Card Drafting?

Now, I might have these mixed up but this concept of "hidden" information vs. Visible information is verrrrry interesting...

Chess practices perfect information. Everyon knows all the information on the field (but may not know all the available moves and/or the better moves).

Imperfect information would be like Magic the Gathering. You know whats in your hand and whats on the field but you may not know whats in you opponents hand and your draw pile and your opponents draw pile!

To me a good mixture is healthy, although Chess did pretty good with just perfect information it still has a very structured path in terms of moves (especially in competitive scenes.

Magic on the other hand has a mixture of the two and works fine!

In terms of drafting I would have a similar mechanic to Star Realms. Everyone sees the drafting cards and hides them from the enemy once picked. This is sort of deck building but it is a drafting mechanic.

1. Yes, in certain games. Drafting adds a lot of choice over simply getting a card at random, so it is good in games where that choice is needed. IMO, drafting is most useful where *combinations* of cards can be especially potent. Synergistic cards encourage the player to enter a risk/reward scenario where they may choose lower value cards in order to get a higher value set of cards in the end.

2. Part of good drafting is using the information the player is able to glean from the cards that are passed to them. Being able to reason based on this limited information is part of the challenge and fun and so I suggest limiting the information during the draft. However, a lack of any feedback can lead a player down a wrong path for a long time which can be very frustrating (espcially for new players). Therefore, it is often desirable to have players play cards publically after drafting a subset of cards. You may want to have the size of this subset dependent on how much the game state will change with each choice. Fairy Tale, which is a fairly simple game, has players draft sets of three cards before playing them. In Seven Wonders, which is considerably more complicated, players play cards after each selection.

My first reaction is that this doesn't sound like a draft, but I'm not sure I have a full understanding of what you're suggesting. Is this a fixed pool of cards or does it change? What happens to the cards they don't pick? If it's a fixed pool of cards I would say it's probably less interesting as the risk of not getting the cards you want is removed, as is the challenge of having imperfect information.

Seven Wonders is quite a good game. I've tired of it from so many plays when it was very popular. The strong point of the game is that you can play a relatively short game with a bit of depth with six or seven players. The irony is that it's probably a better game with three or four players because having the same cards come back to you allows for more strategy, but it's seldom played with three or four because there are just better games to play with that player count. YMMV.

You should also look at Sushi Go! http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/133473/sushi-go which is similar but much simpler than Seven Wonders. Drafting is pretty much the whole game.

It uses the same drafting mechanism as Seven Wonders: Everyone starts with 7 cards, picks one to play, then passes the rest to the player on their left. The cards are all played, then everyone chooses one from the current set which they got from the player on their right. Etc. until the cards are gone.

One important element in both these games is that you can see the ongoing tableau of the player you are passing to and know what cards they want. There are cards that are quick, easy points; and there are cards that need to be put together in combinations for larger points if you complete the combination (but few or no points if you fail to complete it). The result is that you sometimes take a card that is not as good for you because it would be hugely valuable to your opponent that you would otherwise have to pass it to. Without this strategic element, the games would be far less interesting.