 Innovation is a game I saw constantly. I saw it everywhere. I've seen it, not just at PAX, but at board game nights. I just kept seeing the same box over and over and over again. So, Asmadi Games, who publishes that as well as We Didn't Playtest this series, right? Had a super sale, buy direct from them, huge discount. So I went to their website, just check out this sale, and I bought the full We Didn't Playtest this series just because it was so cheap, and it included We Didn't Playtest this legacies, which is right on the cards like Risk Legacy. We're gonna bust that at PAX so hard. Oh, yeah, we are. I think we should make it PAX only. Yes, we play it at PAX's, maybe PAX's and Megfest's. Yeah, anyway. And I bought the full set of innovation, all the original and both expansions, because again, so cheap. And I was like, well, I've seen that game everywhere. I should play it. So we started off with just, without even opening expansions, just playing that first box, and we still haven't opened the expansions. So we're gonna review this game, but it's more like an, I don't know, an overview. We haven't even completed one full game of innovation. We played like a third of one game of it. And, you know, we play a lot of games, and it used to be a time when we would force ourselves to play every game. Yeah, and it's like, yeah, if you wanna say, you guys are discussing this game and judging it, having only played it a third of a session and not even finishing it once, not even seeing all the cards, perfectly accurate statement by you. Yes. Just pin that on us. However, I played a lot of games in my time. I have. And? I can judge a game pretty quickly, just like I can judge a book in the first chapter. It is rare that I have played a game where my initial impression was not the correct one. I have played many games where I doubted my initial impression. Like Twilight Struggle, I kept trying to play it. Like, there's gotta be something to this. Everyone says this game is so great. Maybe we should play it again. Yeah, every time we've said that, it's ended in misery. Well, maybe we should play it again. It's still Board Game Geek number one. Yeah, because Board Game Geek's ranking system is kind of broken. It's tilted toward the Grognards. Okay, so continue. So, innovation. I have no desire to ever play this game again. I think it's kind of a bad game. So the way it works, I don't even, you know, is there's all these cards, right? And the cards go basically get laid out into this circle, right? Of like ages, right? So you're basically going through time developing more and more technologies. Don't even try to link it to the theme. Point number one, the theme of this game means jack-all compared to the mechanics. It might as well just be clubs and diamonds and spades. Right. So basically you can get cards in the different colors and when you play a card, right? It goes into onto the top of the stack of that color, right? And each card has these symbols visible. And when certain people activate abilities on cards, if you have more or less symbols of the appropriate type of the matching the ability that was activated, then you can maybe team up and also do that ability or maybe even be forced to do an ability or be the victim of an ability. Now already the game has trouble because the way that was all worded took a couple of readings to get right. The wording of everything is very poor. And confused everyone at the table. Seasoned gamers were confused by the wording of the rules in this game. Now we were able to figure it out, but already it's a strike against your game if I have any question about the rules while I'm reading them. Right. Other than things that I haven't read yet. Right. The other thing about the game is you have these splays. So you piling up, say the red cards, every time I get a red card played, it goes on top of all the other red cards. But I could perhaps splay the red cards upwards, leftwards, rightwards or downwards, only one direction at a time. To make additional symbols appear. Yeah. That would reveal the symbols on the red cards beneath the currently active red card, right? So the red card on top is gonna be the highest level, most modern one in terms of technology, right? The best. But below it are many other ones and making the symbols appear on the red cards below that top one will greatly increase the likelihood of me not being the victim of abilities activated by other people and also being able to make other people the victim of abilities activate and also being able to team up and take advantage of abilities that other people intentionally activate. Like, oh, you're doing something? I'll get in on that. Look how many symbols I have that match that. Yeah, I'm doing that too. So the problem with all of this is that these mechanics are not intuitive, don't analogize to anything at all in the real world or anything even close to the theme. And they're all so varied and there's so much text of all this crazy bullshit and so many cards and so many bonuses and there's these bonuses to get triggered. And this has been not expanded version. There are these bonuses to get triggered. We didn't open either of the two expansions. Like, if all these conditions are true, then don't forget to take the bonus card that you are. How can you remember all those fucking possible conditions? Like, every time someone takes a turn, you have to fucking check all these things to see if you got one of the bonuses. It is literally not worth playing the game unless you have read every single card in the deck and remember them all. Yep. And you know, it's like in most card games, you sort of have things that go together and board games even, things that go together. Like, we played Sulkin at PAXOS and it's like, oh, you can go the crystal skull route. All these things sort of go together. Oh, the food, all these things go together. In