Your ENTH will decrease at the same rate regardless of if you play in a scrimmage or not. No matter what, if you're out of the cup, then the most ENTH you can have going into saturday's game is 9ish ( Due to ENTH decay from tuesday to Saturday). On a tuesday game it is 11. To get to max ENTH from 5 it will probably take you between 3-5 games. However your ENTH will most likely decay back to 5 over the allstar break, so don't start til after the break. It is definitely beneficial to TIE all non must-win games, because a TIE on 8 ENTH is worth a normal on 5 in terms of how well the team plays.