Envelopes of Cash CFB Recruiting Game Rulebook

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This is a Border State Value Token. It also conveys the Value of the Recruit from that State in , but Border

State Recruits always cost 4 , spread across two different colors of . This example costs

2 and 2 .

SYMBOL & TERMINOLOGY GLOSSARY

Booster Buck, the basic above-the-table currency in the game, used to run Marketing Campaigns and to

pay for Runners to transport Envelopes of Cash to Recruits.

A Recruiting Point (which people also call a “Star Point” because of the symbol) This is the game’s basic

victory point. You earn Recruiting Points by putting cards into play, by recruiting athletes, through clever card

combos, etc. The goal of the game is to get the most Recruiting Points.

Envelopes of Cash (ECs). These are the under-the-table currency of the game. ECs are used to pay Recruits

to join your program and to upgrade your personnel & facilities, improve your program’s culture, and

augment your fundraising (by putting cards into play). ECs can also fuel your Recruiting Bus as you move

across the country. The top symbol represents “Any EC” with the color chosen by the active player. The

others represent the EC of the specific color shown.

A Recruiting Bus. When shown in gray on a card, this refers to your recruiting bus, no matter the color.

This is a basic State Value Token. It conveys the Value of the Recruit in that state in , and the Cost of that

Recruit in . A Recruit in this example State has a base value of 5 and will cost 4 magenta .

This is the Card Type Symbol for a Culture (“Cult”) card. These cards represent the attitudes or approaches

that help you create a winning program and attract the best Recruits.

This is the Card Type Symbol for a Personnel and Facilities (“P&F”) card. These cards represent the

people you hire or the buildings you construct in order to attract the best Recruits.

This is the Card Type Symbol for a Fundraising (“Fund”) card. These cards represent the efforts to get

boosters to donate to the program. You’ll see Fund cards referred to generically with the first symbol or

specifically by region with one of the six colored symbols corresponding to the same colors as regions on

the game board.

This is the Card Usage Symbol that represents a card that can be used Once per Month. You may want to

place a Player Token on the card once you’ve used it to help you remember it has already been used

this turn.

This is the Card Usage Symbol that represents a card that only triggers at the End of the Game. Typically

these cards give you a number of during final scoring but have no impact on gameplay until then.

This is the Card Usage Symbol that represents a card that is a Program Upgrade. Program Upgrades are

always active and can be triggered as often as you want, assuming you meet the conditions on the card.

For example, a card might say it triggers whenever you sign a Recruit or run a Marketing Campaign, etc.

symbols sometimes show a number on them, indicating the quantity of that color of . The symbol on

the left could also have been represented by 4 individual magenta . You can always make change.

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IS THIS GAME FOR REAL?

Welcome to Envelopes of Cash. This a real board game

designed for people who love board games, not a political

statement disguised as a game. But it is also tackling (see

what we did there?) a serious topic in a way we hope you will

find to be enjoyable even while we also hope it proves thought

provoking. Above all, this is not “just” a game about sports.

Through a quirk of history and a heavy dose of propaganda, college

athletes have long been denied the economic right to compete for the

full value of their labor, leading to the ridiculous situation in which the

most valuable laborers in America’s second most popular sport, college

football, are not supposed to be paid. But of course, just because they

aren’t supposed to be paid doesn’t mean they don’t get paid, and this game

is designed to let you take a shot at managing this theatre of the absurd

where officially no one is getting paid, and everyone insists that while they

follow the rules, everyone else is handing out the game’s eponymous “Envelopes

of Cash” like candy.

You will try to score more points than your opponents by balancing a variety of

scoring mechanisms. During the course of the game, you can score points by paying

for the cards you draft each turn (drafting is free, but to actually use the cards, you

have to pay their cost in ). You’ll also be moving your Recruiting Bus around the

country, recruiting athletes. Thematically, this recruiting is the heart of the game, and

every time you recruit an athlete you potentially score points three ways. When you sign a

Recruit, you’ll immediately score points based on the quality of the athlete, measured in .

Each Recruit you land will also contribute to the two major end-of-game scoring mechanisms:

points for each unique position you recruit and points for depth of recruiting success in one

particular region of the country.

There are a few other ways to get points, but the heart of the game is (a) putting the cards you draft

into play for points, so you can then use the benefits those cards provide and (b) moving around the

country to recruit athletes to score points in multiple ways. You’ll be taking advantage of the amateur

system to maximize your own reward and sharing mere scraps with the athletes you recruit, but hey,

don’t hate the player, hate the game, right? 3

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OBJECT OF THE GAME

OVERVIEW OF THE GAME

Players take on the roles of Head Coaches at major

college football programs, earning high salaries to exploit

unpaid labor. To do so, they must marshal all of the tools

available to them, including donations from boosters

( B

or “booster bucks”), envelopes full of cash and other

impermissible payments ( or ECs, these come in six different

colors to pay for different regional recruits) and marketing

campaigns, all to maximize Recruiting Points ( known as ).

The winner is the Head Coach with the most at the end of the

game. The reward is victory, as well as a $1 million “retention bonus.”

(Legal disclaimer: $1 million retention bonus sold

separately at cost of $1 Million)

After choosing some initial cards, players play exactly twelve turns

corresponding to the months of the year, starting in March and ending on

National Signing Day in February. Each of the twelve months runs as follows:

• Players draft cards they hope to be able to put into play and use.

• This month’s Starting Player rolls 6 different colored dice, which can determine if

players have won B

and in “Vegas.”

• Players choose two of the dice, determining how many they earn and in which month.

• Players use any they receive in the current month and any accumulated to

» Put previously selected cards into play,

» Pay Runners to influence Recruits,

» Move their Recruiting Bus around the country,

» Sign Recruits to their teams, or

» Launch a new Marketing Campaign.

• Players can also wager any unused in Vegas to win and B

for the following month.

These actions can earn players , B

, and most importantly .

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Never Played a Game Harder

than Monopoly or Risk?

