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The best drafting board game is 7 Wonders — three to seven players, thirty minutes, and the cleanest version of the mechanism that made drafting a household word. But “drafting” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, because the word covers two mechanisms that feel nothing alike: closed drafting, where everyone picks from a hidden hand at the same time and passes the rest, and open drafting, where the cards sit face up and every one you take is a card you deny someone. People who love one frequently bounce off the other and conclude they dislike drafting. Below are the seven best drafting games, sorted by which kind they are, each with a plain note on who should skip it.
Drafting is two unrelated mechanisms wearing one name
Here is the conversation that happens every week in every board game group. Somebody plays 7 Wonders at a party, has a great time, and asks what else does that. The table says 7 Wonders Duel — same designer, same brand, universally praised. They buy it, they play it, and they are quietly disappointed. Nothing was wrong with the recommendation on paper. It was wrong in the only way that matters: it swapped one kind of drafting for the other.
Closed drafting is what 7 Wonders does. You hold a hand of cards nobody else can see, everyone chooses one at the same moment, and the remaining hands rotate around the table. You are solving your own hand against a shrinking clock. The other players exist, but mostly as weather — you feel them in what shows up in the hand that reaches you, not in a decision aimed at you. It is fast, it is generous, and it is the only mechanism in board games that barely slows down as you add people. A seven-player game takes about as long as a three-player game, which is why a civilization game can fit in half an hour.
Open drafting is what 7 Wonders Duel does, and what Fantasy Realms does, and what Cascadia does with its tile-and-token row. The pool is face up. Everyone can see what everyone else wants. You take turns, and every card you take is simultaneously a card you are taking away. That is a completely different verb. You are no longer optimizing a hand; you are reading a person and deciding whether the card that helps you a little is worth less than the card that hurts them a lot. It is slower per player, it is tenser, and at higher player counts it becomes unmanageable — which is why nearly every great open-drafting game is built for two to four.
So the useful question is not “what are the best drafting games.” It is which half of the word did you actually enjoy. If what you loved about 7 Wonders was that nobody ever waits and the table stays loud, you want more closed drafting and you should be shopping by player count. If what you loved was the moment you took a card you did not need because your opponent visibly needed it, you want open drafting and you should be shopping for a duel.
One more distinction worth holding, because it decides how a drafting game ends: what you draft into. Some of these games draft into a scoring set (collect three of a thing). Some draft into an engine, where the cards you took early make the cards you take later cheaper or stronger. The engine games feel bigger and take longer. The set games are the ones you can teach in four minutes. Neither is better, but people who describe 7 Wonders as “shallow” almost always mean they wanted an engine, and people who describe it as “fiddly” almost always wanted a set.
The best closed-drafting games (hidden hand, everyone picks at once)
1. 7 Wonders — the reference implementation, and still the best
3–7 players — 30 minutes — ages 10+ — Antoine Bauza, Repos Production
Three ages, a hand of seven cards, one pick per turn, pass the rest. That is the whole rules explanation, and it is why 7 Wonders is still the answer fifteen years on. What separates it from every imitator is not the drafting itself but what sits underneath: four scoring lanes running at once (military, science, commerce, civic), a cost curve that collapses as your tableau grows, and interaction limited to the two people physically beside you. Your neighbors are the only players you trade with and the only ones you fight. That single design choice is what lets seven people sit down without the game turning into a table-wide brawl or a two-hour queue.
It is also the most honest recommendation on this list for a specific reason: it scales up rather than down. Most games get worse as you add players. This one gets better, because more players means more scoring lanes contested and the same thirty minutes. If you have six or seven people and half an hour, there is essentially nothing else in the hobby that does this job.
Who should skip it: two-player groups — the base game plays two through a clunky neutral-city variant that nobody enjoys, and Repos built an entirely separate game to fix it (see below). Also skip it if you want the cards themselves to be interesting; 7 Wonders’ cards are deliberately plain, and the game happens in the arithmetic between them. For a deeper, longer version of that arithmetic, our heavy Euro guide is the next rung up.
2. It’s a Wonderful World — closed drafting that builds a real engine
1–5 players — about 45 minutes — ages 14+ — Frédéric Guérard, illustrated by Anthony Wolff, La Boîte de Jeu / Origames
This is the pick for anyone who liked 7 Wonders and wished the tableau did more. Four rounds, and each round you draft a hand of seven cards — publisher’s own description, and the drafting is identical in feel to 7 Wonders. What changes is the second half of the turn. Every card you keep gets one of two jobs: scrap it immediately for the resources printed on it, or slot it into your construction zone as a building that needs feeding. Then production runs in a fixed order of resource types, and completed buildings pay out — which can complete other buildings, which pay out, which complete more.
