Board Game Arena

I think it will be a good option to do draft on the first 10 cards.
the starting hand is really important and sometimes you start with a relay bad hand, i see some cases that player quit on the start of the game because they started with bad hand.
the idea of draft in the middle of the game is to try to decrease the luck effect then why not to do it on the first 10 cards too?

Agreed. The draft that's common on Steam seems to work well: keep 4 project / 2 preludes, pass 6/2; then keep 3 /1 and pass 3/1. (No passing of Corps).

I just wanted to post to add my support for this.

I completely agree. It would help balance the game.

As I understand, BGA only implements official rules/variants. There is no official variant for drafting the start cards, so this is very unlikely to happen.

chrisnn wrote: ↑17 March 2025, 03:10 Agreed. The draft that's common on Steam seems to work well: keep 4 project / 2 preludes, pass 6/2; then keep 3 /1 and pass 3/1. (No passing of Corps).

The steam version has an option for drafting the starting hand ?

Are you referring to the steam app "Tabletop simulator" (which can be used to play, among other things, Terraforming Mars) or the actual steam app "Terraforming Mars"?

nano_kaiju wrote: ↑17 March 2025, 15:39 As I understand, BGA only implements official rules/variants. There is no official variant for drafting the start cards, so this is very unlikely to happen.

Dreams can come true.

chrisnn wrote: ↑17 March 2025, 03:10 Agreed. The draft that's common on Steam seems to work well: keep 4 project / 2 preludes, pass 6/2; then keep 3 /1 and pass 3/1. (No passing of Corps).

Does this meaningfully reduce the variance? I haven't played with this option, but I am slightly sus.

I am generally in favor of reducing variance, but unsure how keeping 4 (!!!) of the best project cards, both (!!!) of the corps and 2 (!!!) of the best preludes meaningfully solve most of the issues. When you keep most the biggest impact cards to begin with... is that a meaningful change?

Also gotta say: playtime is an issue in TfM. While I am in favor of reducing variance, if this results in games taking meaningfully more time... somewhat less certain...

cranesflyhigh wrote: ↑18 March 2025, 15:33

chrisnn wrote: ↑17 March 2025, 03:10 Agreed. The draft that's common on Steam seems to work well: keep 4 project / 2 preludes, pass 6/2; then keep 3 /1 and pass 3/1. (No passing of Corps).

Does this meaningfully reduce the variance? I haven't played with this option, but I am slightly sus.

I am generally in favor of reducing variance, but unsure how keeping 4 (!!!) of the best project cards, both (!!!) of the corps and 2 (!!!) of the best preludes meaningfully solve most of the issues. When you keep most the biggest impact cards to begin with... is that a meaningful change?

Also gotta say: playtime is an issue in TfM. While I am in favor of reducing variance, if this results in games taking meaningfully more time... somewhat less certain...

Yeah, I don't see how this helps. For true balance, I would think it would be something more like this:
Deal out 3 corporations per player. Keep 1, pass the other 2.
Deal 4 or maybe 5 preludes per player, keep 1, pass the others. Once each player has 4 (or 5, or whatever), each player keeps 2.
Deal 10 project cards to each player. Keep 1, pass the others. Once this is completed, each player can keep at most 5? maybe 6? cards.

But, this would take a LONG time.

TFM is a game with highly unbalance cards. Many games are going to be won or lost because of one player getting better cards rather than tactical mastery.

All this leads to is drafting general-purpose cards and providing useful cards to your opponent without even knowing it. An open draft from a common pool of cards might be fun: like, lay out 2N corps, 4N preludes, 10N cards and then players draft 1 card per turn until everyone has 2 corps, 4 preludes and 10 cards.