Draft & Write Records is a paper and pencil game. Your put together a rock band, bringing together not only the musicians, but also producers and stage hands. You release albums and singles, you do shows starting with local pubs and hopefully eventually progressing to prestigious stadiums. Every player does this on his own player sheet. You check boxes off to mark your progress in the various aspects of running a rock band. You score points for the progress you make. To determine which boxes you can check, there is a card drafting mechanism.

 

The card crafting mechanism is similar to that in 7 Wonders. You get a hand of cards. You pick one and pass the rest to your neighbour. The card you choose determines which part of your sheet you get to check off. This process is repeated several times, until one last card remains and is then discarded. Then you start a new round with new cards drawn from the deck. 

 

Checking boxes off a sheet of paper is actually rather abstract. Some parts of the game are mechanisms unrelated to the theme. However, there are also aspects which make you feel like you are really putting together a band and managing their career, which is fun. The people you recruit each have four icons. These are used to represent whether people you bring to the team click with one another. Some spaces need to be unlocked before you can check them off, and to unlock them, you need money. That’s pretty realistic. This is business. You need to worry about funding. You also want to release a good mix of albums and singles. You score points by multiplying these two. That kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?

 

Let’s look at some aspects of the player sheet: 

 

 

Those Polaroid photo slots in the middle are the spaces for your band members. Some icon spaces are linked. You want these linked spaces to have the same icons. You get a bonus for that. At the top right you have a grid of icons. You want to complete rows and columns (including diagonally) to score points or to get to check off other spaces. On the right side when you check off the bigger icons, you get to claim the bonuses between them. 

 

 

There are four public goals. They are evaluated at the end of every round, and multiple players can achieve the same goal. Goals are discarded at the end of a round if scored, and new ones will be drawn. One way the game ends is when any player completes 6 goals. When you complete a goal, you not only score points, you also gain some bonuses allowing you to check off specific spaces. Like many pencil and paper games, you can trigger nice chain reactions. 

 

 

Whenever you get to perform, you advance on these paths. There are forks, so you have to choose which paths to go down. The money icons mean you need to unlock those sections before you can pass through. 

 

I must say this is a lot of fun. I am not specifically a fan of pencil and paper games but I don’t dislike them either. This one works for me partly because of the theme. I had a rock star dream once, many moons ago. The card drafting works well. It can be tough to choose between the incredible vocalist and the god-tier lead guitarist. Sometimes a plain producer by himself may not score many points, but if he clicks well with others on the team, together they can do amazing things. Should I pass on this good singer and hope to get an even better one who also works with the rest of the band? I only have one singer slot after all. Card drafting means sometimes you hate draft to deny your opponents what they want. There is a penalty mechanism in the game. If you are forced to take a person but you have no more slot, you will suffer a penalty. These penalties get more are more costly as you accumulate them. This is something to watch out for. There is no direct player interaction, but the hate drafting can sometimes be devastating due to the penalty mechanism. Most of the time this game is quite pleasant because you generally focus on building your own dream band. 

 

So yes, being band manager can be as much fun as being lead singer.