Envelopes of Cash: The College Football Recruiting Game

Quick Update: Physical Cards
about 2 years ago – Wed, Sep 21, 2022 at 06:03:32 AM

The Portrait Work continues apace.  if you've not yet gotten yours, I promise it's coming.  In the meantime though I had to get a deck printed for the SHUX show that starts in 10 days up in Vancouver, BC, Canada. So Miah and Rese gave me the current state of the art of all portraits, approved, or not, and stuck them on the cards so I could get a few copies printed.  The samples arrived yesterday and I wanted to count them to make sure everything was there (it was).  I thought you might seeing just how much card content you'll be getting once the game ships.  So here you go.

One thing to note, the Head Coach Cards will not be single-sided like this, but rather those 12 HCs on the far left will be six double-sided thick cardboard tablets, with a different head coach on either side.  You'll be dealt one (or players can draft them) and you can then choose to play the A side or the B side.  The Recruiting Boards will be single sided, but they will also be thick tablets, rather than cards.  I just had them printed as cards for SHUX because for the prototype it was faster and cheaper.

Hope to see some of you up in Vancouver.  I will be on "Indie Ave" all day Friday Sept 30, and then playing other people's games on Oct 1.  Details on the show are here: https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/shux22/

A Few More Approved Portraits
about 2 years ago – Thu, Sep 08, 2022 at 05:10:35 PM

Hello Envelopers,

Here at EoC World HQ we have been pumping out portraits and sending them to the adopters fairly rapidly this week, which has really lifted my spirits. I wanted to share just a few of the portraits we’ve gotten back as fully approved to let you all see we are finally making forward progress.

Up first today, we have

The Matriarch of the Program, one of our Head Coach cards, which was adopted by Allen Thompson to honor his wife Liz, a huge Texas A&M fan.

For the Head Coach cards, we let the Adopters play a role in the color scheme, which was not always the case for the other cards which sometimes had to stay consistent with the regional colors of the map to sync up with other elements of the game. But Allen was able to make sure Liz was depicted in aTm maroon and white.

Another cool card that has been signed off on is Creative Financing. This one seemed like it might be hard for the art team to illustrate but Rese and I were able to come up with an image to convey the idea of “juggling the books” that we think captures the spirit of what’s behind creative financing, and our adopter, Clay Carroll, was happy with it as well.

Finally, for today, We have the Tech Bro Millionaire, which was a very late-in-the-day adoption by my friend and business partner Dan Rascher. Dan apparently wanted everyone to know he has a need for speed and I think now they will.

We’re about 60% of the way through the Portraits now, and I think the Prototype I bring up to SHUX will be closed to 75% complete, with the hope we can submit final art to Gameland by mid-October. If you are among the 40% still waiting to see a draft, I am sorry for the delay, but you should see something in the next few weeks and I will promise to forward it to you as soon as I am satisfied with what I see.

I hope the start of the season has brought you all joy, and always be crootin,

Andy

A Happy Labor Day Indeed!
about 2 years ago – Mon, Sep 05, 2022 at 11:27:21 AM

For about twenty-five of you, your email inbox should have a draft of the card portrait you adopted, of yourself, your family member(s), and/ or your friend(s). I sent these out in a flurry last night and this morning, and while I think I managed to avoid calling anyone by the wrong name or sending the wrong picture to the wrong person, if a slip-up happened, that is totally on me. I’ve already gotten back about five responses, all positive and either approving the art as-is or asking for reasonable revisions that we are going to be able to accommodate within the schedule. So progress has resumed progressing.

In total 47 cards were adopted (of which 8 are Head Coaches; only Zen Master (Female) and The Martinet were not adopted HCs, but if you ask nicely we can squeeze these two cards into the schedule). This means we are more than halfway done with the personalized portrait work. I know I was very pessimistic last week when I wrote about the game’s status, but this certainly is going to help us get closer to being on track. In truth, I still think it will be hard to have the game in people’s hands to play at your Big Game or Iron Bowl party, but I am still holding out hope for the CFP.