Try the Newbie Campaign at

https://envelopesofcash.com/newbierules-pdf/

Playing with children or with family members

new to gaming?

Try the Family Rulebook, provided separately

in this box.

Comfortable with Euro Games or willing to dive

into the full game from the start -- then read on.

The Standard Game is for You...

If you use at least 1

this month

$ card

gain 1Ì

023

Support from the

Faculty Senate

...unless you’re looking for a real challenge,

then add in all the “cut-throat” options you’ll

see in side-bars as you read through these

rules.

WHICH VERSION IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

Whichever version you choose, you may find it helpful to

watch the Board Game Geek video explaining how to play

before (or instead of) reading these rules:

https://bit.ly/HTP-EOC

There are several levels of difficulty of Envelopes of Cash, so

let’s figure out which one will work best for your first game.

After choosing some initial cards, players play exactly twelve turns

corresponding to the months of the year, starting in March and ending on

National Signing Day in February. Each of the twelve months runs as follows:

• Players draft cards they hope to be able to put into play and use.

• This month’s Starting Player rolls 6 different colored dice, which can determine if

players have won B

and in “Vegas.”

• Players choose two of the dice, determining how many they earn and in which month.

• Players use any they receive in the current month and any accumulated to

» Put previously selected cards into play,

» Pay Runners to influence Recruits,

» Move their Recruiting Bus around the country,

» Sign Recruits to their teams, or

» Launch a new Marketing Campaign.

• Players can also wager any unused in Vegas to win and B

for the following month.

These actions can earn players , B

, and most importantly .

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GAME COMPONENTS

1 Game Board, a Map of the United States and Pacific Islands

48 Culture

Cards

48 Personnel &

Facilities Cards

24 Fundraising

Cards

(4 per region)

120 Cards divided into three categories

4 Recruiting Calendars, one in the color of each player 4 Player Mats, one in the color of each player

6 Two-sided Cardboard Head Coach Media Facts Sheets 8 One-sided Cardboard Recruting Boards

Your reputation as a Football

Savant means you may recruit

, , and at

a 1 E discount.

Offensive

Wunderkind HC

HC1

Riverboat

Gambler HC

You’re always playing long

shots. Place 2 free tokens on

any colors/numbers in Vegas.

HC8

Your athletes want to do their

best for you as a mother figure,

adding 1Ì to any Recruit with

a base value below 4Ì.

Matriarch of the

Program HC

HC6

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Statements about State Tokens

For each State, you will see a rating and strip of one or two colors,

which represents the cost in . The represents the cost to recruit

the athlete from this state, and the represents the base number of

points you’ll earn from recruiting him. For regular States, the cost

is always one lower than the number of (and always in the color of

that region); for Border States, the total cost is always 4 – two in

each color of the regions it borders, and the value varies but is centered

around 3 . These provide points during the game as you recruit.

The classic Envelope of Cash

Bling

Fancy Clothes

High-end Whiskey

A Sports Car w/a Scrubbed Title

Paying Relatives’ Overdue Bills

(Oddly, this act of charity is against the rules in

the world of college sports)

Now grab the 40 Recruit tokens. They look like this:

These represent the best 40 soon-to-graduate

high school athletes in the country, 5 in

each of 8 position groups. Take the

40 Recruit Tokens and randomly

assign them to the States, placing 1

adjacent to each single-color State

and 2 in each Border State. There is a

rectangular space on the map designed to

hold each Recruit token.

Next, sort the by color and place them next to the

game board. These are the various under-the-table

payments you can make. While they are referred to

generically as “Envelopes of Cash” (“ECs”), these are

actually different types of sub-rosa payments you will

be making on the down-low. You can also collectively

call it “bag money” because in real life not everyone

uses an envelope, especially as inflation makes a

duffel bag more convenient. These are the same colors as the regions and while there is no direct connection,

the colors sometimes are doing double duty as regions and types of . This is not to say that in real life, fancy

clothes actually work better as an inducement in Texas than in the South, but that’s how the game will play out.

The player who most recently was the victim of wage theft gets to be the Starting Player and takes the Starting

Player Chain. Otherwise determine the Starting Player randomly. Each player chooses a Head Coach (either

randomly or in reverse turn order) and a color and takes all of the tokens of that color, placing

one of them onto the track at zero. You start at zero because each recruiting season starts from scratch,

but you will gain as the game progresses. If some or all of the players prefer, they can flip over their Player

Tokens to the mascot side instead of the geometric side.

If you have some clear dishes or plastic containers, you may find it

handy to use to keep these separated by color.

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Secrets about the Stash

The first time you play the game, choosing the four cards to keep for your

Secret Stash can be a challenge because you don’t yet have a sense of what’s

a good card. One option to solve this is just to deal everyone 5 cards (which

they keep) as in the Family Rules. If you do this, then deal 4 cards randomly

into the Discard Pool. Another option is to use premade Starter Stashes,

listed on page 23 of this rulebook.

Once everyone in your game group gets used to making a Stash, you can

have even more fun with a full-on card draft, though it won’t be so “secret”

anymore. Deal out six cards to everyone, and each player chooses one, then

passes the deck counterclockwise (opposite to turn order). Take one from the

deck you get passed and pass the rest counterclockwise, etc. Once you’ve

chosen four cards, throw the remaining two, face up, into the discard pool,

and everyone will have four not-so-secretly chosen cards, now a little less

randomly distributed.

Players place their Recruiting Bus tokens on the HQ spot corresponding to their Player Symbol. E.g., if you are

playing as , you start just south of the (yellow) Texas region on the starting spot marked with a symbol.

Each player takes seven B

All About the Booster Bucks

These are Booster Bucks, which represent

above-the-table money you can spend on

everything other than paying for recruits. This

initial stash of B

represents the Booster

Bucks you have accumulated from last season

which can be spent whenever you wish. You

will accumulate more over the course of the

game, but this will give you a start. Unlike , B

may be kept from month to month.