That cascade is the entire experience, and it is a genuinely different pleasure from 7 Wonders. In 7 Wonders the engine is implied; you notice at the end of Age II that things got cheaper. Here the engine is the thing you are looking at, and a well-built round ends with you flipping over five buildings in one chain while everyone waits. It is the closest any of these games gets to the feeling of a heavy Euro without the running time.
Who should skip it: anyone drafting for a party. The box says 14+ and it means it — the production-order rules take a full teach, and a player who does not plan two rounds ahead will lose badly and know it by round two. It is also the only game here where the draft is the setup rather than the point.
3. Sushi Go Party! — the purest version of the mechanism, and the best teacher
2–8 players — 30 minutes — ages 8+ — Gamewright
Gamewright’s own subtitle for this box is The Deluxe Pick and Pass Card Game, which is the most accurate piece of marketing copy in the hobby. Strip closed drafting of everything else — no engine, no resources, no wonder boards — and this is what is left: a hand of cards, pick one, pass, score sets over three rounds. It takes four minutes to teach to an eight-year-old and it seats eight people.
The Party! edition is the one to buy rather than the original Sushi Go!, and the reason is structural, not cosmetic. The box holds more than twenty dishes and you assemble a menu before each game from a board of tiles. That changes what the game is between plays: one menu rewards greedily collecting sets, another punishes it, and the strategy you learned last time is actively wrong this time. It is the single best answer to “we want a drafting game the kids can play too” that also holds up after fifty plays. We have a full Sushi Go review if you want the longer look at the original.
Who should skip it: anyone who wants their choices to compound. Nothing you draft in round one changes what round three is worth, beyond a couple of pudding cards. If the cascade is the reason you like drafting, this will feel thin no matter how charming the art is.
4. Between Two Cities — drafting where your neighbors are partners, not rivals
1–7 players — 30 minutes — publisher weight: light — Ben Rosset & Matthew O’Malley, Stonemaier Games
This is the strangest game on the list and the one most worth knowing about, because it takes closed drafting and removes the competition from it without removing the tension. You draft tiles, not cards. Each turn you take two tiles from your hand and place one into the city you are building with the player on your left and one into the city you are building with the player on your right. Every city belongs to two people. And at the end, your score is your lower-scoring city — so neglecting either partner sinks you.
What that produces is a drafting game where the table talks constantly and nobody is a villain. You are negotiating, pointing, groaning when your partner puts a factory next to your park. Stonemaier calls the weight light and that is right, but light does not mean empty here: the scoring-your-worse-city rule is a genuinely clever constraint that keeps everyone honest. The Essential Edition consolidates the base game with its expansion content, and the box includes an Automa so it plays at one and two as well as up to seven.
Who should skip it: people who want to win by being cleverer than everyone else. You cannot win this alone, and a table with one determined optimizer and one distracted partner is a bad evening for the optimizer. Also skip it if your group hates table talk — this game is mostly table talk. If it sounds right for your table, our best board games for 7 players list has the rest of the big-table options.
The best open-drafting games (face-up pool, every pick is also a denial)
5. 7 Wonders Duel — the best open draft ever made, and not a two-player 7 Wonders
2 players — 30 minutes — ages 10+ — Antoine Bauza & Bruno Cathala, Repos Production
Sold as the two-player 7 Wonders, and that framing has probably cost it more disappointed buyers than any other game in this article. Mechanically it shares a brand, a designer, and a scoring skeleton with 7 Wonders, and almost nothing else. There are no hands and no passing. Instead, cards are laid out in a pyramid, some face up and some face down, and you alternate taking cards that are not covered by others. Taking a card uncovers the ones beneath it, which means every choice you make also decides what your opponent is allowed to reach next.
That is the whole game and it is superb. You spend the entire thirty minutes doing arithmetic on two things at once: what a card gives you, and what taking it hands over. Two instant-win conditions sit on top — military supremacy and scientific supremacy — so you can never simply build quietly and count points at the end; you have to watch two threat tracks while you do it. It is tense in a way no closed draft is, because in a closed draft you never quite know whom you hurt.
Who should skip it: anyone shopping because they loved 7 Wonders at a party. Duel is a knife fight for exactly two people; it does not scale, and the pleasure it offers is stress rather than speed. If you want more two-player options that are not this intense, start with our best two-player board games and board games for couples lists.
