Envelopes of Cash: The College Football Recruiting Game

Reduction in our Bulk-Order Prices (If you're not a retail shop, you can ignore this update)
about 2 years ago – Mon, Mar 14, 2022 at 04:18:16 PM

As some of you may know, in real life, Andy is an economist and studies all sorts of industries for a year or two at a time for a case and then never touches them again.  College sports is one he has ended up specializing in for the long haul,  but as a counter-example, for a year or two Andy knew a great deal about the cost of shipping in the Mesquite charcoal industry, much of which he has forgotten in the interim.

Some of the reason Envelopes of Cash is coming out as a self-published physical board game and not just as, say, a Tabletopia project, is that Andy wanted some hands-on experience in the crowdfunding and fulfillment parts of our economy and this project is paying off in that respect in a big way.  

Today, Andy attended a seminar and determined the EoC pricing aimed at retailers did not provide enough of a discount to make a bulk purchase really viable.  So, we have adjusted the pricing to correspond more with industry norms, essentially approaching the "keystone" discount for a large order.  Anyone is free to take advantage of these terms, but to do so requires a purchase of 6 or 15 copies of the game.  Other than the volume, the product is identical, and you will also get a bit of a discount on shipping on a per unit basis as well.

We expect the next update will be about Envelopes of Cash rather than just about Cash.

Adopt-a-Card Update
about 2 years ago – Sun, Mar 13, 2022 at 02:18:31 PM

Good Sunday to you all.  The EoC team is preparing to head off this evening to Reno for the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA) Expo, a sort of American “Essen Lite” show. (For those who don’t know, Essen is the giant annual board game exposition in Essen, Germany, where every great Euro game gets debuted, sometimes a year in advance of actually hitting the market. Melodi and Andy plan to go in 2023 or 2024, but for now, GAMA is going to have to do.)  While there, we’ll be meeting with the folks from Longpack Games, our chosen manufacturer, which is super convenient, because they are based in Shanghai and an hour-long flight to Reno from Oakland sure beats the commute time to Shanghai – so far all of our communications have been by email or Zoom.

But the purpose of this update is not to give you our flight itinerary, but rather to specifically talk to those backers who supported us at the Adopt-a-Card level. Some of you have reached out to us via the Kickstarter messaging system or at [email protected], to make sure we have reserved your chosen card for you and to start the process of getting your photos (of you or of your chosen subject if you’re adopting the card in honor of someone else) so Miah and Therese can begin to sketch you into the game. But for several folks, we still haven’t heard from you, and I just want to make sure everyone knows the process. (If you did not back the project at the Adopt-a-Card level, feel free to ignore the rest of this update, though if you find it intriguing and want to upgrade, there are still many great cards still available to adopt before the campaign closes.)

As you will have noticed, most of the cards in Envelopes of Card feature pictures of people, because college football programs are very staff intensive. Leaving aside the 110 athletes on a typical Power Five football roster on opening day (and in some cases an additional couple dozen walk-ons added after opening day) there might be hundreds of athletic department employees playing some role in producing the football consumer product.  And so, except for cards with art that focuses on a building or some other inanimate object, like the anonymous donor, which simply features a pen and a checkbook, each card is available for a Kickstarter backer or a friend of the game to adopt. 

Some were adopted during game development, which is why you see the cool artwork that we featured on the day of our launch, including Joel from Houston.

The final product looks really great. Joel loves it and so do we.

This is the level of effort and quality we have planned for each card adopter, but to do you justice, we need to know which card you want and what you look like. We actually had half a dozen shots of Joel to choose from, and knew he was perfect for the “Coach with Houston Roots” card, but if you’ve adopted a card and haven’t sent us your preference of card, and haven’t gotten us your photos, please do so as soon as you can. I’d like for the next set of review copies of the game to go out with some or all of the Adopter's cards updated, so that if someone does a YouTube review of Envelopes of Cash, your face might show up during the video, rather than just a blank space where your face will eventually be. The sooner Miah and Rese get the photos, the sooner you can be on the cards we send out to reviewers.

