Drafting is an incredibly simple game mechanic that can bring a whole lot of depth to any board game. Some games use drafting as a basic seeding mechanic to start the game or to begin a new round, like Settlers of Catan. In other cases, an entire game can be built on just the mechanic of drafting, like Point Salad. So what, exactly is drafting?
Drafting is the process of taking turns to draw something (usually cards or tiles) from a shared pool. It's that simple. So how do you build an entire game on the basic mechanic of drafting? Let's take a look at Point Salad. To play the game, all the cards are placed in the center of the table. Some of the cards are vegetables and some are point cards. Players take turns choosing to draw vegetables or scoring cards that award points for the vegetables they've chosen. Since the pool of cards is shared, there are a lot of consequences for each player's choices. For instance, if I know my opponent is trying to collect yellow pepper cards I can take them and prevent him from scoring. Inversely, if there's something I really need to score big, I don't have to hope that I draw the card from the top of a single draw pile–I can choose from an entire pool of cards that are visible to me.
The difference between having a single face-down draw pile and a pool of face-up cards to choose from is subtle, but it makes a world of difference in improving a game that is too heavily dependent on chance to one that has much more decision-making. Even Candyland might be a little bit better with a drafting pool (winky face).
We're in the process of working on a pretty spectacular game that involves teams and drafting of cards. You'll want to stay tuned to learn more about it as things progress!
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