Hello, Envelopes of Cash fans. This is a cross post from BGA: https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/1516 ... ry-1-vegas
I wanted to write an explanation for some of the mechanics in this game, and today I thought I’d start with Vegas, which is perhaps the most misunderstood part of the game. There are two ways to interact with the Vegas action, one of which lends itself to increasing the randomness of the game and one of which is designed to mitigate the randomness of the dice/income interaction. New players often gravitate towards the first of these, but then may complain that for a Euro, it’s awfully weird to add extra randomness to a game (see the next installment of this designer diary series, on the VMD and its purpose). But more experienced players come to see that while the name Vegas connotes sexy gambling, as a game mechanic, it’s actually more like “bad dice rolling insurance.” But no one ever gets drunk with their friends and then yells: “Dice Insurance, baby!” so in terms of theme, it seemed more appropriate to go with “Vegas, baby!”
Anyway, here’s how the Vegas action works. On your turn, you may spend as many of your current-month envelopes of cash (ECs for short) as you wish to place a single bet per EC spent. The bet involves selecting a color and number combination you think will get rolled in the next turn’s dice/income phase, and if you are right you win 2ECs, plus 1 Booster Buck (or $BB for short). The bets have horrible odds: you spend 1EC for an expected value of 0.33 ECs + 0.17 BB. Different players can debate the relative value of a $BB and an EC, but I don’t think anyone would argue that spending 2ECs to get $1BB is a good deal, which is what these odds imply. So then why bet at all?
Well, two reasons. One is that ECs are “use ‘em or lose ‘em” each month, so if you end your turn with leftover ECs and there is no other use you want to put them to the go “poof.” Normally, you might spend those ECs on movement or using runners to pre-pay a recruit, but maybe you want to stay put until next turn and there’s no realistic recruit to send those ECs to via a runner. In which case, placing a bet in Vegas is essentially free, because while you are spending an EC per bet, those ECs would just vanish anyway. So now the expected value of that bet is positive relative to the worse choice of letting your ECs expire unused. When the chips are (effectively) free, even placing a bad bet in Vegas is better than not placing any bet at all and guaranteeing a loss.
But the second reason is the more important one, for the concept of Euro design. When I tell non-hobbyists about what makes a Euro different from a more traditional American game (I typically refrain from using “Ameritrash” as my fellow US citizens tend to dislike that term for some reason), I distinguish the use of dice. American games, I argue, put you in a position where dice are rolled (or cards are drawn) and you are completely at the mercy of the die roll. If you need doubles on 2 dice, you have a 1/6 chance to roll a matched pair, and no way to affect that. In a Euro, though, I explain, you might be able to buy a special benefit that lets you create “doubles” even if your dice are off by one, so a {2,3} would count as would a {2,2} as would a {2,1} which means you’ve mitigated your 1-in-6 odds up to 1-in-2.
So then why would I put a “you are at the mercy of the dice” mechanism into my Euro? Because in truth, Vegas is a way to hedge against the bad luck the same dice can bring you with respect to income. In essence, two different kinds of dice bets can be made in the game and if you tailor your actions properly, you lower your risk rather than raise it. Here’s what I mean.
The original income mechanism in Envelopes of Cash (“EoC” for short) is patterned on a similar mechanic in Stefan Feld’s “Macao.” Macao is a great game which was out of print when I designed EoC, and while it remains out of print, Queen Games has published a slightly modified version of the game called Amsterdam, in a fancy new format. I recommend both games highly, though finding Macao can be tricky. In Macao, Amsterdam, and EoC, you roll six dice and choose 2 of them. If, for example, you choose a 4, you can take four units of income in the color of that die, four turns from now. The color of the die sets the color of the unit of currency (e.g., ECs in EoC – try saying that three times fast!), and the number determines the quantity and how long you have to wait.
Where EoC strays from the Macao/Amsterdam mechanic, though, is that players are allowed to cut the value in half (rounding down, never less than 1) and then take that color of income at the halved value in any of the six months from this month forward. What this means is that rolling a 4 can also mean you get 2 ECs of that color right now, as one of your options in addition to taking 4 of those ECs in 4 months. Thus, large dice rolls are much more flexible (and consequently desirable) in EoC than in the Feld games. Just this little change in the income radically changes the decision space and makes for a very different game. Now when you roll a 6, taking 3ECs right now is probably the best bet in many situations, and it is comparatively easy to assess the risks and benefits of those 3ECs, whereas in Macao, taking the 6 is a long-term gamble with a chance that come six turns, you may have very little use for those six red cubes you chose six turns ago.
