Board Game Arena

pheasantSI wrote: ↑24 June 2026, 05:09 When my IRL group switched to drafting I witnessed in real time one of my then favourite board games become much lengthier and *significantly* less fun. I loved improvising with what I had without drafting - and the relationships between the cards I was offered. And I loathe having to look to the player next to me and having to factor in what they need or want and then having to factor that in if I want to play competitively.

I've not been able to find a useful quote from the designer (despite some effort!) but I'm pretty certain it was not designed to be drafted, the designers don't draft it when they play it and the reason it's in the rulebook is that playtesters wanted to draft and so it ended up as a variant.

I won't judge on whether the game designers intended the game to be drafted or not since its impossible to know what they are thinking. But to be honest I don't think it is even possible to play competitively without draft: I simply cannot imagine my opponent being dealt and play Jovians and for the entirety of the game I have to stay in fear of them having all the Jovian multipliers because I don't know what cards they have without drafting (obviously the multipliers only gets played at the end of the game, possibly with the exception of IO mining). Whereas with draft, if they are playing a Jovian strategy, they would be forced to either keep the Jovian cards as their first pick and pass on the good cards I would want, or withhold the good cards themselves but pass on the Jovians which I would keep and discard from them.

A typical example would be them having 3 science tags and 3 jovian tags, and in the card draft they have to pick between Ganymede colony verses AI central in the early game. Without draft I would say that the game has ended already, they can keep ganymede colony to the end game and play AI central in that generation.

There are also milestones and awards so I do not understand how you can just play the game without factoring what the other player needs or want. To me, playing this game without draft is just painful precisely because you only get to improvise with what you have without drafting, and that isn't going to get very far without depending entirely on luck. Also, I'm not sure if you have tried to review the game after the game ends, but without draft reviewing the game becomes quite literally impossible. you do not know what cards the other player has or discarded, so without draft it really just comes down to saying "oh if I had drawn AI Central then I would have won"

From this whole discussion the only plausible explanation I can understand is draft adding onto the length of the game, but I don't really see how thats a problem since drafting doesn't really take much time anyways. From my experience drafting phase takes on average at most 1 minute per generation, so assuming the game ends in 10 generations that only adds 10 minutes to the game; quite little compared to all the time taken to think about actions and doing the actions.

Drafting does not add skill or mitigate luck per se. It favors a different set of skills. Improvising and playing against unknowns well is just a different skill. And you can have good and bad luck with drafts too: Your opponent may be dealt AI and 3 bad cards, whereas you get their Jov mult and 1 good card for you ... It is truly just a matter of preference. I enjoy both play styles but lean towards drafting as I just like the decision making and additional information I get.

Agree, the only reason I see playing without draft is when not playing real time because it slows down the game a lot; but when playing real time I won't even play a game without draft, it just favours who draws better

The game already takes far too long. Draft chomps up 5 mins extra per player