Ahead of the Eagles’ Divisional game against the Rams Sunday, South Street board game cafe Queen & Rook is getting into the football spirit with a Blitz Champz competition on Saturday afternoon.
As an added bonus, Adrienne Smith, the creator of the NFL-licensed card game — for two to six players, ages 7 and up — will be at the cafe to teach and oversee the tournament.
Beyond being a game inventor, entrepreneur, actor, writer, and producer, Smith holds the all-time receiving yards record in women’s tackle football. Currently a wide receiver with the Boston Renegades in the Women’s Football Alliance, she has won four national championships. She has also bagged two gold medals with the U.S. national team at the International Federation of American Football Women’s World Championship, in which she scored the very first touchdown in tournament history with a 52-yard catch and run. Smith also has three silver medals as a five-time member of the U.S. women’s national flag football team.
Her on-field prowess is displayed in a not-so-hidden Easter egg on an important type of card in every Blitz Champz deck.
“I’ve got the best hands in the business,” she said. “So yeah, I am the passing touchdown card.”
Both of Smith’s parents were teachers and, as a self-described “nerdy jock,” making the game serve as an educational, math-based tool was a priority. Launched in New York public schools in 2017, the game is fun and competitive, as well as educational.
“Kids embrace it, and at the end of the day they’re just like, ‘I want to be the first player to score 21 or more points,’ and they’re not realizing that they’re doing the addition and sometimes, even multiplication,” she said.
When taking it out of the classroom, Smith wasn’t initially sure what the Venn diagram of football fans and tabletop gamers looked like. She was pleasantly surprised to find there was some overlap: “Magic: the Gathering” and “Dungeons & Dragons” players could use it as a way to understand gridiron terminology, like rushing touchdown and Hail Mary, while football fans could enjoy the on-field strategy aspects.
“With Blitz Champz, it was the ability for me to allow everyone to experience the fun, the excitement, the strategy of playing football at the elite level,” Smith said. “Not everyone can run a four-whatever 40, right? Not everyone has the best hands in the business, but most people can play and enjoy card games.”
Though the 100 illustrated cards in the playing decks — split into offense and defense — are functionally the same, the decks themselves are customized and promote all 32 NFL teams (Go Birds!). Smith said that the Kansas City Chiefs deck is the most popular, usually followed by whichever teams are doing well at the time.
The card illustrations show men and women playing both tackle and flag football, which was also critical for Smith when designing the game.
“I knew — as a Black woman who’s played football all over the world, competed against and with Japanese players, British players, French players, Russian players, et cetera — football is for everyone,” Smith said. “I was adamant that if anyone picks up a Blitz Champz card game anywhere in the world, that they would see themselves in the game and that they would know that football was for them.”
Blitz Champz also has digital versions on the phone app stores and the game’s website.
Versions of the deck potentially tied to the WFL, or flag football, ahead of its appearance in the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles as an event for both men and women, are “in the works,” Smith said.
No stranger to Philly sports fandom, Smith recalled one of the last times she was in the city, promoting her game at the PAX Unplugged game convention in December 2023. It also happened to be the day before the Eagles faced her favorite team: the San Francisco 49ers.
“As soon as the Philly fans heard that I was a 49ers fan, oh my gosh, the trash-talking began,” she said. “We ended up winning that game, thank you very much, and it was all in good fun. I think when Philly fans realize that you are passionate and you’re knowledgeable about football … there’s respect.”
It helps that the card game she was selling gives Birds fans the chance to play out their Philly fandom with pride.
“I’m giving them the ability to play a game where they can talk more trash. So why wouldn’t an Eagles fan love that?” she said.
Saturday’s Blitz Champz Battle Philly at Queen and Rook runs from 5 to 7 p.m. You can register here and the winner will win $100 and an officially licensed Eagles backpack by S.T.A.B.L.E. Second place gets $75 and third $50.
Hopefully the winner is holding an Eagles deck.
