Card drafting games are games where players pick cards from a limited subset, such as a common pool, to gain some immediate advantage or to assemble hands of cards that are used to meet objectives within the game. Ticket to Ride is a well-known card drafting game.

Games where cards are simply drawn from a pile are not card drafting games - drafting implies that players have some sort of choice. In Ticket to Ride, players can choose to draw random cards. If they could only draw random cards however, it wouldn't be drafting.