Open vs closed drafting
This type of drafting is sometimes referred as closed drafting (as a distinction from open drafting where players choose one of available, public resources; see for example Azul and Point City).
Drafting is a mechanic in board and card games where players draft resources from a total pool of resources to their own pool to be used later, usually by choosing one or more and passing the rest to the next player in a circle until all resources have been drafted.
Geoffrey Engelstein & Isaac Shalev’s Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms describes drafting as
“Drafting is a means of distributing cards or other game elements to players through an ordered selection process.”
A key component in drafting is limited pool of resources where one player picking a resource removes it from the pool of options for other players.
Drafting is a mechanic that can balance the input randomness of card games. Instead of the luck of the draw deciding who gets what, the agency moves to players to make good choices.
Games generally come with their own rules for drafting but a generalisation works as such:
- Players sit around in a circle.
- Each picks up a pile of resources (cards, tokens, etc) from the larger pool and pick one of those for themselves and pass the rest forward.
- Once all the resources have been drafted, you continue with new piles until you’re finished with all of them. Often, the order of which you pass unpicked resources forward changes between rounds to provide balance.
Often, it’s beneficial for a player to pick a resource that best helps them progress their strategy. Occasionally, it can be beneficial to hate pick — to remove a resource so that someone else cannot get it — which is a valid strategy and good to keep in mind when entering any sort of draft.
In some games, instead of everyone starting with a hand of resources to pick from, only one player draws the resources. They then pick one, pass the rest and each subsequent player has one less option to choose from. This can be seen for example in Lords of Waterdeep as an individual available action for a player to choose.
In this type of draft, going first is obviously very strong. Snake drafting is one way to balance it out. Instead of going always from 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4 in player selection order, every other order is reversed: 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1.
Examples
In trading card games like Magic the Gathering and Pokemon TCG, players draft cards by one pack (for example, 10 or 15 cards each) at a time, picking a card they want and passing the rest forward. Once all packs have been drafted, players use drafted cards to build a deck to play against other players. In these games, drafting is not part of the actual game but rather an activity that happens before game play.
In board games like 7 Wonders or Sushi Go, players draft cards that give them resources or points but the cards themselves are not used after drafting.