The Secret Stash

Deal six cards to each player. Each player chooses the four they wish to have access to as the game proceeds

and discards (face up) the two they do not want, into a pool of rejected cards to the side of the board. These

cards will be available for players to choose from during the monthly card draft if they prefer them over the cards

they are dealt.

Players will place 1 free of their

region’s color on every month of their

calendars. This represents recurring

“bag money” prearranged, with boost- ers in your local recruiting area.

Players take Player Mats and Calendars in the correct color

of their player symbols and place them next to each other

on the side of the board closest to the colored square for

each player’s HQ spot. These Mats and Calendars will be

filled with cards and as the game progresses. Players put

the Coach’s Whistle in their color onto their Calendar in the

month of March. Players take 12 of their regional color

marked with a 1 on one side and a 2 on the other and place

one with the 1 facing up in the envelope space of each

of the 12 months on their Calendars.

The Yellow Texas Player starts

here at the yellow HQ.

Orange and Green are

ready to start – they each

have zero points.

Recruiting Boards

Finally, each player should take a

Recruiting Board and keep it secret from

the other players. This lists your Top 3

Recruits, as well as two additional recruits

for your Top 5. If you get your Top 3, you’ll

score 5 at the end of the game.

If you get all 5, you’ll score a total of

15 . Note that this is an either/or;

you don’t get the 5 and the 15.

The Recruiting Board Mechanism

in EoC was inspired by Alan K.

Moon’s "Ticket to Ride."

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Cut-Throat Mode for Set-up

Each Month consists of the following phases, which are explained in detail in the sections that follow.

•Drafting Cards

•Rolling Dice & Paying out Vegas Wagers

Drafting Cards

The Starting player now deals two cards to all players and also takes one additional card as a dealer’s

bonus. Beginning with the Starting player and going clockwise, players must choose one of the following

options:

• Play a Card

Choose one card from either the cards just dealt, their Secret Stash, or the Discard Pool and place it

face-up on their Calendar under their Whistle token. Then they must place the rest of the cards from

their hand face-up into the Discard Pool. They will not take any more turns during this draft phase.

• Discard & Delay

Place one card from the cards just dealt face-up into the Discard Pool and then the next player takes a

turn. The delaying player will take another turn once play cycles back around in clockwise order. Players

with only one card in hand cannot choose to Discard & Delay.

This process continues until all players have placed one card face up onto their Calendar in the current

month. This card is not yet “In Play” simply because it is on your Calendar -- it has only been Drafted. When

you draft a card, all you have done is establish exclusive rights to it. It will go onto your Calendar in the

month you acquired it and just sit there until you pay for it (with ), which will be explained later in these

rules. As will be explained in more detail below, on your turn you will be able to put cards into play, move

them to your Player Mat, and then you will gain all of their benefits.

HOW TO PLAY EACH MONTH

If you have your seven B

, a Head Coach, a Recruiting Board, and four secret cards, you’ve placed your

Calendar and Player Mat on your side of the board (with a Coach’s Whistle on March and a single in

every month), you’ve discarded two cards each into the common pool, the map has all of the State Value

Tokens and Recruits on it, and your Bus is sitting at your HQ, and all players have a Player Symbol Token

on the zero spot on the score track, you are (finally!) ready to begin the game.

Want a real challenge? Instead of players placing 1 of their regions’ color in every month, skip this step

of the set up (or only put a 1 in a few of the early months). The fewer months you seed with , the

harder the game will be because players will have to sacrifice long-term plans for early action.

The draft mechanism in EOC

was inspired by Uwe Rosenberg's

"At the Gates of Loyang."

•Earning Envelopes from Dice

•Player Actions During Each Month

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as long as you are not in the middle of an airborne

pandemic. After the roll, each player token on a Vegas

spot that exactly matches a die result both on color and

number earns the wagering player 1 B

and 2 .

These are for use in the upcoming month. There is no

Vegas payout during the first month of the game. Placing

bets in Vegas will be explained on page 19.

If you bet on at least one die this turn but did not win

anything, then you have “Crapped out in Vegas,” which

can trigger the benefit on some cards. In this example, the yellow player has bet that the

green die will come up as a 2 and the blue die as a

1, and the orange player has bet on 4 purple. If the

green die roll next turn is a 2, the yellow player gets

2 and 1 B

. The same applies for the bets on the

other colors.

All Bets Are On!

Earning Envelopes from Dice (The Dice Draft)

All players now simultaneously gain the benefit from two of the rolled dice. Multiple players may select the same

die. For each selected die, the player chooses one of the following two options:

• Take matching the color and number of that die.

The are placed on each player’s Calendar in a month

based on the die value. If it is a 1, then it goes onto the

current month. If it is a 2 then it goes one month in the

future, a 3 goes two months in the future, etc.

• Take matching the color of the die but at only half the

selected die’s value, rounded down (to a minimum of 1).

Place these on the current month or any of the upcoming

five month’s Calendar spots.

The two months chosen for your two sets of do not need to

be the same (though they can be), but you must always put all

of the from a single die in a single month.

Rolling Dice and Paying Out Vegas Wagers

The Starting Player should roll all 6 of the dice. Blowing on the dice for luck is optional but recommended

To reiterate

Every die roll connotes 3 pieces of info:

• The number of

• The specific color of

• The month when you get the , where

1 = current month, 2 = next month,

3 = month after next, etc.)

The Dice → Income Distribution Mechanism

in EoC was inspired by Stefan Feld's "Macao."

If the game is in Month 4 (June) and you choose a Green

5 die, that means you get 5 green in the fifth month

as your default income. With June as Month 1, the

Month 5 is October.

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the actions help you get there may help contextualize the reasons for the rules. So this interlude is provided to

help you think about the main ways you can accumulate during the game. In early games you should think of

100 as a reasonable target but with experience, aiming for 200 is a more ambitious goal. During the game

itself, you can score 1 to 6 by paying for the cards you draft each turn (drafting the cards itself is free, but to

actually use the cards, you have to pay their cost in ). With the potential to score 12 cards over the course of

a game, that could be 12-30 (or possibly more) by the end of the game. Some cards will earn you end-of-game

points as well, which might add another 10-20 , depending on your focus.

