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Tag: Innovation

** Innovation (2010) – Carl Chudyk

Some games are bad but I see why people like them.  Innovation is bad and I have a hard time seeing how anyone could think otherwise.  It’s an obtuse and visionless card game that brings very little to the table and asks a TON of its players.  It’s random, chaotic, frustrating, and boring.  Its core system is barren, and its meta is non-existent.  Never before has a game offered so many ways for cards to interact without any of them being interesting. To play a game of Innovation you start by shuffling and laying out ten different decks of cards.  The decks are named after different eras of history and numbered chronologically, while the cards are named after technological innovations that were introduced to the world during that era.  One card each from decks 1-9  is randomly removed and used to represent that era’s “Achievement.”  5 “Special Achievement” cards are then placed alongside the standard achievements with various rules on how to earn them.  All players draw 2 cards from deck 1 and the game is ready to begin. A player takes 2 actions on their turn, and there are four actions to choose from: 1) draw a card, 2) play a card, 3) activate a card, and 4) score an achievement.  Cards come in 5 different colors, and when you play a card it goes on top of any other cards of the same color in a stack.  Since you can only activate the top cards of each stack, the…