So again, use the messaging system within Kickstarter, email [email protected], or shoot Andy an email at [email protected]. And if by chance, you did not adopt a card, but you’re thinking it might be fun, it’s easy to upgrade your support level by going back to the Kickstarter and simply boosting your support. Feel free to verify that the card you have in mind is still available before you do at our Adoption page (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_tJHizVsYmU1nCIApef3zpPy0Z_Rd4VSltFC2Fz3SQ4/edit?usp=sharing) if you’re concerned it might be sold out, but we’re trying our best to keep the adoption page up to date, so if it isn’t marked, it should be available and if you grab it now and up your pledge, you’ll have it forever.

Thanks so much for being part of the game’s success to date, and as always, please help recruit more backers so we can push forward to the next tier of Stretch Goals.

Best,

Andy

Weekend Update: 122% and climing
about 2 years ago – Sat, Mar 12, 2022 at 06:24:19 PM

Hello, kind supporters of Envelopes of Cash.  Today is the first Saturday of our Kickstarter campaign, and I am happy to report we have crossed the $12,500 mark for funding.

First, as a quick reminder of how far we’ve come already, this means we’re at the 122% funding level, which is awesome.  And people who have played the game already really like it. For example, here’s what Becca Scott and Jake Michaels had to say after playing a full session of EoC.

You can also watch the full playthrough here if you’d like: 

 If you’re eager to take the game out for a spin yourself, I’d encourage you to give it a try on Tabletopia or TTS. For Tabletopia, it’s extremely simple. Just head to https://t.co/mGlQrUs8by, use the share button to invite your friends (or just launch on your own to play using the solo rules). No one needs to pay anything for tabletopia, and while it may ask you to make an account, it is free to play up to 2 games at the same time.  (For TTS, it’s a little more involved, but if you know that system, the link is: https://t.co/28UGwWtbXM)

These two implementations of Envelopes of Cash will be available from us for free to everyone while the Kickstarter is running, so by all means encourage your friends to join you, spread the word, use them as ways to get people to sample the game.  We’ve yet to find anyone who played the game who didn’t like it; even people like Becca and Jake in the video who may have been a little bit wary of playing a game about “sportball” but came away impressed. Once the KS closes, we’ll make it so that backers like you will continue to have access to these digital versions of the game, to create games for yourself and your friends, but people who did not back the Kickstarter will have to late-pledge (and not at a discount, don't worry!) in order to get access to the digital/online versions.

Ok, so back to money. The fact that we’re at 122% of our target also means that means we’re 22% of the way between the first milestone, being funded, and the next milestone, which is our first Stretch Goal, where we will be adding an additional 12 cards to the game, bringing the total to 132. These 12 cards will be larger format, and each player will get one at the start of the game (you can do a draft in reverse turn order, or you can deal them out randomly).

The idea is that with these head coach cards in play, every program can start the game with a specific identity. So you can imagine playing as a team with a coach who is sort of like, oh, let’s call him Schmabo Schminney, who uses his religiosity to boost his recruiting prowess in the Bible Belt.

Or you might take a more Schmike Schmeach approach to media relations, or perhaps let’s say Michelle Schmeach, and use your gift of gab to cut the price of marketing campaigns, which could amount to up to 12 extra points per game.

Right now, in the base game the only real differentiator among the four players’ strategies are the slightly asymmetric starting positions, driven by the geography of the United States, an asymmetry we’ve worked to mitigate as much as possible by making the west coast a lot closer to, say, the Dakotas than they actually are vis-à-vis the Great Lakes, so that the Blue player (who starts vaguely in Ontario, above Michigan) is just about as far away from Recruits in the Dakotas as the Green player, who starts approximately on Vancouver Island, off of Washington state. But with the head coach cards in the game, you’ll be able to customize your program’s unique feature each game, adding some diversity to the strategic decision making, which helps to make the optimal approach different for each player.

