u/Hpflylesspretentious

I'm currently working on my games rulebook, and I'm wondering about how to generally approach the structure. I want something that's approachable for more casual board game players, but I'm not sure of the right order to present the concepts to ease people into the game. This is what I have now:

1. Game Summary
2. Component List
3. How to Win
4. Setup
5. Round Structure
6. Card Types
7. Game Concepts/Scenarios (ability priority, trading, etc.)
8. Glossary & Symbol Key
9. Endgame Structure
10. Alternate Play Mode Rules
11. Strategy Tips
12. Hidden Objective Appendix

Is there a better approach? I'm sitting at nine A4 pages right now, though there are a lot of bullets that could be placed on the page more efficiently to save space.

The game I’m working on is centered around an auction mechanic where players bid on income generating cards. There’s a big ramp up in scale that results. Players start the game with $10-20 in wealth and often end with $150-$300.

The money constantly moving in and out of pockets is a major source of friction, and I’ve tried a bunch of different ways to make the bookkeeping less painful.

Originally, I had players manage a giant stack of coin tokens, placing coins on auction lots as needed. That was a nightmare because turn order is determined by wealth, and people kept losing their train of thought while calculating income.

The second and current iteration is to give each player an abacus-like tracker for wealth. It has columns for 100s, 10s, and 1s, and players use counters to track their balance by placing them next to the corresponding number in each column. When they want to place a bid, they take coin tokens to place on a tile near the auction lot and lower the wealth tracker by that amount.

The new approach is much lower friction than the original version, but many playtesters have complained that it seems redundant to have both. I’m also starting to think about the visual design of the wealth tracker, and I would prefer to have something like dials rather than placing cubes on a board. I know dials usually can’t do more than a 10s and 1s column though, and tracking 100s is necessary in pretty much every game. Does anyone have ideas on other ways I can approach this issue?

I'm looking to commission some custom models for five denominations of currency token that I want to include in my board game, but I've been having trouble knowing what to look for. It seems like many 3D sculptors focus on minis specifically. What would I search to find the right kind of skillset to hire for this?