6. Fantasy Realms — open drafting stripped to fifty-three cards and twenty minutes
3–6 players — 20 minutes — ages 14+ — Bruce Glassco, WizKids, released August 2017 — 53 cards
The loosest definition of drafting on this list, and included deliberately, because it is the clearest demonstration of what open drafting is for. WizKids describes the turn in nine words: draw a card, discard a card — and you may draw from the deck or from the discard area. That discard area is the draft. Everything anyone throws away is face up and available, so half your attention is on your own seven-card hand and half is on the growing pile of things your opponents did not want, trying to work out why they did not want them.
What you are building is a hand of seven cards that combo with each other, and the combos are absurd — individual cards swing by dozens of points depending on what sits beside them. The game ends when ten cards are in the discard area, which is usually about twenty minutes in. It is the payoff of a tableau game delivered at filler length, and it is the best thing to own if the chains were the part of 7 Wonders you actually liked and you resent spending ninety minutes to get there.
Who should skip it: anyone who needs to understand a game before playing it. Your first game of Fantasy Realms is a guess — there is no way to know what combos exist until you have seen the cards, and reading the reference sheet mid-game is the standard experience. It gets very good on play three. Some tables never get there.
And one for the table that liked the tableau but hated the drafting
7. 7 Wonders Architects — the draft reduced to a single visible choice
2–7 players — 25 minutes — ages 8+ — Repos Production
Worth knowing that Repos themselves shipped a 7 Wonders where the drafting is essentially gone. In Architects there are no hands to pass. On your turn you take one card from one of three decks within reach — your left neighbor’s, your right neighbor’s, or the central one — and you build it. That is the turn. It plays in about twenty-five minutes, it is rated 8+, and a group can be playing it forty seconds after the box opens.
This is on the list because it is the correct recommendation more often than drafting purists want to admit. A meaningful share of people who bounce off 7 Wonders are not bouncing off the civilization theme or the scoring — they are bouncing off the simultaneous hand-passing, which asks everyone to evaluate seven cards at once under social pressure. Remove that, keep the wonder-building and the military track, and you get a game those same people finish and immediately re-rack. If a family member has ever said 7 Wonders was “too much at once,” this is the box.
Who should skip it: anyone reading this article for the drafting. The choice space genuinely is narrower, and if you enjoy agonizing over a hand of seven you will find Architects pleasant and slight. It is the one entry here we are recommending for who it is right for rather than for how much drafting it contains.
The seven best drafting board games compared
| Game | Players | Play time | Age | Kind of draft | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. 7 Wonders | 3–7 | 30 min | 10+ | Closed (pick and pass) | the big table, every time |
| 2. It’s a Wonderful World | 1–5 | ~45 min | 14+ | Closed (pick and pass) | drafting into a real engine |
| 3. Sushi Go Party! | 2–8 | 30 min | 8+ | Closed (pick and pass) | kids, beginners, eight people |
| 4. Between Two Cities | 1–7 | 30 min | light | Closed (tile drafting) | tables that would rather cooperate |
| 5. 7 Wonders Duel | 2 | 30 min | 10+ | Open (face-up pyramid) | two players who want a fight |
| 6. Fantasy Realms | 3–6 | 20 min | 14+ | Open (shared discard pool) | combo payoff in twenty minutes |
| 7. 7 Wonders Architects | 2–7 | 25 min | 8+ | Minimal (three visible decks) | the table that disliked drafting |
Ages and player counts above come from each publisher’s own product page. Between Two Cities is listed by Stonemaier with a weight rather than an age, and we have not invented one; the printed age on the box is 14+, and in practice it plays well below that.
A note on Draftosaurus, and on games that draft without saying so
Draftosaurus belongs in any honest conversation about this mechanism — it is pick-and-pass drafting with wooden dinosaurs instead of cards, and a die each round that dictates where you are allowed to place what you took, which is a smart way to stop the draft from being a pure optimization exercise. It is not a numbered pick here for a boring reason: its publisher’s product pages are not currently reachable, so we cannot verify its player count and running time against a first-party source, and this site does not print specifications it has not checked. The game itself is very good and our Draftosaurus review covers it in full.
It is also worth noticing how many games draft without using the word. Cascadia is open drafting — four tile-and-token pairs in a row, take one, and what you leave decides what the next player gets. A great many modern Euros hide a draft inside a market row. If you find that you enjoy those market rows more than you enjoy the games attached to them, that is a strong signal you are an open drafter, and the two open picks above are where to start.
Which one should you actually buy first?
If you have never owned a drafting game and you have three or more people: 7 Wonders. It is the reference for a reason, it seats seven, and everything else on this list is best understood as a reaction to it.
