Gamehelpinnovation

Beginning of the game

At the beginning of the game you have two cards of age 1 in your hand. You choose one to meld immediately and keep the other in your hand. The player who melded the first card in English alphabetical order plays first. The first player gets only one action to start with, so does the second player in a four player game. After that, everybody gets two actions on their turn.

Actions

Except for the starting player(s) on the first turn of the game (see Beginning of the Game, above), you must take two actions each turn, from the following four (you may take the same action twice):

DRAW: take a card of value equal to the highest top card on your board from the supply deck. If this deck is empty, draw from the next available higher deck. This rule for drawing is also applicable for any effect with the "draw" keyword.

MELD: play a card from your hand to your board. It is played on the existing stack on the same color if it exists, otherwise this card starts a new one. If a stack is splayed (spread to one side) that splay is continued by the new card.

DOGMA: each opponent with fewer of the featured icon (visible on their board) than you must obey the "I demand" effects. Each opponent with at least as many of the feature shares the non-demand effects. Effects are executed clockwise, finishing with you. If sharing an effect with one or several opponents has had any consequence on the game situation, you take a single free Draw action at the end of your dogma action.

ACHIEVE: You can take an action to claim any available age achievement if you have at least 5 times the value of that age in your score pile AND a top card on your board of equal or higher value. For example to achieve age 1 you need 5 points and any card on your board. To achieve age 2, 10 points and at least a 2 as a top card and so on... Points are kept, not spent. The five special achievement cards do not require any action to claim them and are won as soon as the conditions are met.

End of the game

The game can end in three ways:

By achievements

The game ends immediately (even inside a dogma effect) when a player reaches a required number of achievements:

-2 players: 6 achievements

-3 players: 5 achievements

-4 players: 4 achievements

-4 players (team game variant): 6 achievements combined by the teammates

The player who reaches the achievement goal first is the winner, regardless of points.

By score

This happens if someone tries to draw an 11 or higher. The game ends immediately (even inside a dogma effect) and the winner is the player who has the greatest score in their score pile. (If tied, the number of achievements is a tie-breaker; if still tied, the concerned players both win.) In a team game, the teammates combine their score. (If tied, they combine their achievements.)

By dogma

Dogma effects of a few cards awards a win if some conditions are met. If more than one player is eligible (except teammates in a team game), the game continues.

The golden rule

Do as many as you can and ignore the rest.

This rule will help you to leverage ambiguities.

This has many consequences:

-Exchanges do not need to be symmetrical. According to the situation, 2 cards can be exchanged with 2, 1 card with 4, or even 0 card with 10.

-If you don't have enough cards to fulfill the effect requirement, you can process all the cards that you do have.

-However, if a "you may" effect requires you to return 3 cards to trigger an effect, and you have less than 3 cards, you have to pass.

You can hover on the memo to have a reminder of the actions and keywords.

Game editions and differences

The game was first published by Asmadi Games in 2010.

Then Iello published another edition of the game in 2011 with the same mechanics and card effects, but using a different terminology.

More recently, Asmadi Games gather the original game and all its expansions in a new box "Innovation Deluxe" with new graphics, and also made some slight modifications on nine cards for balancing purposes.

The online adaptation is based on the first edition of Asmadi games for the artwork. For the rules, you can choose between:

-Last edition (this is the default): these are the rules of the Asmadi "Innovation Deluxe" pack.

-First edition: these are the rules of the original Asmadi game. These rules are consistent with the Iello edition too.