As a result, the simple act of rolling dice for income creates more chance for bad luck in EoC than the Feld games. A 3 in Macao might be a great outcome as it provides a sort of compromise between low income right now and waiting six turns for the bigger payout. And while that is true in EoC for the 3 as its base value, 3s are very weak as “half value” options, rounding down to a 1. Whereas a 6 can be used just like a full-value 3 (take 3 ECs in the 3rd month), it can also be used to generate 3ECs now, next turn, the turn after that, etc., and also could generate 6ECs in the sixth month (5 months in the future, because the current month is Month 1). The same is true for a 4 or a 5 in contrast to a 2 – you can make the 4 or 5 act just like a 2 in terms of next month, but that 4 or 5 can be much more flexible for the other 5 months available for income.
So, here’s where Vegas comes in. Say you’re positioned so that if next turn you could get 2 Blue ECs, you’ll be able to execute a great combo. And say you have 2 ECs (of any color) this turn, but you can’t trigger the combo yet. That means you need the blue die to come up as a 4, 5, or 6 when dice are rolled in the next income phase; you can then halve it and place two or three Blue ECS in the upcoming month. A 1, 2, or 3 won’t work because you can only get one EC from those in the upcoming month, and while the 2 can generate 2ECs, they won’t be available until the month afterwards, so the timing might be off. You thus have a 50/50 chance of getting the two blues you need. The best way to up those odds is to go to Vegas and bet on blue!
If you take those two blue ECs and bet on blue to come up as any two of 1, 2, 3 – let’s say you bet on 1 and 3 – then when the dice are rolled, you have the following options:
Roll a 1: Success! Get 2 Blue ECs and $1BB in the upcoming month. Combo possible! (You don’t even need to choose the blue die if you don’t want.)
Roll a 2: Fail /sad trombone You lose the bet. You can’t get 2Blue ECs this month. Maybe you can wait a turn by taking them at full value and executing the combo next turn? But if not, you've failed.
Roll a 3: Success! Get 2 Blue ECs and $1BB in the upcoming month. Combo possible! (You don’t even need to choose the blue die if you don’t want.)
Roll a 4: Success! You lose the bet, but you can use the blue die at half value and take 2 Blue ECs right now. Success!
Roll a 5: Success! You lose the bet, but you can use the blue die at half value and take 2 Blue ECs right now.
Roll a 6: Success! You lose the bet, but you can use the blue die at half value and take 3 Blue ECs right now. You end up with another Blue ECs to use for something else.
As you can see, your 50% chance has increased to a 5-in-6 chance or 83.3%. And if you can wait one turn for the 2ECs, you hit 100%. The same would be true if you had been able to bet 3ECs and cover 1,2, and 3, because then no matter what value blue takes, you are guaranteed at least 2 Blue ECs next turn, either from winning the bet or using the die as a high-value, halved die.
This is the way that experienced players use Vegas. If they can, they’ll grab a 6 when convenient and then use those ECs (whether 3 right now or 6 in the future) to wager in such a way as to guarantee they will have the ECs they need when they need them. In Macao, rolling a 6 had the potential to be great six turns from now. In EoC, that 6 can become three chances to win in Vegas next turn and therefore, can guarantee you will get 2ECs you absolutely need right when they are most valuable.
Of course, this is expensive insurance – it costs you 3ECs to guarantee you’ll get 2ECs, and half the time you would have gotten those 2ECs anyway. But this is a classic Euro tradeoff, one that I think makes for a great decision space: go with 50/50 odds and use 3ECs more efficiently or take all the risk out of the proposition at the cost of as many as 3 other things you could have done. Good choices make good games, and this is a spot where EoC offers a very different set of choices than the Feld games with similar income mechanisms.
So there you have it. Vegas is Insurance, not Gambling. Of course, you can always bet on the high numbers and instead of hedging your bets, to go for a major win. This might be good on the last few turns of the game where your only hope is to get a ton of ECs. It’s low probability but when you’re desperate having a Hail Mary option is fun and in the case of a game with a football theme, a Hail Mary is also thematic. (For those unfamiliar with the term, a Hail Mary in football is a long pass with very little chance of being caught, but if it is caught, it could win you the game.)
If you are interested in playing Envelopes of Cash, you can play on Board Game Arena at: https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?ga ... opesofcash
And if you'd like to buy the game (which is finally en route from China and will ship soon), you can so so here: https://eoc.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Stay tuned for more on risk and theme in my next Designer Diary post.