Because some of these portraits got approved already I’d like to resume more regular updates featuring a card or even a few cards each time. Today’s “first to get back to me” award goes to Stephen Harrington, Adopter of the Frugal Bag Man card. Stephen backed the Kickstarter all the way back in March and has been a very encouraging supporter of the project. The Frugal Bagman concept is that he’s able to sway recruits with money, but he’s also able to stash some of the loot away for a rainy day by being frugal, and so he’ll make sure you have more if you really need it. Sort of a “there’s always money in the banana stand” kind of thing. So Rese drew him with money bulging out of the walls behind him even as he’s offering you, the viewer, a suitcase of that is about ¾ full of cash rather than completely full.

 The card itself offers you a thematically related benefit: you’ll always pay one fewer Envelope of Cash (EC)  whenever you sign a recruit.

It’s actually one of the most powerful utility cards in the game, which is part of why it offers so few stars for its relative high cost in ECs (2 gray/1 orange). I think a lot of you will be really happy whenever you draft Stephen’s card and put it into play, because the ability to save 1 EC can be a lifesaver out on the recruiting trail.

I hope to show you many more cards in the coming days and weeks as they get approved and/or revised, and can’t wait to someday be able to tell you that EVERY adopter has been sent a draft.

Also don’t forget I’ll be at the SHUX convention in Vancouver, British Columbia September 30 – October 2.

https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/shux22/

The EoC booth is officially open only on Friday September 30, but we may also get a few bonus hours on Sunday October 2, but aim for Friday if you really want to try out the game in person. I’ll be playing other people’s games on Saturday, though so look me then too but the game is too big to just plop down without a booth reserved.

The face of the University President card, Jim Bryan, is probably going to help me out on Friday so if you show up we can play some 3- or 4p EoC, and you can come talk to the face of a card as well.

Enjoy your Labor Day and Always Be Crootin,

Andy

Late August Update
over 2 years ago – Sun, Aug 28, 2022 at 05:29:05 AM

I am writing this update with a college football game between Nebraska and Northwestern on one of my other screens, originating from Dublin, Ireland. College football fans call this “Week Zero” because next weekend is traditionally the start of college football season and so only a scattered few games happen this weekend, though that number is inching upwards – I think there are eleven games scheduled today.

Schedules and changes thereto are on my mind today. I was scheduled to go up to SHUX, the big British Columbian board game convention in Vancouver from Sept 30 – October 2 to demo Envelopes of Cash to or neighbors to the north with Melodi but now it is looking like I will have to head north on my own.  Which would normally be nothing but a source of sadness since of all the things I love about my relationship with Melodi, Melodi as travelling companion is one of my favorites. But the consolation is that it does mean I will be able to much more in full-on board game mode when I am up there, so if you are planning to be at SHUX, please let me know. There is still time to sign up for the convention if you’d like to come: https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/shux22/. Envelopes of Cash has purchased space on “Indie Avenue” (you can even see our logo on the SHUX website!) and we will have a booth all day Friday and a half-day on Sunday (probably in the morning on Sunday, though that is TBD). I really hope you will stop by and check out the prototype of the game.

Ah yes, the prototype. This too speaks to schedules and changes thereto. If we were on schedule, I was hoping I would have a production copy or two, which would be something the folks at Gameland would have made as a test of all of their manufacturing of our artwork. But this summer has not been as productive for the art team as they had hoped. Things were not helped by the fact that there was a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Luzon, Philippines on July 27 that disrupted the lives of Miah and Rese for a while. But truth be told, they would be behind schedule anyway, so we can only put so much blame on the earth’s plate tectonics.

The good news is that virtually all of the nonadopted cards are finished, and the team has now dived into the work of drawing the 42 cards that were adopted: 9 head coach cards and 33 regular cards. I have held off on this update for-effing-ever because I was hoping I could say that I have sent out a whole bunch of rough draft of portraits already and gotten approvals, but alas, that process has not gone as quickly as I have hoped for either.

