Books &
Buckets
The women's basketball card game. Two duos, four players, one baller each. Where the sport is the mechanic, not the theme.
Working title · A concept by Pamplemoose Games · July 2026
The W already plays this game.
NBA locker rooms had Cee-Lo, the 4-5-6 dice game, and we built Dice & Dimes on those bones. In the W, the cards come out on team flights and at Unrivaled, and the game is spades. Angel Reese asked the internet to teach her before her Miami debut. Dearica Hamby answered, "I got yall."
Spades is played in pairs. Partners across the table, reads, trust, trash talk. It is already basketball. All we did was hand it a court.
Four players. Two duos. One buzzer.
A trick-taking card game for four, played 2v2 on a half court diamond. Each of you controls one baller. Together you call how many buckets you will score, then win the books to back it up.
Take your baller. Four players, two duos, partners across the table, one character card each on the diamond.
Call your shot. Every quarter opens with both duos bidding their bucket line out loud.
Play the possession. Lead a ball, follow its color, highest card takes the book. The Rock beats everything.
Cash the books. Every book becomes a bucket worth what your spot on the court says. Four quarters, final buzzer, high score wins.
A true marriage of basketball and spades.
The court decides what every book is worth. The cards decide who takes it. Remove either half and the game stops working.
Follow the color
Three field balls, Chrome, Neon, and Pearl, plus the Rock. Match the led ball if you can. Out of that color? Take it to the rack.
The Rock beats everything
The classic orange ball outranks every field ball. Dropping it is a statement, and everyone at the table hears it.
Check up, throw down
The ball handler leads. Around the table, one card each. Best card takes the book, and that duo scores the bucket.
Chemistry wins games
You win with your partner or you lose with her. Reads, memory, and trust decide every quarter. No dice anywhere in the box.
The Diamond Cut
Your baller holds a spot on the diamond. Books won from the paint cash as twos. Books won at the elbows, outside the arc, cash as threes.
Score, and you may cut to the open spot. The deep spots pay more and are harder to hold, so the court itself becomes a strategy layer no card table has ever had.
Call your shot. Then back it up.
Confidence is currency here, the same way it is at every spades table and on every court.
Name your number
Each player calls her bucket count and the duo owns the combined line. Hit it and it scores, with a bonus for calling it exact. Miss and the quarter is a bagel.
Bid zero, play D
A pure defense quarter. A clean sheet is a massive swing. A single slip is a foul out. Spades players know it as the nil, the boldest call at the table.
Greed has a price
Books above your bid bank as Heat you can spend on special plays. Bank too much and it tips into Foul Trouble. Momentum cuts both ways.
Meet the league.
An original parody league at launch: a Guard, a Wing, and a Center, every baller bending one rule of the table. Built to welcome licensed athletes as guest stars.
Season 30. All eyes on the W.
All-Star Weekend tips off in Chicago this week as the league celebrates its 30th anniversary. The W has never had more eyes, more capital, or more cultural pull.
Sources: CNBC and Forbes media rights and valuation reporting, Sports Business Journal attendance, 2026.
Two giant markets. One empty intersection.
Trading card games mint franchises that outlive seasons: Pokemon, Magic, Lorcana. Sports sets are one of the fastest growing corners of that market, and basketball keeps growing with fans under 30. Yet the card aisle only sells basketball to collect. Nobody sells basketball to play.
One set is a game. Many is a franchise.
The parody league carries the launch. Licensed athletes carry the franchise.
GROUP LICENSE · when the moment is right LEAGUE EDITION · someday, with the right partners
Every guest star signs her own deal: a licensing fee up front and a revenue share on every product carrying her card. Her card sells, she earns.
Why Pamplemoose Games
We are the two-designer studio of Zack Howe and Cole Beardsley, creators of HAVOC: Gen Zero, the card game we designed, funded on Kickstarter in under thirty minutes.
We turn brands, athletes, and IP into card games for a living. This deck's sister concept, Dice & Dimes, does for NBA locker room dice what Books & Buckets does for the W's spades table. Different league, same conviction: build the game the culture already plays.
Madison, Wisconsin · pamplemoosegames.com
You bring the athletes. We bring the game.
Built with whoever holds the relationships: athlete managers, agencies, player collectives, or a publisher moving first. A founding guest star roster drawn from the athletes you represent and the rooms you build. We handle design, development, and production planning end to end.
Money talk comes later, once the prototype has earned it. The next step is a thirty-minute call. We arrive with a playable prototype plan and a term outline.
Deal the players in.
If a card game built from the W's own table culture sounds like something your athletes belong in, let's talk. And if it's not your thing, that's a fair answer too.
Zack Howe & Cole Beardsley · Pamplemoose Games · zack@pamplemoosegames.com
Concept pitch prepared by Pamplemoose Games LLC. League and brand names appear solely as market context and remain the property of their owners. All characters shown are original parodies created by Pamplemoose Games; no real athlete's name or likeness is used. Game mechanics and designs are original work of Pamplemoose Games LLC. Placeholder art only; final art would be commissioned. AI never touches the game design. Not for distribution.