Thoughtful Thoughts from PLAAY HQ 02.25.26
My working title for this post—I figured I'd think of a better slug line than THAT, but I guess not. I was going to say "random thoughts," but they're more purposeful than random. Stream of consciousness keyboarding here topic-by-topic, with a three-sentence limit for each, loosely applied. No particular order. Here goes...
PLAAY-Fest in Eau Claire, WI: Just want to jog your awareness of this event, particularly because it happens the same weekend as Eau Claire's annual "Summer Jam" concert series. That means that hotel rooms could begin to get scarce as the weather begins to warm up. Not a problem if you're a local, but if you're thinking about dropping in from a distance you might want to secure your accommodations before the end of March? April? Also, the best fly-in airport is Minneapolis/St. Paul, which is about 75 miles from Eau Claire. You can also fly directly into Eau Claire (they do have an airport there!), via Chicago, Milwaukee or Minneapolis. But MSP + a rental car is, I think, the best, fastest, most expedient option. Read more about PLAAY-Fest here…
CFL Rules Changes: There's been some uproar about the Canadian football League's recent and continuing rules changes and how they might be reflected in our CFL game Cold Snap. To be honest, the appetite for Canadian football has waned since we introduced the game seventeen years ago (Whaaa!? It's been seventeen years!?. Thus I don't plan to revise the game materials, it just wouldn't be worth the time investment. Either we'll retire the game as we did with Lacrosse Blast several years ago (and have a farewell party!), or we'll continue to offer it in its present format with some suggested game play adjustments to reflect the new rules. If the former, it could possibly return during the holiday sale each year. If the latter, I'll put together a blog post outlining the rules tweaks for future CFL play and a free download of a 100-yard Cold Snap field.
Will Campbell's "0+" Rating for New England: I went back and forth on how to rate the Patriots O-line for our "Big Game Pre-PLAAY." They surrendered sacks at a more-frequent-than-average rate and finished in the middle-of-the-pack in overall performance. It's tough to rate players "0" on a championship team, though. I (briefly) considered giving Drake Maye the [ ? ] symbol so that I could rate the offensive linemen a little stronger. But that just didn't feel right. So, four of the five New England offensive linemen were given at least a smidge of deficiency. The way the Seattle defense manhandled Campbell (and the others), I think justifies the way they were rated. Whew!
PLAAY Gamer Open Golf Tournament at Digital 2 Dice Con: Al Wilson will be emceeing this for PLAAY (I will not be making the trip this year due to family commitments), and I've been in touch with the con's co-director Mike Canestrari about accommodations. We feel like there will be about 20-30 people who want to play, and Mike has assured that there will be sufficient table space. We might alter the format a little this year--maybe everyone plays a full round (at the Connecticut River course, of course!), and then anyone/everyone who is within (2?)(3?) strokes of the lead plays a second round. Al will be the final arbiter of this. In any case, please let us know if you're attending D2D and would like to play so that we have enough game books, dice and other necessary materials to make the tournament a success!
Bill's Fishing Adventure at Lake Sabbatia: Bill Sauerbier has re-launched his “Bill’s Day Off” Twitch board games video channel, and did a really fun-to-watch "home town throw down" fishin' challenge between his real-life self and Jonathan Oakes, the fictional fishin' pro who lives in Bill's home town, Taunton, MA. I won't spoil it, but it was a good time and I thought Bill captured the essence of what makes this game such an enjoyable yet challenging game to play. Reminder: we will be holding a big fishing tournament at PLAAY-Fest!
College Hoops PLAAY-Down card set for Highlight Maker hoops: We'll go live this weekend with the product page for this card set and I'm super excited about it, here's a "sneak preview" of what’s ahead. What I wanted to mention here was the production aspect of this set: each set requires about 40 minutes to print, finish and package. Thus, it's important that we have a ball park idea of what the demand will be so that we'll have enough on hand. If you're interested in the set, I'd encourage you to get on the wait list when the page goes live. We'll e-mail you when the set is available for purchase and, more importantly, we'll be able to make a quick turnaround getting the cards in the mail to you. Thanks! Side note, just as was the case with the original PLAAY down card set there won't be a PDF option for this set: the file is simply too large, it exceeds our website's download file size limit.
Ice Brew 600 Afterglow: That was a fun race--and a weird one! A couple of people (myself included) noted that there were NO checks of the bottom group for ANY quality the entire race--not a single one! There are plenty of sub-topics we could explore related to that phenomenon, probably foremost is, "what are the odds of that happening!?" I calculate like this: 28 turn race minus three pit turns minus two yellow-flag turns, that's 23 turns of racing. Odds of NOT rolling a 5 on the black die are .833; thus to roll a die 23 times and NOT get a "5," that's about a 1.5% chance. To put it another way, you'd have to run sixty or more editions of the Ice Brew 600 to have another race with no action in the bottom group. (See you in 2086!) At any rate, it's undeniable that the rolling of dice can foil any well-laid plan!
Ice Brew 600 Finish: Spoiler alert if you haven’t watched the YouTube stream. End of race, Aimee Serra's final challenge should have been vs. Hudson Howell not Brendan Nutt--my bad! Hudson Howell would have defended the challenge, forcing Serra to use her chip to move into third place rather than second. Since Kevin Pettis didn't run out of gas, the race outcome isn't affected, he’s the winner. Brendan Nutt gets a second place finish, Aimee Serra finishes third. Hudson Howell would finish 7th instead of third. Everything else is unchanged. Thanks for watching!
SCRAM Blank Cards: Somehow I omitted the set of five or six blank cards that come with every SCRAM season. I've always wondered if people actually use those! Not to worry, you can download an entire sheet of blank driver cards on the RWBR "free stuff" page.
Business card games: One of the things I've been wanting to get active with again is the "business card game" concept we initiated at Dice Tower West a few years ago. When we (re)combined the PLAAY Classic and PLAAY NOW sites into a single site we set aside the concept. But we revived it for BGG.con last fall and it was a big hit. The original business card game lineup included Mow Master, Rugby 6 (since re-branded as Tackle Bee), Pachinko, Forest Friends and Bull Ride Hero. We have several new ideas which we plan to implement as soon as we get the chance. Stay tuned.
No stream this Thursday night (02.26.26)--we'll see you Thursday 03.05.26 for a guided tour and demo of the new College Hoops PLAAY-Down package!
Blog post photo credit: Ally Griffin, Unsplash.com