Pamplemoose Games
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Eurup Spalding card, BB-001, The Post. Ability: Anchor, wins any tied book.
Pamplemoose Games · Concept Pitch

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 insight

The W already plays this game.

The cards come out on team flights, in hotel rooms, 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.

Devil Hershey card, BB-005, The Post. Ability: Put-Back.
Devil Hershey · BB-005 · original parody character
The game

Four players. Two duos. One buzzer.

A card-driven basketball 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.

1

Take your baller. Four players, two duos, partners across the table, one character card each on the diamond.

2

Call your shot. Every quarter opens with both duos bidding their bucket line out loud.

3

Win the Contest. Every shot is a card duel, shooter against defender. Follow the ball color or you're out of position. The Rock beats everything.

4

Cash the books. Every book becomes a bucket worth what your spot on the court says. Four quarters, final buzzer, high score wins.

The engine

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.

Four balls, four suits

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 trump suit

The Rock beats everything

The classic orange ball outranks every field ball. Dropping it is a statement, and everyone at the table hears it.

A shot is a Contest

Beat your defender

Every shot is a card duel. The shooter leads, the defender guarding her must answer in the same ball color, and the higher card decides: bucket or stop.

The assist rule

An assisted shot attacks with two cards

If a pass set up the shot, the passer throws a card in too and the offense keeps the higher one. Ball movement literally raises your odds, and you win with your partner or you lose with her. Nothing in the box is left to luck.

The signature mechanic

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.

PAINT 2 PT ELBOW 3 PT OPEN 3 PT TOP 3 PT THE CUT
Bids, heat, and the shutdown

Call your shot. Then back it up.

Confidence is currency here, the same way it is at every spades table and on every court.

The bid

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.

The Shutdown

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.

Heat

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.

The system

Three card types. One box.

A card carries information in proportion to how often you play it. Ball cards are nearly silent because you throw one every Contest. Special Plays carry their rule. Ballers carry the most, because you live with her all game.

Neon 7 Play card, one of the four ball suits.
Ball cards · thrown every Contest
The GOAT of the Rock, the highest card in the game.
The GOAT of the Rock · the top of the Play Deck
Alley-Oop Special Play, costs 2 Heat, your card counts one rank higher when your partner leads.
Special Plays · bought with Heat

Every card shown is a real render from the concept set.

The cast

Meet the league.

The first prototyped ballers of an original parody league, spanning Guards, Wings, Centers, and Posts, every one bending a rule of the table. The launch roster grows from here, and it is built to welcome licensed athletes as guest stars.

Whitney Briner, The Center. Card BB-002. Ability: Stuffed, once per quarter cancel a Rock played against your duo. Ballier, The Wing, Minnesota Lyonz. Card BB-003. Ability: Two-Way, once per game steal a book back after it is won. Kaitlyn Sharke, The Guard. Card BB-004. Ability: Card Shark, after the first book of each quarter raise or lower your duo's bid by one. Becky Pagers, The Guard. Card BB-006. Ability: Dial Her Up, once per quarter your partner may play a card from your hand.
Placeholder art only. Final art would be commissioned. AI never touches the game design. Parody characters original to Pamplemoose Games; no real athlete's name or likeness appears.
Why now · the league

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.

$3.1B
11-year national media rights, expanded from $2.2B since 2024
$460M
average franchise value, with the first billion-dollar team in women's sports
+34%
attendance growth, 3.15M fans through the gates last season
18
teams by 2030, with Portland and Toronto debuting this season

Sources: CNBC and Forbes media rights and valuation reporting, Sports Business Journal attendance, 2026.

Why now · the business case

Two giant markets. One empty intersection.

$7B+
global trading card game market in 2025, the low end of analyst estimates that run to $13B
450M
people play basketball worldwide, across 200+ countries, the planet's third biggest sport
0
leagues, anywhere, whose players have a true collectible card game of their own

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.

The catapult. First one through this door wins the story. A true card game would put WNBA players ahead of every league on earth, including the men. The W would go first, and first is a headline that never expires.
The roadmap

One set is a game. Many is a franchise.

The parody league carries the launch. Licensed athletes carry the franchise.

01FIRST EDITION · the full 2v2 game, parody league core set · 2027 tipoff 02GUEST STARS · individually licensed athletes as chase cards 03BOX FORMATS · a big box that opens with a draft, tournament and party modes
GROUP LICENSE · when the moment is right LEAGUE EDITION · someday, with the right partners

Every guest star signs her own deal and earns on every product that carries her card, with terms structured alongside the partner funding the run. Her card sells, she earns.

The studio

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. Our conviction is simple: build the game the culture already plays. Nobody has ever done that for basketball, which is exactly why this one exists.

Madison, Wisconsin · pamplemoosegames.com

The partnership

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.

The honest caveat. The concept is done. The game isn't, yet. And Panini holds exclusive WNBA trading card rights, so we build this as what it is, a card game with individually licensed athletes and no league marks, and we confirm the category boundaries with counsel before anything ships.

The money conversation starts now, because funding is what builds the prototype and then the full game. The next step is a thirty-minute call. We arrive with a prototype plan and a term outline.

Next step

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.

Let's talk after All-Star →

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.