innovation, it didn't seem like anything went together. Like, every card had basically these random abilities, some of which would seem beneficial but you couldn't find any way to combo anything because like what came up was so random and it's like, you know, Rym played this card that was like, oh, draw until there's no castles. And Scott got to do it before me. I had more castles or I had more symbols basically already out. I think it was the castle symbol. So I also got to do the ability and I got to do it first. So basically I drew, Rym activated this thing but I basically got lucky and it was just tons of castles and I had all these free cards and I was able to score all of them and Rym drew the first card and it was like no castle. And it's like, well, what the fuck? Yep. That was random bullshit. And also different symbols don't appear in, or different abilities. The castles only appear in levels one through three and certain other ones only appear at the end. The game basically for an early player or a newish player has minimal and often counterintuitive directional heuristics and zero position heuristics. No positional heuristic, whatever. You could not tell who was winning, who was losing or whatever. You couldn't, but directionally, you couldn't tell if doing something was a good or a bad idea unless you'd read all the cards. And even if you've read all the cards, the game would take forever to play if you were actually trying to win. So I think the people who play this game and like it, are not trying to win with all of their abilities. They're just like, oh my God, look at all this random stuff. Woo! Because if you're trying to win this game, you have to check on conditions and read everything on the board regularly. And the game is not- You have to count everyone's number of exposed symbols every time you're about to make an action. And there's a lot of symbols. Yeah, there's no way you could decide what to do during other people's turns either because during their turns, they get symbols. So it gets to your turn, the God of your right just played some cards, giving him more symbols. And so did other people too, because they maybe joined in on the action. And now you have to count again, like, okay, if I do this action, Rym will be able to join in on it. If I do this action, you know, Jess will be the victim of it, right? It's like, there's no, you have to, it takes forever, forever. And different cards have different sets of actions that go in order. And the order that you do things is really important, but it's also confusing. Like I'll read a card right now, invention, it has a four on it. Action, you may splay right. Any one color of your cards currently splayed left. If you do, draw and score a four. And then there's a second action. If you have five colors splayed, each in any direction, claim the wonder achievements. Fuck that. So that's an additional way to claim the wonder achievement in addition to the normal way to claim- May also be claimed by invention from age four, Renaissance. So it says that on the wonder, and wonder can also be claimed, claim the special achievement immediately if you have five colors on the board. Each is splayed either up or right. How could anyone possibly have like play tested or like checked and balanced every freaking thing in this game? It's easy if this is your game. If you play this game the way we played Puerto Rico. Hey, that guy on the left, I think is a guy I play Netrunner with. It might go back. These are all board game geek pictures. Yeah. I can't get back to that picture. Okay. Anyway. Anyway. Anyway. Oh and Scott, we were playing the game wrong. Where are we? Here's a screenshot from the rules. Fun, a mandatory rule. You must have it. Oh. So yeah, we were cheating. We're cheating. Maybe that's why we didn't like it. Maybe. I don't know. It's a game you see everywhere. If anyone wants a full set, including expansions, let me know because I got them. The game, I want to make one more point. It introduces a ton of its own terminology, which further makes the game difficult for a noob to play because noobs can play games like Seven Wonders because they usually understand what a draft is. They understand what draw a card is. But this game doesn't use words like draw. Use words like splay. Yeah. What the fuck is a splay? And the terminology doesn't really fit what you're doing. The instruction manual has a glossary in it. Yes. It has a glossary for things that really could have been described more simply. And this is all a consequence of the fact that the game tries to do the glory to Rome thing where the cards are the economy and are all the actions. But they tried to do too much with it. Glory to Rome is much better than this game by a lot. I played Glory to Rome again after trying to play this just to see and know. Glory to Rome is, it does a lot of the same kind of things. And the thing is, it's so much more elegant than this. And here's the thing, even though the games may not be similar mechanically, right? Even though they're dissimilar physically, they fill the same niche as what you need in your board gaming library. Moderately complex, mid-length, you know, small package. There is no way this game is mid-length if you're trying to win. That's true. But I'm just saying, as you know. Can you imagine playing this? It fills the same niche in a board gamer's library of owned games. So if you have Glory to Rome, or I guess Ucronia is, right, you don't need this. Can you imagine playing this game with someone who doesn't take the turn? Yeah, I imagine stabbing. So I'm going to say don't bother with innovation. If you like it, I'd really like to hear why. Yeah, maybe we just misunderstand this game. Yeah, tell us. I implore you. Tell us why we're wrong. Tell us why we should play this game again, rather than just immediately getting rid of it, having not even finished one game. OK.