 300 player cards, plus a set of 32 umpire cards, 18 different ball park cards which you can assign to your teams as you wish, and an "Instant Results" card listing projected 2021 win ranges for each of the league's twelve teams. The perfect way to savor the Baseball America experience, coming in mid to late April!
Canadian Football: the 2022 IPFC has begun!
With all the buzz about spring football, let's not forget our long-running spring-to-fall COLD SNAP Canadian football league, the Interprovincial Pro Football Conference, now in its 13th season of play. Spearheaded by PLAAY Gamer Lenny LaFrance, the IPFC features a community cooperative project, with all eight teams now coached by a tabletop sports gamer. Peter Miller is the IPFC commissioner, he creates week-by-week league summaries to keep the league members and followers up to date—you’re welcome to get in on the e-mail loop, just let us know and we’ll connect you with the IPFC league office!
NEW this year, we’ll be featuring the IPFC playoffs live at our summer convention! Both the semi-final playoffs and Cartier Bowl Championship Game will be played head-to-head, live at PLAAY Dot CON 2022!
You can PLAAY along with the "real thing!" The league's 2022 season package is posted in the COLD SNAP free stuff section. It includes a league summary, off-season review, eight team cards, fringe player creator, and league schedule.
PLAAY DOT CON 2022
We promised an end-of-March update about our summer get-together, and here it is! First, let’s go over the tentative schedule...
Thursday, July 28
• 5-9pm: Pre-Con Picnic/Cook-Out at Redstone Park
Friday, July 29
• 9-10a: Registration, swag bag hand-out
• 9-11a: Flea Market
• 10-11a: Round Robin Game Demo Session, all PLAAY Games
• 11a-noon: HISTORY MAKER BASEBALL Express Tutorial
• noon-2p: lunch break
• 2-5p: HISTORY MAKER BASEBALL (Express) Time Machine Tournament
• 5-7p: dinner break
• 7-8p: Panel Discussion, "Sports Board Game State of the Union," featuring special guests Rob Oren, ST Patrick, Steve Tower, Al Wilson.
• 7-10p: Game Designer Showcase, Open Gaming
• 7-10p: IPFC Semi-Final Playoffs, COLD SNAP
Saturday, July 30th
• 9a-1130a: Fury Football Tournament (hosted by Steve Tower)
• 9a-1130a: RED WHITE & BLUE RACIN' "Turbo" Head-to-Head Game (hosted by Keith Avallone)
• 9a-1130a: Hockey, soccer or football event TBD
• 1130a-1p: lunch break
• 1-4p: Open Gaming
• 1-4p: IPFC Championship Game
• 1-4p: Golf, hockey, soccer or wrestling event TBD
• 4-430p: Raffle Winners!
• 430-630p: dinner break
• 630p-10p: Dodge Ball Tournament
A couple of convention "show notes..."
• The "swag bag" will include, among other things, copies of HMB Express, RWBR Turbo, the new boxed version of Dodge Ball World Tour and a "Do It Yourself" Dodge Ball team creation kit. More on that in a moment. Every convention-goer will also get a supply of raffle tickets which they can use to allocate to an assortment of cool sports game themed raffle prize boxes. This year's prizes will include a 1961 Continental League package (printed card set and book), Baseball America team gear, a Football America anthology, and more.
• We're planning our usual offerings of convention gear, but have not yet set that up in our online store. Last year we had two different convention t-shirts and a cool football jersey. Stay tuned!
• The Round Robin Game Demo Session gives people a chance to see and try out PLAAY games they don't own. Each game is demoed by a gamer for whom the game is one of their staples. We'll be looking for PLAAY gamer volunteers to host a game table, please let us know if you're interested--it would be a huge help, and I think you'd enjoy it. Feedback from past conventions shows that this is a really valuable segment.
• This year's baseball Time Machine Tournament will be played with the "express" version of HISTORY MAKER BASEBALL which we have been working on behind the scenes. This will allow us to get an extensive test run of the game, and also allow us to finish the tournament in a shorter period of time. We may alter the format to allow everyone to keep playing, instead of gradually winnowing down the field through elimination games.
• Friday Night's "Game Designer Showcase" continues a fun tradition we've started, where we let sports gamers show/tell their OWN games, games they've designed themselves. Mike Fitzgerald will be showing his soon-to-be-published basketball game, "Crunch Time," Grant Fines will have his in-development hockey game, and more announcements to come (we're still firming up the details)!
• We'll be hosting the semi0final and championship games for the 2022 IPFC Cold Snap Canadian football season at the convention. This will be the first time that the playoffs will be played entirely head-to-head, and should be an exciting finish to the season. Two of the IPFC's eight coaches (Jeff Tomlinson, Sean Culnan) and league founder Lenny LaFrance will be in attendance, so it will be sort of a mini-convention within a convention!
