How to play Draft & Bid

Goal: end the game with the squad the AI judge scores highest.

A game has four phases: setup, auction, pitch and verdict. The app is the auctioneer, so nobody has to sit out to run the game.

Step by step

1. 

   Add players and pick a pack

   Enter 2 to 8 names and choose a topic pack. Each pack asks one question, for example “Stranded on an island. What do you bring?”

2. 

   Choose the budget and the mode

   Pick a budget of 20, 100 or 200 per player and an auction mode: Live Auction or Sealed Bid. The smallest bid step is the budget divided by 20 (5 with a budget of 100).

3. 

   Auction the cards

   Cards come up one at a time. In Live Auction you tap your chip to raise by one step and the gavel counts down to SOLD. In Sealed Bid everyone enters a secret bid and the highest bid wins the card.

4. 

   Fill your squad of 5

   The pool has a few spare cards, so the last lots still leave a choice. The app never lets you bid so much that you can't fill the rest of your squad.

5. 

   Pitch your squad

   When every squad is full, each player gets 30 seconds to argue why their 5 cards answer the question best.

6. 

   Hear the AI judge's verdict

   While the pitches run, the squads go to the AI judge. On the results screen it scores every squad and ranks them with a short, witty comment. Spending more won't win: what counts is how well the cards fit the topic and complement each other. If the AI can't be reached, the budget rule decides: the fuller squad wins, then the one with more budget left, then a coin flip or a wheel. In an online room everyone sees the same verdict.

The budget guard

Your highest possible bid is your budget minus one bid step for each other empty slot in your squad. Example: with 100 left, a bid step of 5 and 4 empty slots, you can bid up to 85, because the other 3 slots need at least 5 each.

This keeps every squad completable and makes a late bargain a real strategy.

Live Auction vs. Sealed Bid

• Live Auction: loud and fast. The phone lies in the middle; every tap on your chip raises the bid by one step and restarts the gavel countdown.
• Sealed Bid (Premium): quiet and tense. The phone is passed around, each player types a secret bid, then all bids are revealed together.
• Online: in an online room every player bids from their own phone, in either mode.

Playing in an online room

The host creates a room (a Premium feature) and shares the 4-letter code or the invite link. Friends join for free from their own iPhone with Draft & Bid installed.

If the host's phone drops out, another connected player takes over the room automatically, so the game can continue.

Strategy tips

• Don't blow your budget on the first card; every player needs 5 cards, so plenty of picks are still to come.
• Watch the other players' budgets. When rivals are nearly broke, late cards go cheap.
• Raise just to push the price up, but only if you can live with winning the card.
• Pick cards that tell a story together; a funny, coherent squad scores higher with the AI judge than five random stars.
• Use your 30 seconds: one clear reason per card beats a long list.

Playing without the app

You can play the same idea with paper: write a topic and 5 cards per player plus a few spares, give everyone the same number of points, and let one person auction the cards and keep track of budgets. The app removes that bookkeeping and lets the auctioneer play too.