Hello, I'm Andrewsmile and I play a lot of Envelopes of Cash. It is my current favorite game on Board Game Arena with around 60 games played in the last month and the more I play it the more impressed I am with its balance and its deceptively high skill ceiling. I've been the highest ranked player since about a week after it was publicly released on BGA in early December so I thought I'd put together a card tier list and general strategy guide for others who enjoy the game and are looking to improve. Find attached a card tier list:
https://tiermaker.com/list/board-games/ ... 91/3610298
and I'll give some overall strategy tips below. Please note that I mainly play 2 player, so my guide will be biased in that regard. Find my player stats compared with the all players/winners average stats given by BGA in the picture attached below which I will reference throughout.
https://imgur.com/1S2OHAS
On recruiting:
1. Prioritize your starting color. Because of the huge point gap between the 7th,8th,9th, and 10th recruit in your starting color, your absolute highest priority should be getting every recruit in your color, and denying your opponent the same. It is easier to get all 8 positions because of their abundance on the board but make sure you have a plan to get all 8 when you select a color. Look at all the recruits in your starting color, and if all 4/5 recruits of one position are on the right side of the board think hard before picking green for example. Furthermore, keep in mind which positions your opponent will have a hard time picking up and try to deny them.
2. Beat your opponent to the border. You will often have border recruits that share a color with your opponent. These should be a very high priority for you as soon as you can reach them. A 6 roll in your opponents color is your best friend here- your foolish opponent will very likely take the 6 in 5 months time- whereas for you taking the 3 ECs in the first month you can reach the border will all but ensure you beat your opponent to both of these recruits. Consider the final score implication of winning these 2 recruits over your opponent if you both get all other recruits in your color: your opponent will receive 19 points for 8 recruits, whereas you will receive 32. The difference between this scenario and the scenario where your opponent gets both of these recruits is 26 points- an often game winning amount. If you can't win these recruits, try to get 1 or 2 of your opponents recruits anyways- Even if you don't need the positions, denying your opponent 7-13 points of set bonus is well worth it.
3. Recruits are just endgame scoring cards. Really. Throughout the game, you will often have to weigh whether or not you should play a card or sign a certain recruit because you only have the ECs to do one. You will have to figure out how many points the card is worth, and compare it to how much the recruit is worth. Here are what the recruits are worth: Base value (2-5) + position scoring bonus (0 if you already have that position, up to 8 if it is the only recruit of that position you plan to sign) + regional scoring bonus (0 if it is not part of your largest set, up to 7 if it is the final recruit in your color (or you plan to acquire all the rest)) + recruiting board (0 if it is not the make-or-break on hitting a milestone, otherwise 5 or 10) + any endgame scoring bonus for it (such as 3 for analytics nerd) + all the above that is denied to your opponent (minus your opponents next best option for those ECs they were planning to spend on the recruit). So in a particularly optimized example, the last recruit of your color (a 5-point border state recruit shared with your opponent that is your final position needed for position and recruiting board) can be worth 5+8+7+10=30 base points plus the 5 base+7 regional points your opponent just lost =42 points. There is no card in the game worth that, and you should spend all your ECS you were going to spend on playing a card (or 2 or 3!) to get that recruit before your opponent if they could beat you to it.
On Cards:
1. Endgame scoring cards are usually must-picks. "The goal of economics is to make the best use of limited resources" -Every economics textbook ever. You can only sign so many recruits, you can only play so many cards. In an average game, you should aim to play all your cards and sign around 14 recruits. Is that an exact number? No. But it is my average number of recruits signed (14 over my 60ish games). Compare this to the average number of recruits signed by the winner of a game of EoC (9.57 according to bga- see the stats chart I've linked above, note that this is biased as it includes a lot of games with higher player count where it is harder to sign recruits). Endgame cards allow you to cheat points out past the normal 12 card limit- Your goal should always be to sign every recruit in your color and all positions, but beyond those large caps recruits only bring a marginal benefit of 2-5 points (VMD excluded) for 1-4 ECs which is quite bad compared to many of the juicy endgame scoring cards out there. My ideal card setup is 9 endgame scorers, 1 Booster buck generator, 1 card that helps with travel, and 1 recruit cost reducer or EC generator. In my stats, you can see that the average winner of a game of EoC scores 11 points from endgame cards. I score 34 per game on average (chart linked above).
2. If you can't play a card, don't draft it. This sounds obvious, but because cards only have a 6 month shelf life if you don't have a plan to play it that doesn't jeopardize your recruiting needs you should pass it on. There is an all-too-common winners curse I see with newer players where they draft 6 difficult cards to play with minimal EC overlap and thus only get a few of them down and waste a lot of ECs along the way. A bad card is better than no card.