You’ll also be moving your Bus around the country, recruiting athletes. When you sign a Recruit, you’ll

immediately score based on the value of the athlete. If you get, say, 10 athletes over the course of the

As explained above, you also have the option to accept half the number of (rounded down but never

below 1) in the six-month window starting with the current month.

Cut-Throat Mode for Dice Drafting

Want a real challenge? Instead of everyone selecting their dice at the same time, with duplicates

allowed, draft the dice in turn order, with no repeat use of a die allowed (for 2-3 players) or only 1

repeat use (for 4 players, or for easier drafting with 2-3). If you think recruiting is a dirty game, just

wait until someone snipes that green 6 die you absolutely need.

Once drafted, dice still are used the same way as in the standard game – either take the number of

ECs rolled in the color of the chosen die on the month corresponding to the number rolled, or take

half (rounded down, no less than 1) in any of the other available months.

Thus, in the second half of the game, it’s ok if you choose a

5 or 6 even if there aren’t five or six months left in the game,

because you can always choose to divide the value by two

(again, rounding down, never below 1) and then you can

place it in any of the remaining months.

Once everyone has placed in the appropriate months,

players now move from the current month on the

Calendar to their Player Mats, as they will also be available

to spend these this turn. Players will now take turns playing

out their month of actions.

The “Why” behind What You Can Do Each Turn

In Envelopes of Cash, you’re going to be trying to score more

points than your opponents by balancing a variety of scoring

mechanisms. As you read through these rules, having a

sense of what it will take to win the game and how each of

If you choose a Green 5, but you don’t want

to wait until month 5 (October in the example

above) you could also accept 2 Green (5/2=

2.5, rounded down to 2) in any of the other

available months.

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game, you might expect to add another 30 to your score. Because each Recruit you land will also contribute to

the game’s two major end-of-game scoring mechanisms (for unique positions and regional depth), the Recruit

also helps you add to your end-of-game . The positional scoring values escalate as you approach the maximum

of 32 for having all 8 positions and the regional climb a little more slowly, but they do also escalate as you

approach the regional maximum of 10 Recruits, which also lets you score 32 . In theory, all four players could

land eight unique positions each, but it is impossible for all four players to max out four different regions, because

two players cannot both use both Border States Recruits mutually adjacent to their regions. Recruits also

potentially contribute to the 15 from your Recruiting Board.

There are a few other miscellaneous ways to get , but with these major sources of points in mind, you’ll want to

build a strategy around your card play and your recruiting. How best to do that is part of the fun of learning the

game, but the game is designed to be played differently from game to game, so often your best strategy will be to

adjust to what the cards and dice give you. Above all, do not be afraid to take several short turns (especially early

on) if those turns are tactically sound ways to set up a strong turn midway through the game, where your strategy

comes together and lets you create a powerful engine that can power you through the rest of the game. This can

be very satisfying and is often a great path to victory.

Player Actions During Each Month

Players will now perform actions, beginning with the Starting Player. There are nine different action options and

(except for “Marketing” and “End of Turn”), any action can be performed in any order, as often as the active player

would like (and can afford). Marketing can only be done once per Month. Players obviously perform the “End

of Turn” action only once and only when they have no other actions they wish to perform. Then the next player in

clockwise order will become the active player and repeat the process. This will continue until all players have had

one opportunity to perform actions.

While players take turns separately, you can speed up gameplay by performing turns simultaneously whenever

possible. This is more feasible in the early stages of the game because near the end there will be many decisions

where player order is important, especially if two players might recruit the same Recruit in the same Month.

Players are allowed to undo most of their actions within a single turn, but once a Recruiting action happens a

die will be rolled, which locks in the current action and all previous actions. Once a player uses the “End of Turn”

action, the entire turn is then locked in, and further do-overs are not permitted.

1) Put One or More Cards into Play.

Put a card from your Calendar into play by paying the cost shown in its top-left corner and then placing the

card onto an empty slot on your Player Mat. There are 12 slots on your Player Mat and you will draft exactly 12

cards so you will never run out of space. The paid must exactly match those shown on the card unless you

have a previously played card that modifies the cost, though you can make change. You can put into play as

many unplayed cards from your Calendar as you want as long as you can continue to pay the cost. You can

perform other actions in between each card you put into play if you wish. If you are given a discount on , you

may choose which you don’t need to pay. With discounts, it is possible

a card can cost zero , but never below zero.

Card Payment & Use in EOC was also

inspired from Stefan Feld’s “Macao”

Page 16 of 24

2) Trigger the Effect on One or More Cards that are Already in Play.

You may trigger the benefit of the cards on your Player Mat (as described in each card’s Benefit Box) if they are

eligible to be triggered. If a cost is indicated in the Benefit Box, then it must be paid in order to trigger the effect.

All cards on your Player Mat are potentially eligible to be triggered if they have a triggerable effect, even in the

turn they were put into play. If the triggered card shows a symbol, place a player token on it after it is triggered

to show that it cannot be triggered again this turn. Remember to remove these tokens at the end of each turn.

Cards with an symbol cannot be triggered; instead they give points at the end of the game. Cards with a

symbol provide ongoing conditional effects and can be triggered as often as you want, assuming you meet their

conditions (and can pay any cost required).

3) Trade Envelopes of Cash.

Sometimes you will find yourself with the wrong color in a given turn. You may spend 1 B

and 3 of any

color (or colors) in order to gain 1 of any color. This can be

helpful if you have some that don’t match the colors you need.

The 3-for-1 Trade Mechanism is common

in many Euros, dating back at least to

Klaus Teuber’s “Settlers of Catan”

Pay 1 fewer E when putting

any $ card into play.

Campus Near an

Airport Hub

001

Campus Near an Airport

Hub lets you reduce the

cost of all Fundraising

cards by 1 .

The Booster in Human

Resources lets you

reduce the cost of all

cards by one of

your choice.

Pay 1 fewer E (of your

choice) every time you put

a H card into play.