If you already own 7 Wonders and want the next thing: the fork is the whole point of this article. Wanted more engine? It’s a Wonderful World. Wanted more people and less rivalry? Between Two Cities. Wanted the fight? 7 Wonders Duel — but understand you are buying the other mechanism, not more of the same one. We take that comparison apart pick by pick in our games like 7 Wonders roundup.
If you are buying for a family or a mixed-age table: Sushi Go Party! at 8+, or 7 Wonders Architects if the group has already found pick-and-pass overwhelming once.
And if you are only shopping for two: 7 Wonders Duel, without hesitation. It is the best game on this list on a per-play basis; it simply asks for a specific kind of evening.
What nothing here replaces, and what not to buy expecting drafting
No game on this list gives you 7 Wonders’ full four-lane scoring at seven players in thirty minutes, because 7 Wonders is the one that does that. The others each keep some of it. That is worth saying plainly, because the honest version of a list like this is that the original is usually still the original.
Two things frequently recommended into this conversation that are not drafting games at all: Catan and Splendor. Both are turn-based engine builders — you wait, you act, you wait again. They are good games and they are the correct recommendation for someone who liked building an economy. They are the wrong recommendation for someone who liked the fact that nobody at the 7 Wonders table ever had to wait, which is the thing most people actually mean when they say they liked it.
And if a drafting game left you wanting something with more weight behind each decision rather than more speed, the next move is not another draft — it is up a rung, into our best heavy Euro board games guide, or sideways into strategy games generally.
Drafting games by player count and by solo
Two players: 7 Wonders Duel is the pick and it is not close. Sushi Go Party! plays two respectably. Between Two Cities plays two with the Automa. Skip base 7 Wonders at two.
Six to eight players: Sushi Go Party! seats eight, 7 Wonders and Between Two Cities seat seven, Architects seats seven. This is the mechanism’s home turf — very little else in the hobby handles these counts without downtime. See also our best party games list.
Solo: thin, as you would expect from a mechanism built on passing hands to people. It’s a Wonderful World includes a solo mode in the base box and is the clear pick; Between Two Cities’ Automa covers one and two. The rest are multiplayer only. More options in our best 1-player board games roundup.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the best drafting board game?
The best drafting board game is 7 Wonders, a card-drafting civilization game for 3 to 7 players in about 30 minutes, ages 10 and up. Everyone picks a card from their hand at the same time and passes the rest, so a seven-player game runs about as long as a three-player one. For two players, 7 Wonders Duel is the better buy.
What is card drafting in board games?
Card drafting is choosing cards from a shared or rotating pool rather than drawing them randomly. It comes in two forms. Closed drafting, as in 7 Wonders and Sushi Go Party!, has everyone pick from a hidden hand simultaneously and pass the rest. Open drafting, as in 7 Wonders Duel, puts the cards face up, so every card you take is one you also deny.
What is the best drafting game for two players?
The best drafting game for two players is 7 Wonders Duel, designed by Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala for exactly two players in about 30 minutes, ages 10 and up. You alternate taking cards from a face-up pyramid, and two instant-win conditions, military and scientific supremacy, keep constant pressure on. Base 7 Wonders is poor at two players.
What is the best drafting board game for kids and beginners?
The best drafting board game for beginners is Sushi Go Party!, a pick-and-pass card game for 2 to 8 players in 30 minutes, ages 8 and up. It teaches in about four minutes, seats a whole family, and lets you build a different menu from more than 20 dishes each game so the strategy changes between plays. 7 Wonders Architects is a good second choice.
What drafting game is best for six or seven players?
For six or seven players, 7 Wonders is the best drafting game: it seats up to seven in about 30 minutes because everyone drafts at once. Between Two Cities also seats seven in 30 minutes and makes your neighbors partners instead of rivals. Sushi Go Party! stretches to eight players if you need one more seat.
The bottom line
Buy 7 Wonders if you do not own a drafting game and you have a table. Buy It’s a Wonderful World if you own 7 Wonders and wanted the engine to be the point. Buy 7 Wonders Duel if there are two of you and you want the version where every card you take is aimed at someone. Buy Sushi Go Party! if the table includes children or eight adults. Buy Between Two Cities if your group would rather build together than beat each other, and Fantasy Realms if you want the combo payoff in the time it takes to make coffee.
The thing to carry away is the fork, not the ranking. Drafting is not one taste. Half the people who say they love it mean they love a table where nobody waits, and half mean they love taking something out of someone’s hands. Work out which one you are before you spend money, and every recommendation on this page — including the ones telling you to skip a game — gets easier to use.