April Fools – Stonemaier Games

April Fools

2023

This year’s April Fools theme is CATS! In addition to a cat-themed Stonemaier Games t-shirt (a fitted tee made from soft Bella Canvas material), we have 3 new Rolling Realms promos: Biddy & Walter, The Isle of Cats, and Minigolf (which isn’t cat-themed, but it’s a realm based on the minigolf solo mode in Rolling Realms, a level of meta that seems appropriate for April Fools).

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We donated 10% of webstore proceeds (all products, not just April Fools products) through April 1, 2023 to a few cat-related charities: The Humane Society of Missouri (where I adopted Biddy 16 years ago), Kauai Community Cat Project, and Panthera).

This article discusses the other elements of the 2023 April Fools celebration, including Stonemaier coworkers as animals and a video of pets strategizing over games.

2022

This year, we added something new to our April Fools collection. It’s slightly less silly than the 2020 products, but still quite a departure from tabletop games: We created 8 custom-stamped discs for disc golf!

Disc golf became my go-to outdoor activity during the pandemic, and I’m fortunate to play on a weekly basis with a wonderful group of people (all of whom also happen to be tabletop gamers). So I thought it would be fun to create a series of “signature” discs, each paired with a Stonemaier Game and a disc-golfing friend.

We partnered with my disc golfing manufacturer of choice, Innova, to make these discs right here in the US. There’s a limit to how many we can make per print run, and that was probably a good thing, as I have very little information as to how these will sell (and even if they do sell, this isn’t a profitable endeavor–some things are just for fun). I ran a poll last year with one of our subscriber lists to have a rough idea of how many of these discs we needed to send to each of our fulfillment centers; most are in the US.

If you haven’t played disc golf but you like dexterity games and/or you want an excuse to play a strategy game outside, I highly recommend giving it a try. You’re basically taking a short hike and occasionally throwing a disc at a big metal basket. You might be surprised by how many courses are in your area, and you really only need one disc to try it for the first time (they’re different than traditional frisbees, and each disc is weighted and shaped to do something different when it leaves your hand). For beginners, a starter set is any 1 putt/approach disc, 1 mid-range, and 1 distance/fairway driver.

If you want to delve deeper into the sport, here’s a rather famous starting point from last year, one that I think is perhaps the greatest moment in any sport, ever.

You can select your disc of choice here, and if for some reason it’s already sold out, just enter your email for a back-in-stock request–we’re happy to make more if there’s demand.

For bonus silliness this April Fools Day, I asked Stonemaier Ambassadors to submit photos of their pets in game boxes, and I filmed a video including all of the photos and my top 10 favorites:

2021

I made an important “announcement” on April 1 this year.

2020

5 Plastic Containers for Candy Eggs

Wingspan first released in the spring of 2019, which happens to be the season for candy eggs. As a result, there were countless reports of people placing plastic eggs in one container and candy eggs in another container.

We don’t want people to accidentally eat a plastic egg. So today, on April 1, we are happy to announce a new line of chocolate-colored plastic trays. These new trays are designed to hold candy eggs, clearly differentiating them from plastic eggs in clear trays.

This is a 100% real product that is on our webstore now for a limited time.

Stonemaier Games Magnifying Glass

At Stonemaier Games, we seek to make our games as accessible as possible. As for April 1, 2020, we’re now offering a solution to games with small text: The Stonemaier Games magnifying glass.

This device can magnify text and icons up to 30x their printed size. This will not only allow you to better see components in our current games, but it will also allow us to use font sizes as small as 1 or 2 points in future games, which significantly increases the amount of text we can print on cards and tiles.

This is a 100% real product that is on our webstore now for a limited time.

9 Comments on “April Fools

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  1. Jamey, would you ever consider offering a disc golf starter set in the future? You could create a beginner set and an advanced set.

    Also out of what is offered…could you recommend which of the drivers/mid-range/putters would be the best three for beginners?

    1. David: Thanks for asking! Our method for all products is to offer them individually so people can pick and choose exactly what they want. My recommendation is to pick 1 putt/approach disc, 1 mid-range, and 1 distance/fairway driver–any of the discs will work for those starting out. Thanks for giving disc golf a try!

      1. Thanks for the quick response. I’ve never played and I’m trying to create a local tournament haha. (What have I got myself into)

  2. April Fools Week: Cat Cards, Cat Shirts, Cat Charities, Strategy Cats, and Cat Coworkers – Stonemaier Games says:

    […] April Fools […]

  3. […] is April Fools Day, and we’ve continued a tradition we started a few years go (and added something […]

  4. We were preparing for my daughters birthday party recently, and one of the games we were going to have was to search through a stack of pennies for ones that were minted the year she was born. Well, my vision to read the year on coins is not what it used to be, but thanks to this magnifying glass, I was able to read the years! So this is useful beyond just for reading the fine print on games!

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