075

Booster in Human

Resources

When you put a card

into play, immediately

score the value

indicated by the

number of on the

card, like the 2 on

this card which shows

it is worth 2 points

when put into play.

Score 1Ìfor each of your

Texas $ cards currently in

play.

009

Coach with

Houston Roots

Score 3Ì for each Border

State Recruit you signed.

038

Analytics Nerd

Note that some cards

indicate that they score

additional points at the

end of the game with an

symbol.

Do NOT score these

points when you put

the card into play, just

score the star value of

the card. You will add

points for any “End of

Game” values at the

end of the game. For

example, the Analytics

Nerd scores 2 points

when put into play, and

then will also score

additional points at the

end of the game based

on your Border State

recruiting.

Page 17 of 24

For example, if you have and , but what you really need is , you

can turn in the 3 you don’t want, discard one B

, and take the you

need. You can do this as many times as you would like each turn, with any

combination of traded in, at a cost of one B

per trade.

4) Travel in Your Recruiting Bus.

Move your Recruiting Bus to a connected destination by paying 1 of any color. Destinations are

represented by circles and named state squares on the map. More than one Bus may occupy the same

space. However, before you spend your , be sure to use the free movement you get during the first

nine months of the game. This free movement can be used all at once or divided up with other actions

performed between moves. The free movement amounts are shown on your Calendar and are as follows:

• March through May (Q1) - 3 free moves.

• June through August (Q2) - 2 free moves.

• September through November (Q3) - 1 free move.

• In the final three months of the game, from December through February, there is no free moment.

5) Pay a Runner.

You may spend 1 B

to send any number of , in any mix of colors, to any Recruit at any destination

(whether or not your Recruiting Bus is currently there). Place the with one of your player tokens on top

of the next to the intended Recruit on the map. These piles of are called “Recruiting Packages.”

On a future Recruiting action for the indicated Recruit, when your Bus is at the correct space and you have

accumulated the full price (including any in a Recruiting Package), you may use your Recruiting Package

as part of the payment. If another player recruits the indicated Recruit before you, then all your in that

Recruiting Package are lost and returned to the supply; only your player token is returned to you.

For example, if you are playing as , and want to send to a Recruit in Wisconsin, you would discard

1 B

to the general supply and then place plus a token next to the Wisconsin space and its Recruit.

If you get to Wisconsin before anyone has signed the Recruit in Wisconsin, you can include those as

part of your payment of the full price of recruiting him. In this example, because Wisconsin requires ,

you would only need to spend one additional whenever you reach Wisconsin to get him to sign with your

program. However, be careful; if another player signs the Wisconsinite before you do, your are lost.

If you send via a Runner to a Border State and there are still two Recruits available, you will need to

indicate which of the two Recruits the Recruiting Package is aimed for. Do this by placing your player

token abutting the specific Recruit you’ve chosen for those .

Cut-Throat Mode for Trading

Want a real challenge? Pay

2 instead of a B

to trade

in .

Painful!

Want a real challenge? Players do not gain any free movement! Your Recruiting Bus will start out

slower, and you will be presented with tougher tradeoffs about how to spend your .

Cut-Throat Mode for Travel

Page 18 of 24

6) Sign a Recruit.

You may sign a Recruit who is at your Recruiting Bus’s current location. Pay the indicated on the State

token next to the Recruit. You may use any of your already placed next to the Recruit by previous Runner

actions. Of course, you may move your bus before and between signing Recruits. Note that with discounts, it is

possible a Recruit can cost zero , but the price can never be below zero.

Place the Recruit onto the box on your Player Mat corresponding to his position and then roll the Value Modifier

Die (VMD). The Recruit’s value is equal to the amount on the State Token plus or minus the VMD roll and

has a minimum value of 1. Never deduct so much from a Recruit that his value becomes zero or negative.

Gain this amount of points. All recruitment effects from cards will use value after the VMD die roll.

Finally, place the State Token near your Player Mat and return all from other player’s Runner actions back

to the supply.

If you are recruiting in a Border State where no one else has recruited yet, you have your choice of which

Recruit you want. If you can afford both Recruits, you may take them both in the same month (or in different

months).

7) Run a Marketing Campaign.

You may run a Marketing Campaign once per turn.

Find the Marketing Campaign box at the bottom of the

map board. Pay a number of B

shown in the top row

to gain a number of points shown below it.

Prices reset each month: 1 will cost 1 B

in April,

even if you bought 1 for 1 B

in March. The

Marketing action can only be performed once per

month, so it’s often easiest to wait until near the end

of your turn to do your marketing unless your plan

hinges on spending B

for in order to trigger some

other action. You will also be allowed to run one

additional Marketing Campaign when the game ends, so in essence, you get to do two Marketing Campaigns in

a row in February.

If you spend 3 B

, you will get 2 .

Score an additional Ì each

time you sign a Recruit.

008

National Pregame

Show on Campus

Some cards allow you to earn bonus or B

or when your

score , so be sure to trigger those cards if applicable (once

per signed recruit) but apply it after the impact of the VMD.

For example, the “National Pregame Show on Campus” card

gives you an extra every time you sign up a Recruit. Score

these card-driven bonuses right away by advancing your Player

token along the track.

Page 19 of 24

may place as many bets each month as you can afford and more than once on the same color/number. All

bet tokens, win or lose, are removed from Vegas once the winning bets (if any) are paid out.

9) Declare Your Turn Over.

Perform this action to end your turn. You may not modify any of your other performed actions after this.

Discard all of your remaining and remove any player tokens from your triggered cards to show they

are eligible to be used again next month. The next player in clockwise order now gets a turn to do all of these

same actions. If you are the last player for the month, then the End of the Month process begins.

Ok, but what should you actually do on your first turn?

