How about paired drafting?

I always have a ton of favorite games, but if you ask me to rank them, I immediately refuse 😅 - it’s just too hard. It’s pretty much the same with game mechanics. I love worker placement, tile-placement, dice allocation, rondels... so many things. But I couldn’t pick one above others. I want to highlight such a new ‘favorite’ mechanic of ours that started appearing in games! Not sure if it has an official name, so we dubbed it “paired drafting”. Or I guess it could be “group drafting” or “double drafting” or something? 🤔 What do you think?

Prime examples are Cascadia, Luna Capital and Yokohama Roll&Write! They all have this mechanic and it offers an inherently difficult and crunchy decision every turn: Draft from available things, however they are bundled together in some way, which makes it less clear what the best choice might be - and you keep having to make compromises and weighing up pros and cons every turn. 🧐

In Cascadia you are building a landscape out of hexagonal tiles and putting animal discs on them to fulfill specific scoring conditions that you randomly chose for that game. On your turn you can pick from 4 hex-disc pairs, and place them into your growing habitat.

In Luna Capital you are building your settlement with cards, on top of which you place building tiles. When drafting you have to choose one of 4 columns of cards and tile(s). You might be looking for specific cards because their value is important, but certain buildings could be more valuable to you than others. As rounds go by, more tiles get allocated to each card, which makes the decision more layered.

In Yokohama Roll&Write you choose one of three pairs, each made up of a die and a card. The die value will indicate in which parts of the city you can draw, and the card shows you how many circles. More circles are better, but lower value cards will additionally give more valuable bonuses.

Drafting is already such an interesting mechanic, where decisions influence other players as well - I think this type of paired drafting really ups the ante, by a lot! Evaluating choices can be so grueling, but so much fun! 😊