3. Try to figure out how many points a card ability is actually worth- Private jet only scores 1 point, but it does allow you access to essentially the entire map especially when combined with another travel card and thus allows you to sign many recruits you would have been otherwise unable to- even if it only gets you to 2 extra recruits and the last position you need, that can be up to 15 points you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Cards that generate an EC of a specific color generate ECs that are often wasted. Perhaps you'll find the occasional use and get some extra travel distance in the meantime but there are often better options.
Miscellaneous rankings:
1. Coach Tierlist:
S- zen master- zen master is unparalleled. They allow you to have no waste in the early game and allow you to keep taking full value dice in the midgame by letting you pull an errant EC needed from one color into an adjacent month or 2 so you can play cards with different colors without needing to take hasty half-rolls. The number of ECs saved from efficiency is far greater than any other coach, and the fact you can target any month not just the current means you can setup perfect heavy turns where you have multiple colors stacked on top of each other with multiple cards played with minimal waste.
A- Martinet, Wunderkinds, riverboat gambler- Cost reduction is good, travel is better. Riverboat gambler is deceptively good- He ensures you can always get 2 ECs in the desired color either in the next turn or the turn after by betting on 1 and 3. Combined with bookie with ties to the program, a specific cards that allows you to modify Vegas rolls, you have a guaranteed 2 ECs in a desired color + a booster buck every single turn. That combo alone can be game winning.
B- Patriarch/Matriarch, Media Favorite- The coaches in this tier give you 8-10 points or so, more than that rarely, but that's about it.
C- Preacher in a visor, Star Polisher- Preacher I like less and less the more I play him. He constrains your starting location to 1 of 2, your opponent will very likely select the other, and he doesn't work on border states. Best case scenario you get maybe 5 reductions? And you'll be lucky to get 8 points out of star polisher.
2. Region Tier list:
Take this with a grain of salt as it is context dependent but in a vacuum I think that Northwest>South>Midwest>Texas. There are exceptions of course. Consider the earliest turn each color can reach a border state shared with another starting color:
Green: Blue in 3 turns, Yellow in 4
Blue: Red in 3 turns, Green in 4
Yellow: Red and Green in 3 turns (need one EC for an extra space)
Red: Blue in 3 turns (with 1 EC), Yellow in 4.
Part of my consideration of blue and yellow as inferior regions stems from the fact that blue vs yellow games are very rare. They suffer from awkward early travel not allowing a first turn recruit and messy early months, coupled with the risk of getting their recruits poached if you try to come back later since they are in the middle of the map. Green's isolation is actually its greatest benefit- you can come back to most of your recruits in the final turns with high confidence your Midwest or southern opponents will have left them alone. Green also has a very clean early game. I'll give you my first few months of an average green game:
If opponent is blue or yellow: March: recruit Washington, take green dice in any number except 1 on the month it is at full value. On 6, take half value in April. April: move to Montana, take green at half if it is over 3 and send 3 ECs by runner to Montana. May: Finish recruiting Montana, move to Dakotas. on all 3 of these first months, and blue dice that gives multiple blues in may or June should be taken if opponent is blue, otherwise any yellows in June/July. Yellow suffers from having a very awkward route to Nebraska/Kansas if they want to contest you by then, so try to beat them there.
If opponent is south: take as many greens as possible and try to recruit from Washington to Oregon to NorCal to Nevada/Utah to Montana to Dakotas to Nebraska in that order and then catch any stragglers endgame after clearing out Texas and the southwest. Don't be afraid to send a single green by runner to recruits you are about to sign. If you are more aggressive/not getting the greens you need early you can take some fat red/yellow rolls for later and move toward the center of the map to scare and disrupt your opponent.
3. Final cleanup- this is a game of efficiency and opportunity cost. Early on, you shouldn't have wasted ECs: they should be sent by runner. Later on, your extra ECs that cant be sent by runner to recruits your opponent can't poach should probably go to travel. I almost never convert 3:1, less than once per game on average, and I VERY rarely use Vegas (less than one bet per game on average), and only as insurance when i have a surplus I can use to bet on 1,2 and 3 for a color I need 2 of for a card next round. I do not spend on marketing early unless I know I'll have a booster buck card in play by the second half of the game since those dollars are more efficiently spent on runners since ECs are more valuable than Booster bucks in general. One last tip- do not be afraid (and do not forget) to discard and delay during the draft- unless there is a card in the discard pile you really want, there is no downside to throwing a mediocre card you weren't going to draft anyway into the discard pile and seeing what your opponent will offer you.
