I have some budget to pay for development of a BGA implementation of the game Envelopes of Cash: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/355 ... lopes-cash. We had a successful crowdfunding campaign and as word has slowly spread the late pledge was also quite successful for a true indie publisher. The game is now in physical production, with estimated ship date of March 2023 (slowed by China's recent Covid woes).
I have made Tabletopia and TTS implementations of the game, but I think it will really shine here on BGA, and would love to partner with a developer to make it available broadly. It has been well received by reviewers, most notably Mark Bigney of "So Very Wrong About Games" discussed it twice on the podcast, saying:
In terms of the game itself, Envelopes of Cash is a medium-weight Euro board game with a very American theme: college football recruiting. Players take the roles of Head Coaches at major college football programs who earn high salaries to exploit unpaid labor. To do so they must attract the most valuable high schoolers to their college teams by marshaling all of the tools available to them, including the eponymous envelopes full of cash and other impermissible payments, donations from boosters, and marketing campaigns, all to maximize their Recruiting Points. The winner is the
Head Coach with the most Recruiting Points at the end of the game.
Game play is driven by a card draft, in which players acquire the potential to hire new personnel, build new facilities, strengthen their program's culture, or boost their fundraising prowess, but to actually put those cards into play, players need to generate income via careful selection of six different colored dice, which are rolled at the start of each turn. Those dice generate the most valuable currency in the game Envelopes of Cash — which are used to lure the athletes to your program. To succeed, you need to balance the benefits of your cards, which make recruiting easier, with the nuts and bolts of actually getting out there and recruiting, by using runners to send cash, traveling to visit the athletes in their home states, and most importantly, slipping them those valuable tokens of your affection in little colored envelopes. You only have twelve months to gather as many different recruits across a variety of football positions (like QB, LB, etc.), so the tension between less income now vs. more income later plays a role in shaping your strategy. Should you jump out to a quick start and get the best recruits before your opponents, or should you build up a big stash of envelopes of cash and have a major blowout month towards the end of the year? Or can you build a strategy more around your personnel and culture, turning their special abilities into a victory-point engine and leave the grubby business of bribes to others?
We also got a nice review (and and 8 rating on BGG) from The Cardboard Kid, which she concluded with: "I think this is excellent, and would love to play whenever we have the time."
I tried to post a request for a developer earlier this week but for some reason the post never showed up, but if this ends up being a duplicate post, that's why.
Some other praise for my game includes:
All-American Linebacker
If you're interested in developing this game for BGA, please get in touch. I am very motivated to make this happen, and have some budget for compensation. Let's talk!
I have made Tabletopia and TTS implementations of the game, but I think it will really shine here on BGA, and would love to partner with a developer to make it available broadly. It has been well received by reviewers, most notably Mark Bigney of "So Very Wrong About Games" discussed it twice on the podcast, saying:
To be clear though, the game is NOT a sports game. It is a economic game with a sport theme, driven by drafted cards & dice, and scoring primarily through pickup/delivery and set collection mechanism. It is great fun as a Euro even if the theme means nothing to the player. You no more need to know anything about college football than an Agricola player needs to know how to run a subsistence farm in late-medieval Germany. one of our game testers, Astrid from Lower Saxony in Germany, told me "I do not like your American football, but I really like your game."“The timing considerations layered on top of the resource management is really, really enjoyable and diverting. That on top of the incredibly well-executed theme. This isn’t one of those things where you read the rule book, chuckle a little bit and then you go play a game of resource management. It is very transparently obvious that what you are doing is you are running a coach to go grease the palms of some ignorant kid out in the Midwest.… It’s marvelous fun. I think it’s just the right level of economic pre-planning coupled with social commentary that you seldom see. … Honestly, the one designer who kind of operates at this level who comes to mind, and this is high praise to be compared, is Vlaada Chvátil.”
— Mark Bigney of “So Very Wrong about Games”
In terms of the game itself, Envelopes of Cash is a medium-weight Euro board game with a very American theme: college football recruiting. Players take the roles of Head Coaches at major college football programs who earn high salaries to exploit unpaid labor. To do so they must attract the most valuable high schoolers to their college teams by marshaling all of the tools available to them, including the eponymous envelopes full of cash and other impermissible payments, donations from boosters, and marketing campaigns, all to maximize their Recruiting Points. The winner is the
Head Coach with the most Recruiting Points at the end of the game.
Game play is driven by a card draft, in which players acquire the potential to hire new personnel, build new facilities, strengthen their program's culture, or boost their fundraising prowess, but to actually put those cards into play, players need to generate income via careful selection of six different colored dice, which are rolled at the start of each turn. Those dice generate the most valuable currency in the game Envelopes of Cash — which are used to lure the athletes to your program. To succeed, you need to balance the benefits of your cards, which make recruiting easier, with the nuts and bolts of actually getting out there and recruiting, by using runners to send cash, traveling to visit the athletes in their home states, and most importantly, slipping them those valuable tokens of your affection in little colored envelopes. You only have twelve months to gather as many different recruits across a variety of football positions (like QB, LB, etc.), so the tension between less income now vs. more income later plays a role in shaping your strategy. Should you jump out to a quick start and get the best recruits before your opponents, or should you build up a big stash of envelopes of cash and have a major blowout month towards the end of the year? Or can you build a strategy more around your personnel and culture, turning their special abilities into a victory-point engine and leave the grubby business of bribes to others?
We also got a nice review (and and 8 rating on BGG) from The Cardboard Kid, which she concluded with: "I think this is excellent, and would love to play whenever we have the time."
I tried to post a request for a developer earlier this week but for some reason the post never showed up, but if this ends up being a duplicate post, that's why.
Some other praise for my game includes:
— Chris Borland, 2013 Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year and“I like to play board games, and I LOVED Envelopes of Cash! It is fast-paced, multilayered, and delightfully pokes fun at the farce of ‘amateurism’ in big-time college football. I just invited Mark Emmert to play; you should join us!”
All-American Linebacker
— Becca Scott, Good Time Society“I don't love sports, but I love this game! Envelopes of Cash jabs at the unfair power and pay dynamics of college football, while creating a complex and novel recreation of it. It’s full of overlapping mechanics for players to continually balance like set collection, area control, and engine building. This game has everything you need to make your brain buzz! Or go to the end zone, or whatever.”
If you're interested in developing this game for BGA, please get in touch. I am very motivated to make this happen, and have some budget for compensation. Let's talk!