Terraforming Mars Draft Strategy: What to Take and What to Pass

Welcome to Level 3. Up to now, your cards arrived by luck. The draft changes that. It is in the base game’s rulebook as a variant, tournaments such as WBC use it, and it rewards the skills you built at Level 2: knowing what a card is worth to you, and to everyone else.

How the draft works

From the rulebook’s draft variant:

1. In the research phase, each player gets 4 cards, keeps 1, and passes the other 3.
2. Keep 1 of the 3 you receive and pass 2. Keep 1 of those 2 and pass the last card. Then take the final card passed to you.
3. Look at the 4 cards you drafted and buy any of them at 3 M€ each, as usual.

Cards pass clockwise in even-numbered generations and counterclockwise in odd ones. Generation 1 has no draft, since its research phase is skipped.

Tournaments often draft the starting hand too. The WBC 2025 event dealt 5 cards, drafted them passing left, then dealt 5 more and drafted them passing right, for a starting pool of 10.

Drafting is free; buying is not

The most important fact about the draft is that taking a card costs nothing. You only pay when you buy it afterward. That opens up two kinds of picks:

• A pick for you: the card you most want to buy and play.
• A pick against someone: a card you take only so the next player cannot have it. You can simply discard it at the buy step. This is often called hate drafting.

Your first pick

Your first pick of each draft is almost always for you. Take the card with the biggest value for your plan right now, using the method from how to value a card. Production and key tags early, points and TR late.

If two cards are close, take the one that is more valuable to everyone. The weaker of the two is more likely to come back around, or at least to hurt less in a neighbor’s hands.

When to deny a card

Later picks are where the draft gets interesting. By the third pick, you often hold two cards you will not buy. Ask which one helps the next player most.

Deny a card when:

• It would win a race. The card that gets your neighbor to a milestone, or decides an award, is worth more to them than its printed value.
• It fits their engine perfectly. A neighbor collecting Jovian tags will pay a lot for one more.
• It would hit you hard. A red-bordered attack on a resource you hold is safer in your hand than theirs.

Do not overdo it. A pick spent on denial is a pick not spent on yourself, and there are other players beyond your neighbor. Deny when the card swings a lot, not by habit.

The direction changes

Because the passing direction flips every generation, you feed a different neighbor each time. In even generations, your passes go clockwise; in odd ones, counterclockwise. Before you pass, know who receives your cards this generation, and think about that player’s tags, corporation, and milestones.

What the passes tell you

The draft is also a window into your neighbors’ plans.

• What they pass you is what they did not want. A strong plant card passed to you suggests the passer is not on a plant plan, or took something better.
• What is missing is what they kept. When you see the same pack come back smaller, you know they took one of the cards you passed them.
• Their tableau tells you the rest. Combine what they play with what they skipped, and you can often guess their next few buys.

This helps you deny the right card, and it helps you predict which parameter the table will push. The rulebook says as much: the draft lets you predict which parameter will rise first.

Draft for the buy step

Drafting 4 cards does not mean buying 4. Money is still tight, and the habits from Level 1 still apply. Draft the best cards, then buy only the ones you can afford to play soon. A drafted card you leave behind costs you nothing.

A draft routine

For each draft, run through three questions:

1. First pick: which card is worth the most to me right now?
2. Middle picks: is anything here a big swing for the player I pass to?
3. Last card: what does this leftover tell me about the players around me?

Do this for a few games and the draft stops feeling like luck. It becomes the part of each generation where you have the most control.