Always be Crootin,
Andy
I wanted to write an explanation for some of the mechanics in this game, and today I thought I’d start with Vegas, which is perhaps the most misunderstood part of the game. There are two ways to interact with the Vegas action, one of which lends itself to increasing the randomness of the game and one of which is designed to mitigate the randomness of the dice/income interaction. New players often gravitate towards the first of these, but then may complain that for a Euro, it’s awfully weird to add extra randomness to a game (see the next installment of this designer diary series, on the VMD and its purpose). But more experienced players come to see that while the name Vegas connotes sexy gambling, as a game mechanic, it’s actually more like “bad dice rolling insurance.” But no one ever gets drunk with their friends and then yells: “Dice Insurance, baby!” so in terms of theme, it seemed more appropriate to go with “Vegas, baby!”
Anyway, here’s how the Vegas action works. On your turn, you may spend as many of your current-month envelopes of cash (ECs for short) as you wish to place a single bet per EC spent. The bet involves selecting a color and number combination you think will get rolled in the next turn’s dice/income phase, and if you are right you win 2ECs, plus 1 Booster Buck (or $BB for short). The bets have horrible odds: you spend 1EC for an expected value of 0.33 ECs + 0.17 BB. Different players can debate the relative value of a $BB and an EC, but I don’t think anyone would argue that spending 2ECs to get $1BB is a good deal, which is what these odds imply. So then why bet at all?
Well, two reasons. One is that ECs are “use ‘em or lose ‘em” each month, so if you end your turn with leftover ECs and there is no other use you want to put them to the go “poof.” Normally, you might spend those ECs on movement or using runners to pre-pay a recruit, but maybe you want to stay put until next turn and there’s no realistic recruit to send those ECs to via a runner. In which case, placing a bet in Vegas is essentially free, because while you are spending an EC per bet, those ECs would just vanish anyway. So now the expected value of that bet is positive relative to the worse choice of letting your ECs expire unused. When the chips are (effectively) free, even placing a bad bet in Vegas is better than not placing any bet at all and guaranteeing a loss.
But the second reason is the more important one, for the concept of Euro design. When I tell non-hobbyists about what makes a Euro different from a more traditional American game (I typically refrain from using “Ameritrash” as my fellow US citizens tend to dislike that term for some reason), I distinguish the use of dice. American games, I argue, put you in a position where dice are rolled (or cards are drawn) and you are completely at the mercy of the die roll. If you need doubles on 2 dice, you have a 1/6 chance to roll a matched pair, and no way to affect that. In a Euro, though, I explain, you might be able to buy a special benefit that lets you create “doubles” even if your dice are off by one, so a {2,3} would count as would a {2,2} as would a {2,1} which means you’ve mitigated your 1-in-6 odds up to 1-in-2.
So then why would I put a “you are at the mercy of the dice” mechanism into my Euro? Because in truth, Vegas is a way to hedge against the bad luck the same dice can bring you with respect to income. In essence, two different kinds of dice bets can be made in the game and if you tailor your actions properly, you lower your risk rather than raise it. Here’s what I mean.
The original income mechanism in Envelopes of Cash (“EoC” for short) is patterned on a similar mechanic in Stefan Feld’s “Macao.” Macao is a great game which was out of print when I designed EoC, and while it remains out of print, Queen Games has published a slightly modified version of the game called Amsterdam, in a fancy new format. I recommend both games highly, though finding Macao can be tricky. In Macao, Amsterdam, and EoC, you roll six dice and choose 2 of them. If, for example, you choose a 4, you can take four units of income in the color of that die, four turns from now. The color of the die sets the color of the unit of currency (e.g., ECs in EoC – try saying that three times fast!), and the number determines the quantity and how long you have to wait.
Where EoC strays from the Macao/Amsterdam mechanic, though, is that players are allowed to cut the value in half (rounding down, never less than 1) and then take that color of income at the halved value in any of the six months from this month forward. What this means is that rolling a 4 can also mean you get 2 ECs of that color right now, as one of your options in addition to taking 4 of those ECs in 4 months. Thus, large dice rolls are much more flexible (and consequently desirable) in EoC than in the Feld games. Just this little change in the income radically changes the decision space and makes for a very different game. Now when you roll a 6, taking 3ECs right now is probably the best bet in many situations, and it is comparatively easy to assess the risks and benefits of those 3ECs, whereas in Macao, taking the 6 is a long-term gamble with a chance that come six turns, you may have very little use for those six red cubes you chose six turns ago.