BUT… a few cards have gone out for approval from adopters, finally, and one was approved (but needs work on background images) and one received an appropriate level of requested revisions and will be revised accordingly.  A scant few others are still waiting to hear back from the adopters.  Another 20+ are listed as “On the way” from the art team (i.e., they aren't ready to send out for approval but maybe they will be soon), meaning that we might be close to halfway there. But nothing is true until the art shows up in my inbox, so please do not take this as a promise.

I do have some art I can show from the non-adopted cards, though not in card format. Here is the artwork for the Fast Food Mogul:

Here is the Accounting Wizard:

And the Coach with L.A. Roots

And one of my personal favorites, the Small Buyout Clause:

I can’t wait to share with your portrait of the game’s backers that look as cool as these generic people.

Ok, so that dejected look on the Small Buyout Clause card is also appropriate for the rest of this update because if you can do the math, you can probably figure out that if we haven’t finished the card art yet and college football is playing on my TV as I type this update, well, then the odds of getting all the way through the manufacturing process and getting games shipped to the United States (or elsewhere in the world) from China before Conference Championship Weekend are pretty much nil at this point. I know it has been my ambition to hit this goal but at this point I think I have to admit it will not happen. I am really cajoling the art team to try to speed things up with the hope that you will get your games before December 25, but even that is iffy. Suffice it to say I am doing everything I can to make things move but the Supremes taught me you can’t hurry love, no, you just have to wait, and apparently that is also the case with artwork for board game cards.

So apologies in advance as the schedule for the game slips to late 2022 or possibly into 2023. But this is a delay, not a cancellation. The updates should start coming more frequently and will feature adopted portraits that have worked their way through the approval process and been put onto cards. If you are an adopter, I really hope you’ll get an email from me soon with the first draft in the near future. It really pains me how the summer has slipped away and so few of you have gotten that email yet, but here is to hoping September is the month things turn around.

Always be hoping!

Andy

Late July Update from Andy
over 2 years ago – Tue, Jul 26, 2022 at 04:20:47 PM

Greetings from post-vacationland! My wife Melodi and I enjoyed a fabulous 25-days away from everything traveling the return route of the fiasco known as the Fourth Crusade, flying to Istanbul and then traveling by sea from Turkey to Greece, Montenegro, Croatia, and ending in Venice, rich with booty. We capped the trip off with a stop in Ravenna, home of fantastic mosaics (and an ongoing tradition of mosaic-making) and if Envelopes of Cash, LLC ever makes a second game, I suspect it will involve Mosaic laying somehow.

But all of that travel isn’t going to get a board game into your hands any time soon, so let’s talk about what Team EoC was doing in my absence and where things stand.

We have gotten the official sign-off from Gameland, our manufacturer, for all of our game tokens and for the Recruiting Boards and Head Coach “tablets,” which is the term I think I’ve settled on for the thick cardboard cards that these two stretch goals will be produced on. And while the face art still needs to be added to the HC cards, the look of those cards has been finalized.  So, here is your preview of a Recruiting Board tablet – there will be 8 of these included in the game, each as thick as a typical game token and the length/width of a game card.

At the start of the game players will receive one Recruiting Board randomly and this will then give you some goals right from the start of the game. If you recruit one of each of the top 3 positions (which should be pretty easy), you’ll score an extra 5 points. If you add a duplicate of each of the bottom two, so that you have all 5, you’ll score 15 points.  Please note the names and home town information is 100% for flavor.  All that will matter at the game's end is if you got the 3, or 5, positions required.

Head Coach cards will come in a similar cardboard format, but are double sided, so players can either deal them out randomly and then choose which side of the tablet they want, or can draft them to get specific attributes they wish to add to their programs. Each Head Coach brings an asymmetric benefit that only your school will have. Sometimes the A-side and B-side are identical, other than the gender of the coach, but sometimes the attributes differ a little as well. Both sides of this card have been adopted, but these generic faceless version will give you an idea of how these will work.

