PLAAY Connect 08.25.22

See You in Phoenix, AZ at ConSimWorld Expo—this weekend!

We're headed to Arizona for the weekend, so if you're in the area come join us! We'll be at the ConSimWorld Expo in Tempe, at the Tempe Mission Palms Resort Hotel, Saturday 08.27.22 through Monday 08.29.22. The ConSimWorld Expo (which runs through Friday 09.02.22) is primarily a get-together of war-gamers, but anyone who's been in the hobby for awhile recognized the overlap between sports gaming and war gaming.

We have an exhibitor's table and will be offering our games at special Expo "cash-and-carry" prices (too low to mention here!). Outside the vendor's hours (2p to 330p), we'll be showing people how to play our games, and also moving around the room getting some ideas for possible future PLAAY NOW battle/skirmish games, historical and non-historical.

Here's the address for the Tempe Mission Palms: 60 E 5th St Tempe, Arizona 85281. Let us know if you think you might show up, and we'll keep an eye out for you!

2022 Football America for SECOND SEASON—and Fast-Drive Football!

I know this was on the "danger of not getting done" list but I just couldn't let that happen! It's an all-new season of pro football fun, with all twelve Football America teams back in action starting 09.12.22! As usual, there's a host of rookies ready to make names for themselves, lots of free agent movement (including a BIG NAME quarterback move that could shift the league's balance of power) and the expected career ebbs and flows of players you've grown familiar with in Football America's previous twelve seasons.

For those PLAAY gamers with a preference for quick-play, we’ve teamed up with Al Wilson to create 2022 Football America cards for Fast Drive Football! Available as a free download, also starting 09.12.22.

New for '22, the Football America team cards will be in team colors, same format as our 2021 Pro Season release! (We'll still let you choose the nick-names, though!)

Be sure not to miss our special 2022 Football America Season Kickoff Event, happening Thursday 09.08.22 on the PLAAY Games YouTube channel!

Big Month for New PLAAY Games!

In the last two weeks we've released three new games: PLAAY Classic's History Maker Express Baseball and PLAAY NOW's Dodgeball World Tour and Planet Flipper! There's been video activity for all three, take a look...

• Al Wilson's HMB Express Tutorial

• Steve Tower's AFR Planet Flipper and Dodgeball Doubleheader

• Our In-Season Express Baseball West Coast Twin-Bill (Oakland/Los Angeles, San Diego/San Francisco)

• Planet Flipper Un-Boxing with designer Darryl Durston

2022 Pro In-Season EXPRESS Cards for HISTORY MAKER BASEBALL

If you've never experienced the fun of playing along with the in-progress big league baseball season, you should check out our revival of the Pro In-Season cards for HMB! A staple of the game in its early years, the In-Season set got de-railed (like a lot of things) when COVID hit in 2020. We've brought it back for 2022 in a new "express" format! Each team gets 24 players, 12 pitchers and 12 batters, based on the most-used players prior to the set's release on August 7th. You also get a sheet of blank player cards to fill out your roster with late-season call-ups or emerging players. Umpires, too! Read more about it here...

We're also contemplating bringing back our annual HMB "Fall Classic Pre-PLAAY," where we put the in-season cards to use as prognostication tool! We fast-forward the regular season in mid-September to get a couple weeks ahead of real-life, and then play the entire post-season out with HMB, culminating in a live get-together with other PLAAY Gamers to complete the season with our own "Fall Classic." We've held this event all over the country, in cities like Milwaukee, Boston, Dallas, Seattle and more. I'm not sure we can fit this into our fall travel schedule, but--we'll let you know! (If not, we can always do it online!)

Coming in September: XL Game Book for HMB, and the return of the Trading Card Quick-Rate Guide!

We've been quietly making some cosmetic changes to the HMB game book--the game results have NOT been changed, just the "look." We're now on game book 5.1. We've updated the game book cover to match the game box and re-formatted the pages to be "full bleed" print. The 1-3-5 Unusual Results pages are now color-coded: ball park (gray), umpire (blue) and special results (pink). We’ll show you what it looks like on our 08.25.22 YouTube stream.

We're also excited to bring back the trading card quick rate guide in a new streamlined presentation. The cards are the same as before, but we've replaced the folder in which the cards were previously housed with a cello-wrap container and cover card.

Both the items should be available within a couple of weeks.

Coming in September: Binge Week SOCCER!

Because it's being staged in Qatar (a very HOT place in the summertime), this year's World Cup will be played in November. We're getting ready for the football fervor that always accompanies the World Cup by releasing a Qatar '22 Pre-PLAAY card set for SOCCER BLAST. Engineered by Canadian soccer fan John Bergeron, the base set will include all 32 cup qualifiers, in a new Qatar '22 card design featuring team colors and national flags. There'll be a twelve team supplemental set--teams that didn't make the final tournament field, but were competitive on the world stage--available as a free download!

When we release the World Cup cards, we'll also have a couple of OTHER soccer goodies available as well! First, we'll offer the 2018 World Cup cards as a “blast from the past” appetizer, and we'll also be re-releasing the Soccer Blast "How-To" guide in its new booklet format. PLUS, we'll introduce a brand-new Soccer Blast PLAAY mat! All happening starting 09.19.22--cards, mat, guide. AND--we'll also put the SOCCER BLAST game on sale that week as well, 20% off, $39 postage-paid.

Course Collection EIGHTEEN for HISTORY MAKER GOLF

We've been busily at work behind the scenes creating our latest course collection for History Maker Golf. We're planning a "big reveal" of the four courses included in a special HMG YouTube Stream on 09.15.22. We'll drop this small hint: Course Collection EIGHTEEN will be a collection of domestic (U.S.) courses, from four different regions of the country. Course Collection EIGHTEEN will be available 09.26.22.

Join Us In-Person at the November PLAAY Gamer Get-Together!

Every year at PLAAY-Dot-CON we get a good group of local Denver-area gamers together and we always wonder, "why don't we do this more often?" Well, for the past three years, we HAVE! It's an informal gathering at PLAAY HQ, where we talk shop, play some games, eat pizza and just have fun for a few hours. This year's get-together will be Saturday, 11.05.22 10a to 3pm. Out-of-towners are welcome (in fact, we will have a couple for this event!), just let us know you’re coming so we have enough food!

It's FREEEEEE!

• It occurs to me that we didn't do our usual pre-season SECOND SEASON football freebie for the 2021 Pro Season, featuring the two "Big Game" teams and/or our very own College All-Star team. Done, and done.

• Here's our Fury Football Pro All-Stars cards, which we put to VERY good use during July's PLAAY-Dot-CON. That’s right, REAL pro players playing Fury Football! It's the kind of re-imagining of the game that the pro league commissioner was musing about, super fast, super fun--with PLAAY NOW's Fury Football Game!

• PLAAY Gamer Brien Aronov sent along these very cool HISTORY MAKER BASEBALL cards, based on the 1958 Japan Pro Season.

• Better-late-than-never (sorry!!), here’s Neil Maitland's 2021-22 English Pro Season Fringe Player supplement for SOCCER BLAST.

Photo Finish

I don’t remember who sent this to me (um, well, maybe I DO, but I’ll never tell…) but thought I’d post it here as idea-fodder for the PLAAY online Christmas Party “White Elephant” gift exchange as a complement to HISTORY MAKER GOLF. Yup, the holidays will be here sooner than you can say “YEOMAN, UTILITY, CHUNKY…”