Thank you for reading, and feel free to share your opinions/disagreements/things I missed!
https://tiermaker.com/list/board-games/ ... 91/3610298
and I'll give some overall strategy tips below. Please note that I mainly play 2 player, so my guide will be biased in that regard. Find my player stats compared with the all players/winners average stats given by BGA in the picture attached below which I will reference throughout.
https://imgur.com/1S2OHAS
On recruiting:
1. Prioritize your starting color. Because of the huge point gap between the 7th,8th,9th, and 10th recruit in your starting color, your absolute highest priority should be getting every recruit in your color, and denying your opponent the same. It is easier to get all 8 positions because of their abundance on the board but make sure you have a plan to get all 8 when you select a color. Look at all the recruits in your starting color, and if all 4/5 recruits of one position are on the right side of the board think hard before picking green for example. Furthermore, keep in mind which positions your opponent will have a hard time picking up and try to deny them.
2. Beat your opponent to the border. You will often have border recruits that share a color with your opponent. These should be a very high priority for you as soon as you can reach them. A 6 roll in your opponents color is your best friend here- your foolish opponent will very likely take the 6 in 5 months time- whereas for you taking the 3 ECs in the first month you can reach the border will all but ensure you beat your opponent to both of these recruits. Consider the final score implication of winning these 2 recruits over your opponent if you both get all other recruits in your color: your opponent will receive 19 points for 8 recruits, whereas you will receive 32. The difference between this scenario and the scenario where your opponent gets both of these recruits is 26 points- an often game winning amount. If you can't win these recruits, try to get 1 or 2 of your opponents recruits anyways- Even if you don't need the positions, denying your opponent 7-13 points of set bonus is well worth it.
3. Recruits are just endgame scoring cards. Really. Throughout the game, you will often have to weigh whether or not you should play a card or sign a certain recruit because you only have the ECs to do one. You will have to figure out how many points the card is worth, and compare it to how much the recruit is worth. Here are what the recruits are worth: Base value (2-5) + position scoring bonus (0 if you already have that position, up to 8 if it is the only recruit of that position you plan to sign) + regional scoring bonus (0 if it is not part of your largest set, up to 7 if it is the final recruit in your color (or you plan to acquire all the rest)) + recruiting board (0 if it is not the make-or-break on hitting a milestone, otherwise 5 or 10) + any endgame scoring bonus for it (such as 3 for analytics nerd) + all the above that is denied to your opponent (minus your opponents next best option for those ECs they were planning to spend on the recruit). So in a particularly optimized example, the last recruit of your color (a 5-point border state recruit shared with your opponent that is your final position needed for position and recruiting board) can be worth 5+8+7+10=30 base points plus the 5 base+7 regional points your opponent just lost =42 points. There is no card in the game worth that, and you should spend all your ECS you were going to spend on playing a card (or 2 or 3!) to get that recruit before your opponent if they could beat you to it.
On Cards:
1. Endgame scoring cards are usually must-picks. "The goal of economics is to make the best use of limited resources" -Every economics textbook ever. You can only sign so many recruits, you can only play so many cards. In an average game, you should aim to play all your cards and sign around 14 recruits. Is that an exact number? No. But it is my average number of recruits signed (14 over my 60ish games). Compare this to the average number of recruits signed by the winner of a game of EoC (9.57 according to bga- see the stats chart I've linked above, note that this is biased as it includes a lot of games with higher player count where it is harder to sign recruits). Endgame cards allow you to cheat points out past the normal 12 card limit- Your goal should always be to sign every recruit in your color and all positions, but beyond those large caps recruits only bring a marginal benefit of 2-5 points (VMD excluded) for 1-4 ECs which is quite bad compared to many of the juicy endgame scoring cards out there. My ideal card setup is 9 endgame scorers, 1 Booster buck generator, 1 card that helps with travel, and 1 recruit cost reducer or EC generator. In my stats, you can see that the average winner of a game of EoC scores 11 points from endgame cards. I score 34 per game on average (chart linked above).
2. If you can't play a card, don't draft it. This sounds obvious, but because cards only have a 6 month shelf life if you don't have a plan to play it that doesn't jeopardize your recruiting needs you should pass it on. There is an all-too-common winners curse I see with newer players where they draft 6 difficult cards to play with minimal EC overlap and thus only get a few of them down and waste a lot of ECs along the way. A bad card is better than no card.