As a result, the simple act of rolling dice for income creates more chance for bad luck in EoC than the Feld games. A 3 in Macao might be a great outcome as it provides a sort of compromise between low income right now and waiting six turns for the bigger payout. And while that is true in EoC for the 3 as its base value, 3s are very weak as “half value” options, rounding down to a 1. Whereas a 6 can be used just like a full-value 3 (take 3 ECs in the 3rd month), it can also be used to generate 3ECs now, next turn, the turn after that, etc., and also could generate 6ECs in the sixth month (5 months in the future, because the current month is Month 1). The same is true for a 4 or a 5 in contrast to a 2 – you can make the 4 or 5 act just like a 2 in terms of next month, but that 4 or 5 can be much more flexible for the other 5 months available for income.
So, here’s where Vegas comes in. Say you’re positioned so that if next turn you could get 2 Blue ECs, you’ll be able to execute a great combo. And say you have 2 ECs (of any color) this turn, but you can’t trigger the combo yet. That means you need the blue die to come up as a 4, 5, or 6 when dice are rolled in the next income phase; you can then halve it and place two or three Blue ECS in the upcoming month. A 1, 2, or 3 won’t work because you can only get one EC from those in the upcoming month, and while the 2 can generate 2ECs, they won’t be available until the month afterwards, so the timing might be off. You thus have a 50/50 chance of getting the two blues you need. The best way to up those odds is to go to Vegas and bet on blue!
If you take those two blue ECs and bet on blue to come up as any two of 1, 2, 3 – let’s say you bet on 1 and 3 – then when the dice are rolled, you have the following options:
Roll a 1: Success! Get 2 Blue ECs and $1BB in the upcoming month. Combo possible! (You don’t even need to choose the blue die if you don’t want.)
Roll a 2: Fail /sad trombone You lose the bet. You can’t get 2Blue ECs this month. Maybe you can wait a turn by taking them at full value and executing the combo next turn? But if not, you've failed.
Roll a 3: Success! Get 2 Blue ECs and $1BB in the upcoming month. Combo possible! (You don’t even need to choose the blue die if you don’t want.)
Roll a 4: Success! You lose the bet, but you can use the blue die at half value and take 2 Blue ECs right now. Success!
Roll a 5: Success! You lose the bet, but you can use the blue die at half value and take 2 Blue ECs right now.
Roll a 6: Success! You lose the bet, but you can use the blue die at half value and take 3 Blue ECs right now. You end up with another Blue ECs to use for something else.
As you can see, your 50% chance has increased to a 5-in-6 chance or 83.3%. And if you can wait one turn for the 2ECs, you hit 100%. The same would be true if you had been able to bet 3ECs and cover 1,2, and 3, because then no matter what value blue takes, you are guaranteed at least 2 Blue ECs next turn, either from winning the bet or using the die as a high-value, halved die.
This is the way that experienced players use Vegas. If they can, they’ll grab a 6 when convenient and then use those ECs (whether 3 right now or 6 in the future) to wager in such a way as to guarantee they will have the ECs they need when they need them. In Macao, rolling a 6 had the potential to be great six turns from now. In EoC, that 6 can become three chances to win in Vegas next turn and therefore, can guarantee you will get 2ECs you absolutely need right when they are most valuable.
Of course, this is expensive insurance – it costs you 3ECs to guarantee you’ll get 2ECs, and half the time you would have gotten those 2ECs anyway. But this is a classic Euro tradeoff, one that I think makes for a great decision space: go with 50/50 odds and use 3ECs more efficiently or take all the risk out of the proposition at the cost of as many as 3 other things you could have done. Good choices make good games, and this is a spot where EoC offers a very different set of choices than the Feld games with similar income mechanisms.
So there you have it. Vegas is Insurance, not Gambling. Of course, you can always bet on the high numbers and instead of hedging your bets, to go for a major win. This might be good on the last few turns of the game where your only hope is to get a ton of ECs. It’s low probability but when you’re desperate having a Hail Mary option is fun and in the case of a game with a football theme, a Hail Mary is also thematic. (For those unfamiliar with the term, a Hail Mary in football is a long pass with very little chance of being caught, but if it is caught, it could win you the game.)
If you are interested in playing Envelopes of Cash, you can play on Board Game Arena at: https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?ga ... opesofcash
And if you'd like to buy the game (which is finally en route from China and will ship soon), you can so so here: https://eoc.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Stay tuned for more on risk and theme in my next Designer Diary post.
Always be Crootin,
Andy