The $20 Draft
An auction draft you play against a friend. Everybody gets the same budget and the same empty roster. Players come up one at a time, you bid or you pass, and at the end the rosters go side by side. Pick a topic.
The $20 Draft
Auction NFL players against your friend. Same budget, same empty roster. Outbid them, or let them overpay.
Josh Allen
Final rosters
Judge for yourself first. Then flip the ratings.
How to play
The setup
Two to four players, one screen. Single-position modes give you $20 for five players. Lineup and team modes give you $30 for a full roster ($40 for the nine-bat MLB lineup and the soccer Starting XI), with every position mixed into one deck, and you can only bid on someone if you still have a spot for them.
Bidding
Cards come up one at a time in a random order. The opening seat rotates, the opening bid is $1, and the turn goes around the circle: raise or pass. Once you pass you're out on that player. When only one bidder is left standing, he's theirs at the current price. If everyone passes on the opening, he's gone for good.
Two skips
Each player gets two skips for the whole game. Passing when nobody has bid yet costs a skip. Once your skips are gone you have to open the bidding on whoever comes up, so nobody can wave through every bench player waiting for a star. Passing on someone else's bid is always free.
The budget rule
You can never bid so much that you can't afford $1 for each spot you still have to fill. The game caps your bids automatically.
No hiding
When a player fills their roster, the auction carries on without them. Once only one player is left with open spots, passing is off for them: they take whoever comes up next at $1 until the roster is full. And when the deck is down to exactly as many cards as there are open spots for a position, passing locks for everyone, so nobody finishes with an empty slot.
The deck
Every deck is about 85% starters and 15% bench, and the bench shows up late. The deck grows with the player count. Wait too long for the perfect card and you're drafting backups.
The verdict
Rosters go side by side first so you can argue. Then reveal the hidden ratings for a score, a grade, the steal of the draft and the biggest overpay.
The ratings
Current NFL players carry their Madden NFL 27 overall rating, every position including defense. Current NBA players carry their NBA 2K27 overall rating. Current F1 drivers and constructors are rated on 2026 championship points. Current MLB hitters are rated on 2026 fantasy points per game on a curve for their position (runs, hits, extra bases, homers, RBI, steals, walks; forty-game minimum), starters per start on innings, strikeouts, wins and runs allowed, relievers per game with saves and holds on top. Current soccer strikers are rated on 2025-26 league goals and assists per 90 minutes (discounted outside the big five leagues), wingers half on that and half editorial; midfielders, defenders and keepers are editorial, because the box score doesn't measure them. Hover a rating on the verdict screen to see its basis. Coaches, rookies, players who barely played, NFL players Madden doesn't list, and every all-time pool are editorial calls, and say so.
Movies
Five genres, drafted by decade or all-time. Every film's hidden rating blends what the audience thinks (its Letterboxd average) with what the critics thought (its Metacritic score), ranked within its genre so comedies aren't punished for being comedies. Hover a rating on the verdict for both numbers. A film with no critic score is rated on the audience alone. Cards carry the poster, the release date and the director.
Songs
Four genres, drafted by decade or all-time, exactly like the movies, with a "70s and before" mode that also sweeps up the 50s and 60s. Hip-hop is the exception: the first rap record came out in 1979, so it starts at the 80s. Every song's hidden rating comes from one number: how many times it has been played on Spotify. Because Spotify only opened in 2008, raw plays are heavily tilted towards recent music, and towards pop and rap over country and rock, so each song is ranked against the other songs of its own genre and decade rather than against everything ever recorded. A huge 1985 country hit and a huge 2024 country hit can both be a 99 in their own decade. The card itself just shows a short note about the song, not the number, so the auction stays blind; the exact play count only shows up in the rating basis once you've won the song. The all-time mode takes the best of each decade, which is why a 1975 song can outrank something with five times the plays.
Cars
Five classes: hypercars, supercars, sports cars (muscle cars live in there too), daily drivers and off-roaders, each drafted by decade from the 70s to now or all-time. Hypercars are the exception and start in the 90s, because the extreme limited-run car only becomes a class of its own with the McLaren F1; the F40 and the 959 are drafted as supercars. What the hidden rating is built from changes with the class, because a Land Cruiser and a McLaren are not trying to do the same job. The three fast classes are rated on their real numbers, power and 0-60 and top speed, blended and ranked against the other cars of the same class and decade. Daily drivers are rated on how good they are at being a daily, which is mostly about how little they ask of you. Off-roaders are rated on how far from a road they can actually get. Because every car is ranked inside its own class and decade, a 1970s off-roader can be a 99 without being quick, and a slow-by-modern-standards 80s supercar still gets a fair hearing. Full garage is the whole topic at once: one hypercar, one supercar, one sports car, one daily and one off-roader for the same twenty dollars. The 70s and 80s garages field four cars instead of five, for the same reason hypercars have no early decades.
Characters
Superheroes and villains (Marvel, DC, Invincible, The Boys, and the others from Star Wars to the Turtles), anime (seven series), cartoons (Looney Tunes, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, PBS Kids) and video games (Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, fighting games). Heroes and villains fill separate spots, three of each, or five of each in the all-universes mode; the anime, cartoon and video game modes mix good guys and bad guys, five per roster, or seven in the all-series modes. Heroes, villains and anime characters are rated on raw power, so Galactus and Goku sit near 99 and Hawkeye and Yamcha near the bottom. Video game characters are rated on strength with a nod to how big their games are. Cartoon characters are rated on how loved they are and how good their show is: Bugs Bunny and SpongeBob are 99s. All of it is editorial, and the basis line says so; argue with it at the verdict.
The daily drafts
Three drafts a day, one per topic, the same for everyone: the date picks the category, the mode, the opponent and the order of the cards. One go at each, a result to share, and your streaks kept in this browser. New drafts at midnight.
Computer opponents
Any seat can be a computer. It prices every card on how much better the player is than whoever it would otherwise end up with, against the money still on the table, so it pays more when cash is loose and less when a position runs deep. It knows the player pool and the ratings, like a fan would, but not the order of the deck. The Accountant pays fair value, The Shark overpays for stars and lets the rest go, and The Gambler misreads players and bids on a whim.
On a computer
Keys 1, 2 and 3 bid. P or space passes.