3. Try to figure out how many points a card ability is actually worth- Private jet only scores 1 point, but it does allow you access to essentially the entire map especially when combined with another travel card and thus allows you to sign many recruits you would have been otherwise unable to- even if it only gets you to 2 extra recruits and the last position you need, that can be up to 15 points you wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Cards that generate an EC of a specific color generate ECs that are often wasted. Perhaps you'll find the occasional use and get some extra travel distance in the meantime but there are often better options.
Miscellaneous rankings:
1. Coach Tierlist:
S- zen master- zen master is unparalleled. They allow you to have no waste in the early game and allow you to keep taking full value dice in the midgame by letting you pull an errant EC needed from one color into an adjacent month or 2 so you can play cards with different colors without needing to take hasty half-rolls. The number of ECs saved from efficiency is far greater than any other coach, and the fact you can target any month not just the current means you can setup perfect heavy turns where you have multiple colors stacked on top of each other with multiple cards played with minimal waste.
A- Martinet, Wunderkinds, riverboat gambler- Cost reduction is good, travel is better. Riverboat gambler is deceptively good- He ensures you can always get 2 ECs in the desired color either in the next turn or the turn after by betting on 1 and 3. Combined with bookie with ties to the program, a specific cards that allows you to modify Vegas rolls, you have a guaranteed 2 ECs in a desired color + a booster buck every single turn. That combo alone can be game winning.
B- Patriarch/Matriarch, Media Favorite- The coaches in this tier give you 8-10 points or so, more than that rarely, but that's about it.
C- Preacher in a visor, Star Polisher- Preacher I like less and less the more I play him. He constrains your starting location to 1 of 2, your opponent will very likely select the other, and he doesn't work on border states. Best case scenario you get maybe 5 reductions? And you'll be lucky to get 8 points out of star polisher.
2. Region Tier list:
Take this with a grain of salt as it is context dependent but in a vacuum I think that Northwest>South>Midwest>Texas. There are exceptions of course. Consider the earliest turn each color can reach a border state shared with another starting color:
Green: Blue in 3 turns, Yellow in 4
Blue: Red in 3 turns, Green in 4
Yellow: Red and Green in 3 turns (need one EC for an extra space)
Red: Blue in 3 turns (with 1 EC), Yellow in 4.
Part of my consideration of blue and yellow as inferior regions stems from the fact that blue vs yellow games are very rare. They suffer from awkward early travel not allowing a first turn recruit and messy early months, coupled with the risk of getting their recruits poached if you try to come back later since they are in the middle of the map. Green's isolation is actually its greatest benefit- you can come back to most of your recruits in the final turns with high confidence your Midwest or southern opponents will have left them alone. Green also has a very clean early game. I'll give you my first few months of an average green game:
If opponent is blue or yellow: March: recruit Washington, take green dice in any number except 1 on the month it is at full value. On 6, take half value in April. April: move to Montana, take green at half if it is over 3 and send 3 ECs by runner to Montana. May: Finish recruiting Montana, move to Dakotas. on all 3 of these first months, and blue dice that gives multiple blues in may or June should be taken if opponent is blue, otherwise any yellows in June/July. Yellow suffers from having a very awkward route to Nebraska/Kansas if they want to contest you by then, so try to beat them there.
If opponent is south: take as many greens as possible and try to recruit from Washington to Oregon to NorCal to Nevada/Utah to Montana to Dakotas to Nebraska in that order and then catch any stragglers endgame after clearing out Texas and the southwest. Don't be afraid to send a single green by runner to recruits you are about to sign. If you are more aggressive/not getting the greens you need early you can take some fat red/yellow rolls for later and move toward the center of the map to scare and disrupt your opponent.
3. Final cleanup- this is a game of efficiency and opportunity cost. Early on, you shouldn't have wasted ECs: they should be sent by runner. Later on, your extra ECs that cant be sent by runner to recruits your opponent can't poach should probably go to travel. I almost never convert 3:1, less than once per game on average, and I VERY rarely use Vegas (less than one bet per game on average), and only as insurance when i have a surplus I can use to bet on 1,2 and 3 for a color I need 2 of for a card next round. I do not spend on marketing early unless I know I'll have a booster buck card in play by the second half of the game since those dollars are more efficiently spent on runners since ECs are more valuable than Booster bucks in general. One last tip- do not be afraid (and do not forget) to discard and delay during the draft- unless there is a card in the discard pile you really want, there is no downside to throwing a mediocre card you weren't going to draft anyway into the discard pile and seeing what your opponent will offer you.
Thank you for reading, and feel free to share your opinions/disagreements/things I missed!