As for what, specifically, to do on your first turn, there are two schools of thought: you can either think long- term or try to jump out to a quick start. In the long-term play, you’ll take full value dice in the first half of the

game, clustering your in July or August for a blowout month where you will put a lot of cards in play and

then, if possible, also move your Bus and do a lot of recruiting. In this case, turn one is simple - draft your

first card assuming you won’t be able to put it into play until, say, August, take 5s and 6s for dice (at full

value), and then on your turn, use your free Bus movement to reach (or get close to) the 2 Recruit in your

home territory’s color, so you can use your 1 pre-seeded to recruit him. If you can’t reach a Recruit you

can afford, then get as close as you can and send that by Runner to a nearby Recruit (one you will be able

to afford) so you can recruit him in April or start using Vegas as a way to push into the future by betting

on you want to spend next turn. Spend 1 B

on marketing, then declare your turn done.

In a quick-start play, you’ll want to draft cheap cards with benefits you can use during the game (or perhaps

assume you’ll let your cards expire unplayed in six months), draft large-value dice but take them at half-value

in each current turn, and focus your on putting that first card you draft into play in March or April if you

can (so you can start getting its benefits right away), or on recruiting the athletes you can reach using your

free movement every month, , paying for extra movement with only when necessary. Instead of spending B

on marketing, assume you will use B

to send leftover by Runner, or else use Vegas strategically

by betting on low values of the colors you really need for your next turn to recruit or pay for cards. In either

strategy, if possible, always try to mix in some large full-value dice in later turns as you go along so that you

don’t run out of steam in Q3 or Q4.

8) Place one or more Wagers in Vegas.

Spend 1 to place 1 Player Token onto any spot on

the Vegas grid in the bottom-right corner of the map

board. The spent does not have to match the

spot’s color and multiple player tokens (from any

number of players) may be on the same spot.

After the next month’s die roll, if a die matches the

color and number of a spot with Player Tokens on it,

those players will gain 1 B

and 2 matching the

die color for each player token. You receive the for

use in the month in which the dice are rolled. You

In this example the yellow player paid 2 (of any

color) to place two bets and the orange player paid 1

(of any color) for a single bet. Yellow bet on 2 Green

and 1 Blue. Orange bet on 4 Magenta.

All Bets Are On!

Page 20 of 24

End of the Month

Once all players have had a chance turn to perform their actions, the month will end. All players must move

their Whistle token to the next month. If there is already a card in the Calendar slot above the Whistle’s new

position (which becomes possible from September onward), then place that card in an alternate Discard

Deck, NOT the Discard Pool. At the end of February, discard all unplayed cards from your Calendars.

At the end of May , August, and November, the Discard

Pool should be emptied by placing those cards into the

Discard Deck. Then deal a single face-up card into the

Discard Pool. In a 4-player game, at the end of November,

the Discard Deck should be shuffled and put at the

bottom of what’s left of the current draw deck. At the end

of February, remove all cards from the Discard Pool but

do not place a new one into it. If you’ve just completed

the February turn, proceed to End-of-Game Scoring.

Otherwise, pass the Starting Player Chain token clockwise

so that there will be a new Starting Player and start the

next month from the beginning with the next Card Draft.

End of Game Scoring

Once twelve months have passed (at the end of the

February turn), it will be time for National Signing Day. As

Head Coaches, you will be judged for who had the best

recruiting class, represented by who gained the largest

total, including the following end-of-game points.

End of Game Cards

Every card on your Player Mat that has an will now

score points. These will either be a set number of points

or a conditional amount depending on how well you

fulfilled the card’s scoring conditions.

Discard

If you have already signed 1

Recruit from a Border State,

you may sign the other from

that State at a 2 E discount.

071

Accounting

Wizard

As September becomes October, then you

will remove any player’s unplayed April

card from the game.

063

Score 9Ì

Blue Blood

Program

The Blue Blood Program is simple:

it gives you 9 at the end

of the game, in addition to the 5

you earned when it was put into

play.

The Campus Master Plan is more

complex: it gives you 2 for every

Culture card (as indicted by the

symbol) you put into play (including

the Campus Master Plan itself!), on

top of the 3 from putting it into

play during the game.

Page 21 of 24

Run One Final Marketing Campaign

Players who have any B

left over may conduct one additional Marketing Campaign using the Marketing

Table on the board. If you have any leftover B

after this, save them to serve as a tiebreaker.

Positional Scoring

Regional Scoring

Now count up how many unique positions

you recruited. You get points equal to the

corresponding value on the Positional Scoring

Table. So if you have recruited 3 distinct

positions, you would score 4 points. If you have

recruited at least one of all 8 positions, you would

get the maximum possible score for this element

of the game, 32 points.

Finally, find the region of the country from which

you recruited the most players. You may count

recruits from Border States as being in whichever

region you want, but just one, so obviously, group

them into whichever region scores you the most

points. Add up the total number of State Tokens

you have from that region and look on the Regional Scoring Table to determine the value of that effort. Add

this to your total. Only Score one Region!

At the end of the game, if the player has recruited recruits

who play 3 different positions, will score 4 . If has

recruited 7 different positions, will get 24 .

For example, if has recruited 3 athletes from the South,

plus one athlete from a border state that border the South,

then gets 5 for having 4 recruits from the South. If

got all 4 recruits from the northwest, plus 2 adjacent border

state recruits, would get 10 at the end of the game.

Players only use their best set for each table. So if also

had five Northeastern recruits, would not score another 7

for those magenta recruits.

1 3 5 8 12

1 2 3 4 5

Recruits 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1 2 3 5 7 10 14 19

Regional Scoring

9 10+

25 32

Positions 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1 2 4 8 12 18 24 32

Positional Scoring

18 24 30

6 7 8

END OF GAME END OF GAME

ANDY SCHWARZ’S

ENVELOPES OF CASH

5 6

Marketing Campaign ONCE PER MONTH

Booster

Bucks

3 4

1 2

5 6

3 4

1 2

Legend

Path Node

State Token

Star

Cost

Value

Recruit Token

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

95 90 85 80 75 70 65 60 55

SCORING

VEGAS

5 5

4 4

WASHINGTON

OREGON

THE

DAKOTAS

NORCAL

SOCAL

HAWAII AMERICAN

SAMOA

ARIZONA

SOUTHWEST TEXAS

NORTHWEST

MIDWEST

SOUTH

NORTHEAST

LUBBOCK

DALLAS

HOUSTON

NEVADA

UTAH

COLORADO

NEW MEXICO

MINNESOTA

WISCONSIN

IOWA

MICHIGAN

ILLINOIS

INDIANA

TENNESSEE

ALABAMA

THE

CAROLINAS

PENNSYLVANIA

D.C.

