Tag: Open Drafting

Games with Open Drafting mechanics allow players to choose new resources from a shared pool. The pool of resources is public, meaning all players will see available options.

Saloon Tycoon

Saloon Tycoon

Saloon Tycoon

Players are Saloon owners in an old west gold rush town. They’ve purchased lots on the four corners of the main crossroads and need to expand their small establishments into thriving businesses. Their goal is to create massive centers for commerce and entertainment in the wilds of the West. To boost their success, they’ll need to attract the wealthy and famous citizens of the town while keeping away the less savory characters.

This is a building and tile placement game where the purpose of the game is to build the best saloon. The game is played by each player taking a board and then taking turns going clockwise from the first player earning gold, taking an action, building and collecting bonuses.

The player with the most reputation points at the end of the game wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.29

Sagrada

Sagrada

Sagrada

Draft dice and use the tools-of-the-trade in Sagrada to carefully construct your stained glass window masterpiece.

In more detail, each player builds a stained glass window by building up a grid of dice on their player board. Each board has some restrictions on which color or shade (value) of die can be placed there. Dice of the same shade or color may never be placed next to each other. Dice are drafted in player order, with the start player rotating each round, snaking back around after the last player drafts two dice. Scoring is variable per game based on achieving various patterns and varieties of placement…as well as bonus points for dark shades of a particular hidden goal color.

Special tools can be used to help you break the rules by spending skill tokens; once a tool is used, it then requires more skill tokens for the other players to use them.

The highest scoring window artisan wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Coverage
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Puzzle
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.92

Roll Player

Roll Player

Roll Player

Mighty heroes don’t just appear out of thin air — you must create them! Race, class, alignment, skills, traits, and equipment are all elements of the perfect hero, who is ready to take on all opposition in the quest for glory and riches.

In Roll Player, you will compete to create the greatest fantasy adventurer who has ever lived, preparing your character to embark on an epic quest. Roll and draft dice to build up your character’s attributes. Purchase weapons and armor to outfit your hero. Train to gain skills and discover your hero’s traits to prepare them for their journey. Earn Reputation Stars by constructing the perfect character. The player with the greatest Reputation wins the game and will surely triumph over whatever nefarious plot lies ahead!

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting
  • Role Playing
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.42

Rocketmen

Rocketmen

Rocketmen

They have set up their empires of trailblazing innovation and groundbreaking technologies on a somewhat unremarkable planet circling around a rather average star. Years of hard work and steadfast dedication to their clear-cut vision of looking further than the day-to-day toils and chores of human civilization have cemented their reputation as the forefathers of the future humanity. Secretly, they have never stopped dreaming about the thrust of all their entrepreneurial actions and deeds – reaching the stars. Now, the time has come for them to embark on a second giant leap for humankind, to make the outer reaches of the solar system our home. Only one of them shall go down in history as the first explorer of space and a person who truly forged their will and power according to the bold words: citius, altius, fortius – faster, higher, stronger.

Immerse yourself in a fast-paced race to the final frontier: space. A deck-building confrontation of swift decision-making and tactical choices, Rocketmen gives you the feel of taking a front seat in a technologically wonderful spectacle of space exploration. It’s up to your predictive abilities and resource management skills to determine what kind of endeavor would be most suitable for paving the way to Earth’s celestial neighbors. It doesn’t matter whether it would be a low Earth orbit satellite or a manned base destined for the Red Planet; plan your mission carefully, equip your shuttles and rockets craftily, yet do not hesitate when your gut instinct tells you when it’s time to launch!

The universe might wait for you eternally. Your opponents won’t!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Hidden Roles
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Racing

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.58

Rescuing Robin Hood

Rescuing Robin Hood

Rescuing Robin Hood

Rescuing Robin Hood is a collaborative deck-building game that takes 45-60 min and plays 1-5 players. Robin Hood has been captured! As the leaders of the Merry Band you have only 5 days to come to his rescue, using all the Wit, Brawn and Stealth you can muster. Each turn you work together to rescue villagers captured by the Sheriff of Nottingham’s men. As more people are rescued new villagers join your side. Once you have built up your Merry Band you select your dream team, storm the castle, and fight one final battle to rescue Robin Hood!