• We've put a priority on open gaming for this year's convention. One of the things we learned at Dice Tower West was that people come to these things to play games with their friends. Now, we DO want to have some structure. Every convention includes a number of people who have never been to a sports game convention before--indeed, there will be people who have NEVER played a sports game with someone else, EVER! For those people, it's helpful and usually a relief to be told, "be at such-and-such a table at such-and-such a time, you'll be playing so-and-so in round one." But we want to have extra time this year for people to 1) play the games they want 2) with people with whom they want to play.
• We have a couple of "TBD" segments, we want to get some feedback before committing to a specific game segment. We haven't had a soccer segment since the 2018 convention, and we didn't have room for Hockey Blast or Second Season last year--we'd like to fix that, if there are interested gamers to populate an event.
• The "big finish" will be Dodge Ball, we'll include a "do it yourself" dodgeball team in each swag bag. Each team will be comprised of the same dozen or so cards, un-named. You'll choose the seven players you want on your team, provide names for each player and select a team name. We'll e-mail the generic card set to everyone 30 days before the convention. We'll have a separate "bling your team" contest, where you can take the generic cards and "bling them up" to your own taste, however you like! You can use your favorite graphic design software, or your own latent artistic skills, make them look however you like. We'll award bonus raffle tickets to everyone who makes their own cards, and BONUS bonus raffle tickets to the convention-goers with the coolest-looking cards! THEN, we'll PLAAY Dodge Ball!!
That's the basic run-down of what we have planned so far. We still have four months to go, so plenty of time to iron out the details. Right now, we are at 75% capacity for the event. If you have questions about PLAAY Dot CON 2022, just let us know!
Join Us at Star Fest in Denver!
We're hoping to go live on location again at this year's Star Fest in Denver. May 13-15. We've been a part of that show off and on for the past ten years, as an exhibitor for the show and by participating in various panel discussions. This year, we plan to set up a booth similar to what we had at Dice Tower West (hey, all the work has already been done, right?) and conduct demo sessions, hand out business card games, etc. We’ll have more information about this soon!
DTW recap--did you catch it?
Speaking of Dice Tower West, I hope you've checked out our blog posts pertaining to that awesome event. I created a post after our first day of exhibiting, and a second one after we got back from the convention with insights gleaned from the show.
Work Begins: 2023 WAF cards for FTTM, 2021 Pro Season for SECOND SEASON
The year 2022 soldiers on, and we have our work cut out for us with fresh card sets for several games...
Work will begin next week on the Wrestling America Federation 2023 Stars cards--you may recall our "Commissioner's Edict" series last fall, where the WAF roster was called onto the carpet in the commissioner's office and given the news about their employment status. We'll be using the results of those shows to create the cards, and it will be fun! Watch for a May or June release date.
"The Big Kahuna of Card Sets" is the annual Pro Season team cards for SECOND SEASON. We're scheduled to begin work on the teams in a few weeks, always a major undertaking. Honestly, I am thinking of taking a somewhat different approach for the 2021 Pro Season set, given what COVID did to the team rosters. Numerous teams had COVID outbreaks that decimated their rosters for stretches of time, putting practice squad players in starting roles for a game or two, wreaking havoc with the depth charts. Frankly, there are more players on many teams than will fit on a team card. Rather than spend hours composing an extensive and unwieldy Fringe Player list, over-filled with players who might not even get used on most people's tabletop enterprises, I may just skip the Fringe Player list entirely (for this season only). However it's put together, we're planning on the usual July release date.
FREE STUFF
Here's something we created to augment the Pro Football Showcase idea we've presented over the last couple of months, I'm calling it a "Coach 'Em Up" chart. It's a way to get some granularity in the player ratings, which are generated by the game book/express charts in whole numbers.
(Please forgive the “plain jane” look, we intended to spiff this up a little but ran out of time!) The chart uses two 10-sided dice of different colors, one d10 is the "tens" die, the other is the "ones" die. Before each showcase game, each team gets two rolls on the "coach 'em up" chart. You'll adjust the indicated player's rating by one-half point, based on the team's result the previous week. If the team won, use the "plus" rating inside opponent's territory; if it lost, use the "minus" rating.
For example, let's say you're rolling for Atlanta, and they lost last week. You roll a "66," indicating that player E's pass rating will decline. Let's say player E had a pass rating of "1." You'd adjust his rating to "1-" on the pass with this result. Had Atlanta won the previous week, he would have been rated "0+" on the pass.
Click the button below to download the chart, and let us know how it works for you! Incidentally, I’m almost finished with the regular season in my own PFS. Chicago is undefeated (3-0) and averaging 40 points per game. Atlanta is 2-0 in the Eastern Showcase, with a huge game against Washington that will decide who’s the number one seed.
PHOTO FINISH
Ray Gavel’s been playing SECOND SEASON Pro Football Game for a VERY long time, as evidenced by his collection of game books! The game book in the center is the “original, circa 2000.