And not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but if we can manage to hit the $30,000 Stretch Goal, we’ll also be adding Recruiting  Board cards. These are secret cards you’ll get at the start of the game telling you your highest priorities for your roster and giving you and end-game point value target if you achieve your goals. You might be told you’ll earn 15 points for recruiting 2 DBs, 1LB, an RB, and 2 OLs, or 10 points for the easier task of getting just 2OLs, and 2DLs. Many games use the idea of a secret starting goal to help guide players towards an initial answer to “what should I actually DO?” and to also differentiate each player’s objectives a little. Fans of Ticket to Ride will recognize this mechanic as the “Tickets” themselves, where you might start out with the goal of building a route from LA to NY, 

which then sets the tone for your whole game’s overarching strategic vision. The Recruiting Board cards will play that role in EoC, assuming we can get the pledge level up to $30,000, which will be quite a push.  But if we can hit this, it will be quite cool.  For one thing, the game with these two sets of starting cards is the full vision of the game as we've spec'ed it out here at EoC World Headquarters.  The $30K mark is also the approximate spot at which the decision to simply print up enough copies to satisfy the Kickstarter demand, without any additional copies to try to make a run at retail distribution, starts to look less optimal, and instead we think we'll go the full 1,500 copy route,  taking a chance on really getting the game into broader circulation.  So for a lot of reasons, these two Stretch Goals are very important for EOC's longevity as a game 

To that end, Andy is investigating other forms of marketing. To date, we’ve hard very good success in our sports-oriented marketing efforts, but have not really cracked open the board gamer space yet. If we manage to do that, those stretch goals are very achievable. If you know any influential people in the board game hobby and you have ideas for how to help spread the word to/through them, by all means drop Andy a note, either here or on his DMs on twitter which are open. He’s @andyhre there.

Thanks for reading this Saturday morning update, thanks for being a supporter of Envelopes of Cash, and of course, thanks for always being crootin!

We did it -- Funded in under 48 hours!
about 2 years ago – Fri, Mar 11, 2022 at 08:22:25 AM

This is Andy again, with a great update. Around 4:50am this morning out here in California, slightly less than 48 hours after I clicked LAUNCH on Tuesday, a kind backer (I see you, MTV – and thank you!) supported the project and pushed us over the 100% mark. So Envelopes of Cash is a Go! This is the best news I have gotten in quite some time, which is perhaps not surprising since EoC has been my COVID-19 project and we’ve all been a little short on good news since March 2020.

The next targets are our Stretch Goals, specifically Stretch Goal 1, which is to add 12 Head Coach cards to the game.

The Head Coach cards will be a larger format card, more the size of a standard playing card. Each player will receive one before the game starts and they will provide a game-long, no-cost bonus. Here are the prototype cards from my spreadsheet-style pre-art file:

I realize there is a gender imbalance, but this is just a nod to the reality that our backers are more male than female, as is the sport. If it turns out we receive more than 4 requests from backers for female Head Coach cards, adjustments can easily be made.

I'm also really excited about the second stretch goal, which adds secret recruiting goals, a little like the secret goals you get at the start of a game like Ticket to Ride  (or if you like a more recent reference, like also at the start of Maglev Metro a cool new game I learned last weekend).  Those cards will look like a typical recruiting board you might see if you get inside the inner sanctum of a school's recruiting war room.

So adding these cool elements to the game are two reasons why I hope these first two days are just a prelude to bigger and better things over the next weeks of this campaign.  It’s a big lift to go from $10,500 to $20,000 or $30,000, but I hope we can do it.  Regardless of whether we do that or not, though, my commitment to all of you is that now that we have funded, physical game production is going to happen.