Our double-sided map board was conditionally approved as well, but then Gameland’s Q&A team did a doublecheck and asked us for one small revision, which is in process right now, to make sure the cut-outs, where the tokens will nestle when placed at the start of the game, are properly cut. I hadn’t realized it, but of course the lower layer of the board, which is mostly covered by the top layer, does not need to be a complete map, so it’s sort of a blotchy abstract art version of the game. I think it’s cool to look at – here’s a portion of it so you see what I mean

The Box Cover was also given a “revise and resubmit,” for some small technical issues, but we expect to have those revised and resubmitted this week.

This leaves us with two major projects to go for me to be able to say to you all that the game is now being printed. One is quite close to done: the rulebooks. The other is a long, ongoing process that will take at least another month: the faces on cards. I plan to finish the Standard rulebook by the first weekend in August. It’s mostly done but the final edits require back and forth between me and Sean, our rulebook graphics guy who we brought on board to make sure Miah and Rese can focus (with help from Heather) on cards. I am not great with InDesign, so every time I tough the program to change the rules, I like to run it past Sean to make sure I haven’t messed up the margins, etc.  Once that is done, I then need to merge that final version of the rules with my draft of the Family Version rulebook, which will provide a stripped down experience for parents to play with smaller children or even for you to play with your real-game-reluctant friends. It will have a lot less of the fun trade-offs that makes a Euro a Euro, but it will be a great way for the kids to “play mommy and daddy’s game” with them too.

As for Cards, the good news is that the portrait process has begun, and some of you should start getting emails with first draft artwork as early as this week. This will be a rolling process. We had about 50 cards in total adopted, which is a lot of portraiture work for Miah and Rese, but they are up to it and the rest of July and August is their time to crank on this work. I would ask each of you, when you get your review copy, to let us know as soon as you possibly can whether you have suggested changes on how you want to be portrayed. We want to accommodate you, but given the production timeline, the sooner you get back to us with your (constructive) critique, the more likely we can provide a thoughtful artistic revision. And of course, you are always welcome to love the first version and make everyone’s life easier! Once the final face is drawn and approved, and Gameland’s Q&A folks give us the A-OK, then the game will officially go to print and I will have to make the final call on how many units to actually manufacture, the 500 minimum or some higher number.

While all this has been happening, orders have been trickling in, even with zero marketing. The hoped-for newspaper/magazine publicity never happened, alas, but we are now up to 432 units sold. As of today, I am thinking I will order 550 units, rather than 500 so I have a few extra units to keep selling as word-of-mouth spreads), but I vacillate on that call. It would be great if when the art is final to have crossed 500 organically so the decision is easier. But wherever we are when the art is finished I will order some number above that, aiming for 75-150 extra, depending on how optimistic I feel, and then we will all be in Gameland’s hands.

For those of you who play (or want to play) online, both the Tabletopia and the Tabletop Simulator versions of the game have received updates. The Tabletopia update is fairly minor – I simply added the recruiting boards and the head coach cards. You can start a game by heading to this URL: https://tabletopia.com/games/envelopes-of-cash-eh978h/play-now

For Tabletop Simulator, though, Jonathan Cox of JonGetsGames has built a “scripted” version of the game, which means that some of the game’s rules are actually automatically enforced by the TTS system. It makes for a better experience, but TTS is not everyone’s cup of tea, so don’t feel compelled to use it if you don’t want. The Tabletopia version is free and available. But if you do like TTS, subscribe to Jon’s mod at https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2828893050 and once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to set up games using his scripted version. The artwork on the Recruiting Boards and Head Coach cards are a little out of date (as of this moment – I will send him the newest version soon) but the content is the same.

So, that’s where things stand. Card Sponsors and Adopters will be getting individual card updates over this next month, and I’ll try to update once some of these “almosts” become final, like once the rulebook is done, etc. And I’ll be very eager to start sharing some of the final version of adopted cards, once the adopters themselves have signed off.

Other that that, all I can advise you is to always be crootin!

Andy