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Deck Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.29

Regency

Regency

Regency

Take up the mantle of history’s greatest rulers in this fast-paced, interactive, civilization-themed, set-collection game! Compete against Attila the Hun, Cleopatra, William Wallace, and Queen of Sheba, in your quest to assemble a diverse domain, consisting of six different citizen types. But beware! Rival regents will attract citizens away from your domain, whether by allure, by force, or by treachery.

Set against a historical and multi-cultural backdrop, Regency simulates the struggle of power and control that has marked the rise and fall of the world’s greatest empires. Players use cards out of their hand to exert influence over citizens and to perform various actions and reactions. With the addition of each new caste of citizen (including nobles, religious, military, merchants, commoners, and even brigands), new actions become available, resulting in an ever-escalating dynamic and competitive environment, right up to the crowning moment when one regent emerges supreme.

Game Mechanics:

  • Civilization
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.33

Red Rising

Red Rising

Red Rising

Enter the futuristic universe of Red Rising, based on the book series by Pierce Brown featuring a dystopian society divided into fourteen castes. You represent a house attempting to rise to power as you piece together an assortment of followers (represented by your hand of cards). Will you break the chains of the Society or embrace the dominance of the Golds?

Red Rising is a hand-management, combo-building game for 1-6 players (45-60 minute playing time). You start with a hand of 5 cards, and on your turn you will deploy 1 of those cards to a location on the board, activating that card’s deploy benefit. You will then gain the top card from another location (face up) or the deck (face down), gaining that location’s benefit and adding the card to your hand as you enhance your end-game point total. If at any point you’re really happy with your hand, you can instead use your turn to reveal a card from the top of the deck and place it on a location to gain that location’s benefit.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.27

Railroad Rivals

Railroad Rivals

Railroad Rivals

While playing Railroad Rivals, you connect cities via one of the twelve great railroads that stretched across the United States, while simultaneously building your stock portfolio. You then use those railroads to make deliveries that drive up the price of your stocks. At the end of the game, the player who has run the most profitable railroad while also owning the most valuable stocks becomes the greatest of all of the railroad rivals!

In more detail, Railroad Rivals is a tile-drafting and -laying game in which you build a railroad empire that stretches across America…and across your table. Each turn you draft one new city tile and one new railroad stock tile. You then lay one of your city tiles next to a city tile that is already on the table to create a link between the two cities. The matching edges must both have the same railroad on them. Each newly laid city gets one or more randomly drawn colored cubes placed on it that represent the goods that can be delivered from that city. After all players have laid their city tile, you deliver one goods cube using one of that city’s railroad links. This gives you points and raises the value of that railroad stock.

At the end of the game, your score is the total of all of the points that you received from deliveries, from other players using your railroad links, and from the value of all of your railroad stock tiles.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.07

The Quest for El Dorado: Golden Temples Adventure

The Quest for El Dorado: Golden Temples Adventure

The Quest for El Dorado: Golden Temples Adventure

In The Quest for El Dorado: The Golden Temples, which can be played as a standalone game or combined with 2017’s The Quest for El Dorado, players have now reached the legendary city of gold and they have started to explore it. What will they find there?

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Grid Movement
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Racing

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.88

The Quest for El Dorado

The Quest for El Dorado

The Quest for El Dorado

In The Quest for El Dorado, players take the roles of expedition leaders who have embarked on a search for the legendary land of gold in the dense jungles of South America. Each player assembles and equips their own team, hiring various helpers from the scout to the scientist to the aborigine. All of them have one goal in mind: Reaching the golden border first and winning all of the riches for themselves. Whoever chooses the best tactics will be rewarded!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Grid Movement
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Racing

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.93