MARYLAND

VIRGINIA

OHIO

W. VIRGINIA

NEW YORK NEW ENGLAND

FLORIDA

LOUISIANA

NEBRASKA

KANSAS

OKLAHOMA

MISSOURI

ARKANSAS

MONTANA

Positional Scoring was inspired by Bernd

Brunnhofer’s “Stone Age”

Regional Scoring was inspired by Bernd

Brunnhofer’s “Saint Petersburg”

Reveal and Score the Recruiting Boards

Players reveal their Recruiting Boards. Players who got all five Recruits receive 15 . Those who did not get

all 5 but did get their Top 3 receive 5 . Don’t score both 5 and 15 . Recruit names and hometowns on

the Recruiting Boards do not matter for scoring.

Determining the Winner (and Breaking Ties)

The winner is the person who scored the most . That person gets a (fake) $1,000,000 retention bonus

and wins the game. In the case of a tie, the person who has the most leftover B

wins. If there is still a tie,

whoever recruited the most unique position groups wins. If it is still a tie, all tied players roll dice: the highest

roll wins. Repeat until there is a winner, dang it! We don’t have ties in college football anymore.

For the winner, congratulations – you’ve earned “$1 million” while exploiting unpaid labor! For the losers, at

least you’re likely to get a generous buyout when it comes time to fire you. You’re really all winners, after all,

since you got paid millions and didn’t even have to risk an on-field injury. Well done!

Page 22 of 24

Special thanks to our Kickstarter Backers Who Adopted Head Coaches and Cards

RJ Young, Adopter of the Patriarch of the Program.

Allen Thompson, Adopter of the Matriarch of the Program, depicting his wife Liz.

Nate Tice, Adopter of the Media Favorite.

Derek Dodson, Adopter of the Preacher in a Visor.

Scott Wilson, Adopter of the Offensive Wunderkind.

Karl von Brockdorff, Adopter of Defensive Wunderkind.

Luke Engelman, Adopter of the Star Polisher.

Kyle Boes, Adopter of the Riverboat Gambler (patterned after E.B. Wall).

Zen Master, depicting an Anonymous Adopter.

Brock Aldrich, Adopter of the Financial Advisor.

Walberto Smith, Adopter of the Campus near Airport Hub, depicting himself and his family.

Kelley Ford, Adopter of the Blue Blood Program, depicting himself and his wife, Karlie.

Adam Nowland, Adopter of the Coach with Michigan Roots, depicting his brother Aaron.

Laura Ingram, Adopter of the Coach with Iowa Roots, depicting her father, Pat Ingram.

Brandon Prince, Adopter of the Coach with Idaho Roots, depicting his college buddy Brett.

Nick Ortner, Adopter of Legalized Sports Wagering, depicting his son Zach.

Clay Carroll, Adopter of Creative Financing.

The Anonymous adopters of Good Mojo, which features their cat Mojo, their own Good Mojo for 19 years,

adopted in his memory.

Dwayne Pate, Adopter of the Color Commentator Alum depicting his brother and sister-in-law,

David and Allison Pate.

Jalen and Seraphina Cobeen, Adopters of the Scrupulous Parents, depicting their parents JoAnna Gekas

and Richard Cobeen.

Duane Morvant, Adopter of the Tricked Out Recruiting Bus Card, depicting himself

and his sons Tyler, Brett & Poria.

Mike Bowers, Adopter of the Faculty Senate, depicting himself and his friends/fellow Clemson alums

Shane Ryan, Terence Polk, and Patrick Ely. #ALLIN.

Optional Variant Rules: Bidding for the Starting Player Chain

If you want to play the game with some added complexity and strategic interaction, you may find this auction

mechanic a fun addition. Instead of simply passing the Starting Player Chain after each month to give the

next player the right to go first, when you pass the Starting Player Chain, call the recipient the Auctioneer. The

Auctioneer puts the Starting Player Chain up for bid. All other players (clockwise from the Auctioneer) may bid

for the Chain using B

, bidding at least one more B

than the prior bidder until no one wishes to raise the bid

any further. Once a player passes out of the bidding, he/she may not re-enter the bidding. Once the bidding

ends, the Auctioneer may then choose to sell to the highest bidder or to keep the Chain for him/herself. To

keep the Chain, the Auctioneer must discard an amount of B

equal to whatever the highest bidder offered.

Otherwise the high bidder wins the Chain and becomes the Starting Player, paying the Auctioneer the one B

more than the second-highest bid (or the exact amount bid if there was only one bid).

If no one bids at all, the Auctioneer becomes the Starting Player and keeps the Chain for free.

Page 23 of 24

Ty Schalter, Adopter of Sports Info Department.

RJ Young, Adopter of the Coach w/Odessa Roots.

Martin Duus, Adopter of the Campus Master Plan.

Zach Binney, Adopter of the Coach with Georgia Roots.

Stephen Harrington, Adopter of the Frugal Bag Man.

Spencer Black, Adopter of the Hire Recruits Relatives.

Kyle Boes, Adopter of the Strength in Online Forums.

Adam Nowland, Adopter of Athletic Endowment.

Dan Rascher, Adopter of the Tech Bro Millionaire.

Jack Kurila, Adopter of the Australian Satellite Campus.

The Daltoso Family, Adopters of Giving 110%.

Geoffrey Tanner, Adopter of the Airline CEO Alum.

Craig Norris, Adopter of the Hedge Fund CEO Alum.

Jim Bryan, Adopter of the University President.

Steve Holler, Adopter of the Bookie with Ties to Program.

