Innovation

About this board game

Innovation is a card-only tableau-building game for 2–5 players, with a play time of about 60 minutes. Guide a civilization from pre-history through the present and into the near future using cards alone—there is no map, tokens, dice, or playing pieces.

At the heart of the game are innovations: cards with unique effects organized into ten ages, or eleven in the fourth edition. Each effect is tied thematically to its innovation, giving you ways to develop your own society while also affecting your opponents.

• Build a tableau: Develop your civilization by placing innovations in front of you.
• Share technologies: Amass enough visible icons to benefit from effects in other players’ tableaux.
• Make demands: Use innovation effects to directly affect opponents and challenge their plans.
• Claim achievements: Win achievements by collecting points or meeting specific criteria through your innovations.

Visible icons are central to the game’s strategy. Building your tableau to share effects frequently, while defending against opponents’ demands, creates a constantly shifting contest in which the value of a technology can change from one moment to the next.

The game includes 105 innovations, or 115 in the fourth edition. Card effects have changed across Innovation’s four editions, and the fourth edition adds an eleventh age, while the core gameplay remains consistent across editions.

No two games of Innovation play the same way. The combinations of cards, icons, shared effects, demands, and achievement requirements create a journey through technological progress where every civilization develops along its own unpredictable path.