There were six of us this week so we decided to split into two tables and my group of three started with Innovation. This is a clever card game designed by Carl Chudyk, who also designed Glory to Rome. Each player is drawing playing and activating cards in their own tableau with a view to gaining influence points with which they can claim dominations. The game is very interactive as the activations not only help yourself but can also help or hurt others depending on the icons they have available in their tableau. The cards are split into ten ages with more powerful cards appearing in later ages. The game can end by one player achieving a certain number of dominations; by having most influence once all ten ages have been gone through; or by achieving certain conditions spelt out on particular cards in the eigth, ninth or tenth age.

You've got to watch what other people are doing as some of the cards can be very powerful and you don't want your opponents to activate these too often, so you should be trying to destroy such cards or get them transferred to your tableau. Mark G and I made the mistake of not watching Andrew closely enough and he was able to rack up loads of influence points and claim his fifth domination for the win before we could really stop him. I enjoyed Innovation but a good knowledge of what the cards does is a big advantage. One to play a few times to understand how it works. I also suspect it is best with just two players as it then becomes a straightforward tug of war.