Michael Schottey, Adopter of the Coach with Florida Roots.

Jake Prohaska, Adopter of the Coach with Pennsylvania Roots.

Stadium Developer Alum, depicting the father of an Anonymous Adopter.

Conor Triplett and Dan Wilborn, Adopters of the Alumni Challenge Grant.

Chan Creswell, Adopter of the Tour Guide Card, depicting his brother Cheney.

Laura Ingram, Adopter of the University Provost, depicting her mother, Beth Ingram.

Adam Nowland, Adopter of the On-Campus TV Studio, depicting Jon Meerdink.

John Edwards, Adopted of the coach half of the Sports Information Director.

Nicole, depicted on the Sports Information Director.

Nancy Skinner, depicted on of the State NIL Law.

Michael Felder, depicted on the Innovative Blitz Package.

Sarah Spain, depicted on the Graduate Assistant.

Pablo Torre, depicted on the Analytics Nerd.

Joel Anderson, depicted on the Coach with Houston Roots.

Manali Kulkarni and Ricky Volante, depicted on the Foreign Royalty Alum.

Keith Sparks, Wendell Haskins, David West, and Ricky Volante, depicted on the National Pregame Show.

John Schwarz, my father, who going forward shall forever be known as the Oil Baron.

Thanks also to our Card Sponsors: Alex Simon, Brian Beebe, Anon., JJ, Ken Wright, and Raeayn Warren.

For a deeper understanding of the theme of this game, see Steven Godfrey’s “Meet the Bagman” at https://

www.bannersociety.com/2014/4/10/20703758/bag-man-paying-college-football-players

Game Design:

Andy Schwarz

Illustrators:

Miah Rose Serdone

Therese Ureta

Rulebook Graphical Design

& Draft Recruiting Boards:

Sean Kenny

Marketing/PR: Heather May

Graphical Consultation:

T. Wyeth

Mentorship: Juli B.

Proofing & Editing: MojoCat, J. Cox

Playtesters include Astrid, Judy,

John, Ben, Brandon, Lance, Enrique,

Seth, John, TWB, and MVD.

Inspiration from great

German game designers,

most especially

Stefan Feld, but also

Uwe Rosenberg,

Karen & Andreas Seyfarth,

Andreas Steding, and

Bernd Brunnhofer.

This game is dedicated to

Melodi, my sine qua non.

Beat Cal!

Remember: Always be Crootin! 23

Starter Stashes

If you want to skip the process of choosing cards for your

starter stash, one option is to use these preselected Stashes

Coach with Oregon Roots (013), Sports Information

Department (016), Playing the Angles (065),

Northwest Fundraising (F22).

Coach with Georgia Roots (020), Campus Tours (076),

Anonymous Donor (079),

South Fundraising (F02).

Coach with Odessa Roots (072), Strength in Online

Forums (019), Hundred-Dollar Handshake (088),

Texas Fundraising (F18).

Coach with Iowa Roots (003), Accounting Wizard (071),

Creative Financing (084),

Midwest Fundraising (F10).

Kudos to Senator Skinner

Envelopes of Cash would like to honor California

State Senator Nancy Skinner, who took an idea

developed by Andy Schwarz, a state law to insist

college athletes can earn money from their NIL, and

started a revolution. Thank you Senator Skinner!

Page 24 of 24

PLAYING OUT EACH OF THE 12 MONTHS (March through February)

1) Draft Cards (Deal 3 Cards to Starting Player, 2 to all others)

2) Roll Dice and Pay any Successful Vegas Wagers

3) Gain (all Players Choose 2 Dice, take Corresponding Envelopes)

4) Each Player Plays Out a Full Month of Actions.

1. Pay for cards on your Calendar to put them into play. Score based on the value of the card.

2. Trigger cards already in play, including cards put into play this month, if conditions are met.

3. Trade in . Trade in any 3 in any color(s) and 1 B

for 1 in any color.

4. Move the bus. Some movement is free until December. Additional movement costs 1 per space.

5. Sign a Recruit. Be on a Recruit’s State space and have the required available in the current month.

• Roll the VMD, apply any other modifiers, and score this modified value immediately.

6. Send via a Runner. Pay 1 B

and place the chosen next to Recruit with a Player Token on top.

7. Run a Marketing Campaign. (Once per turn). Spend B

to receive , based on the Marketing Table.

8. Go to Vegas. Pay 1 to place a Player Token on one color/number combination on the Vegas Table.

9. Declare your turn over. All leftover must be discarded at this point.

ENVELOPES OF CASH RULES SUMMARY

END OF THE MONTH (Players prepare for the next month or the end of the game)

• If it is not February, advance the Coach’s Whistles one month. Pass Starting Player Chain clockwise.

• If it is the end of May, August, or November, empty the Discard Pool. Deal one new card up to the pool.

• If it is the end of August or later, discard any cards still on players’ Calendars from five months

earlier. At the end of February, you can empty the Discard Pool and leave it empty.

• In a 4p game, after November, shuffle all previously discarded cards and put them at bottom of deck.

END OF THE GAME SCORING

• Score for any card you put into play that has an symbol.

• Perform a final Marketing Campaign using the Marketing Table. Leftover B

is the first tiebreaker.

• Score from the Positional Point Table and the Regional Point Table.

• Score from Recruiting Boards if you’ve landed your Top 3 or Top 5.

March April May June July Aug

April May June July Aug Sept

May June July Aug Sept Oct

June July Aug Sept Oct Nov

July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec

Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan

Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb

Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Must Round

Die

Nov Dec Jan Feb Must Round

Die

Must Round

Die

Dec Jan Feb Must Round

Die

Must Round

Die

Must Round

Die

Jan Feb Must Round

Die

Must Round

Die

Must Round

Die

Must Round

Die

Feb Must Round

Die

Must Round

Die

Must Round

Die

Must Round

Die

Must Round

Die

When Do I Get My Envelopes?

Current

Month/Die

Roll

March

April

May

June

July

Aug

Sept

Oct

Nov

Dec

Jan

Feb 24