Drafting
Players select items in turn from a shared pool or from packs passed around the table, so that each pick both builds a private holding and removes the item from everyone else's options.
Also known as: card drafting, pick and pass, closed drafting, open drafting
Definition
Drafting is a mechanic in which players select items in turn from a shared pool, keeping what they pick and passing or leaving the rest for others; the pool is a passed pack (closed) or a visible row (open). Selection is the only cost, and every pick removes an option from opponents. It differs from deck-building, which acquires into a shuffled deck across a whole game, and from auction-bidding, where price rather than turn order allocates the item.
How it works
In the closed form each player takes a pack, picks one card, sets it aside, and passes the rest to a neighbour until the packs are empty. Each pick weighs the item’s value to the player, its value to players downstream, and what may return when the pack comes round again. Having seen every pack that passed through their hands, a player makes later picks with inferences about what neighbours are collecting.
Variations
- Closed pick-and-pass (7 Wonders, Sushi Go!): the canonical form; simultaneous picking keeps pacing neutral at any player count.
- Open drafting (Ticket to Ride’s face-up train cards, Century: Spice Road): a public, persistent row, moving information to perfect.
- Rochester and snake drafts (Magic’s Rochester format, fantasy sports leagues): all items face up with pick order reversing each round, which damps seat position.
- Pick one of several, no passing (Hearthstone Arena, Slay the Spire rewards): one player chooses among random offers; interaction drops to solo. Repeated through a run as its progression rule, it is described under random upgrade offers.
- Dice drafting (Sagrada, Seasons): dice rolled into a common pool are drafted one at a time, keeping randomness as input and coupling the draft to pattern building or card play.
Design considerations
Pack size relative to pick count sets how much of a pack a player sees twice, and so how much inference is possible. Item variance governs denial: when one card dominates, the pick is automatic; when values depend on prior picks, the draft rewards commitment and reading. The main failure mode is seat dependence, since pack quality is set by the neighbour upstream, which alternating pass direction only partly corrects.
Analysis notes
Planning follows from picks that pay off only in combination with later picks. Inference is tagged because a passed pack reveals what the upstream player removed. Fear of missing out is intrinsic: every pick visibly forecloses alternatives that may never return. Analysis paralysis appears with large packs of comparable options, especially when picks are sequential. Replayability follows from the random distribution of items into packs.
History and provenance
Picking in turn from a pool is old in sports drafts, but as a game mechanic drafting is usually traced to the booster and Rochester formats of Magic: The Gathering’s organised play in the mid-1990s. Fairy Tale (2004) brought pick-and-pass into a self-contained card game and 7 Wonders (2010) made it the whole action economy of a widely played board game, after which the term became a standard label. Video games adopted mainly the single-player form, where denial is dropped.
Notable examples
| Game | Year | Medium | How the mechanic manifests |
|---|---|---|---|
| Magic: The Gathering (booster draft) Wizards of the Coast | c. 1996 | Board & card | Players open sealed packs, keep one card and pass the rest, then build decks from what they drafted. Booster draft was a sanctioned format by the first Pro Tour season and is the model for most later card drafts. |
| Fairy Tale Satoshi Nakamura | 2004 | Board & card | Five-card hands are drafted pick-and-pass and then partly played, four times over; a compact self-contained draft that is often noted as a precursor to 7 Wonders. |
| 7 Wonders Antoine Bauza | 2010 | Board & card | Three ages of seven-card packs are passed simultaneously, alternating direction each age. The draft is the entire action economy, since every pick is built, sold, or buried under a wonder. |
| Sushi Go! Phil Walker-Harding | 2013 | Board & card | Pick-and-pass drafting feeding set collection with no separate play phase, reducing the mechanic to its minimum form. |
| Hearthstone (Arena mode) Blizzard Entertainment | 2014 | Video | A single-player draft: thirty successive picks from three offered cards, with no passing and therefore no denial, isolating the valuation half of the mechanic. |
| Cascadia Latest Randy Flynn | 2021 | Board & card | Four habitat tiles are on display, each paired at random with a wildlife token; on a turn a player takes one pair for their own landscape and the display refills, so each pick also removes that pairing from everyone else. |
Provenance
Earliest documented use: Magic: The Gathering (booster draft) (c. 1996), board & card. Confidence: medium. Booster and Rochester drafts developed in Magic's organised play in the mid-1990s and are the recognised source of card drafting as a design pattern; informal drafting among players is likely a little earlier than the sanctioned format. Picking in turn from a pool is older in sports player drafts and in choosing sides, which are antecedents rather than game mechanics in this sense.
Established form: Magic: The Gathering (booster draft) (1996), board & card. The earliest documented use also set the form. Confidence: medium. Magic's booster draft, open a pack, keep one card, pass the rest, is the recognised model for later card drafts; 7 Wonders (2010) later made pick-and-pass the whole action economy of a widely played board game.
Sources
- Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev. (2019). Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: An Encyclopedia of Mechanisms. CRC Press. Book Card Mechanisms chapter. Definition and the closed versus open distinction. (bibliography)
- Antoine Bauza. (2010). 7 Wonders rulebook. Rulebook Canonical pick-and-pass procedure, used for the property coding.
- BoardGameGeek community. (2024). Board Game Mechanics. Wiki Closed Drafting; Open Drafting. (bibliography)
Cite this entry
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- 2026-10-27
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West, James, Jr. (2026). "Drafting." Game Mechanic Compendium, updated 2026-10-27. http://localhost:4321/mechanics/drafting
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