Now for the inside scoop: the truth is our funding goal was set below the full cost of manufacturing with our preferred partner in Shanghai, Longpack, mostly because Longpack requires a minimum order of 1,500 games. The fundraising to date has covered the soft costs – paying the illustrators and graphics consultants and such, as well as our marketing costs. Actually making the game is going to either mean we need to raise more money or covering those costs will be my “contribution” to the Kickstarter, one I have committed to making if that’s what it takes. Don’t feel bad for me – this was my choice. But I do still hope we can hit higher tiers and it will not be quite such a self-funded production.

Details: We’re at a little over 100 copies of the game ordered. This is fantastic, but obviously far short of 1,500. My hope is we can build on this momentum and hit our stretch goals, to unlock great additional features of the game, and thus also get closer to around 300 to 500 copies sold via Kickstarter, making the proposition of a full order less daunting, and to make the project more of a break-even proposition for me. Ordering 1,500 with 500 already spoken for is a very different concept than doing so with only 150 orders. But if we are in the latter situation, I have been making backup plans with a more expensive (per-game) shop that can do smaller minimum orders and one way or another, I am committed to getting each of you the game you have helped me bring to life.

That said, if you can help us all hit the higher levels of Stretch Goals, that would be great. Here’s to more backers and more great morning updates! And again, thanks to each of you for helping make this dream a reality.

Best,

Andy

Incredible start! We're well on our way to meeting our goal, and it it very encouraging to see how many of you have responded already
about 2 years ago – Wed, Mar 09, 2022 at 03:18:07 PM

This is Andy,  Obviously much of the written content you'll get from the EoC team will be from me but not always so I figured I'd make it clear who is doing the typing.  Miah, Therese, and Sean have all been working very hard as well to get us where we are today, as well as the mysterious T. Wyeth who doesn't want his real name used.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know that in our first day of being open for business, we hit 80% of our opening funding goal, which far exceeded my hopes for how our initial 24 hours would go.  it makes the possibility of saying we funded within 48 hours a real possibility, one which I now am hopeful we can achieve.  That should in turn push us higher up on the Kickstarter algorithm for additional promotion, making it easier for folks who might not know about the game to find us, and thus hopefully making it easier to unlock the stretch goals, all of which will make the game a lot more fun for everyone.

Quick recap of yesterday's additions:

Around Noon out west, Becca Scott and Jake Michaels from Good Time Society took the game for a spin on Two-Player Tuesday.  If you haven't yet seen the game being played, you may enjoy seeing a full game played out.  

Also, the gameboygeek preview video, which had been available in private mode, went public.  

Also, on our end, I was able to finally finish a first draft of the "Learn by Playing" campaign rules just prior to launch.  The idea for this is that if people are coming cold to Euro gaming for the first time, Envelopes of Cash might seem a little daunting.  It is, after all, a medium-weight Euro, and for veteran players, the path to a game like this would typically have involved lighter gateway games like Catan, Carcassonne, or Ticket to Ride.  So, I ripped the game in half, both in terms of length (creating two six month scenarios) but also mechanically, so that in Scenario One there are no cards, so all you do is move/recruit, and in Scenario Two, there is no movement/recruiting, so all you do is worry about cards & marketing.  This way, a newcomer to this style of game can learn both halves of the game separately and then see how they will fit together.  Those rules are now available in first draft form and I am sure they are rife with typos.  Of course any proofreading is welcome, but I'd also like any constructive critique on how to make them clearer or easier to understand:  Newbie Campaign 

So, in closing, TYTYTYTY.  Thank you.  We have another big marketing push slated for today, including a big mailing through Boardgamegeek and another series of podcast ads, but I do also have one request for all of you.  With the game at 80% funding, that means if 25% of you can get one person to joins us in this endeavor at the current rates, we would hit 100% just by internal referrals.  So to the extent you think you know someone who might like the game, if you could maybe forward this update, or just send them the link to the Kickstarter (https://bit.ly/EOC_LIVE) or to one of the videos above, tell them you've backed the project and you think they would like the game as well, that along could easily push us over the line before we cross the 48 hour mark.

And so, with one more thank you, I'll sign off. 

Thank you,

Andy