Innovation: Figures in the Sand

The Game

I have been playing Innovation with younger daughter Chen Rui frequently. We both enjoy the game. Some time ago I had purchased the expansion Figures in the Sand, but it sat on the shelf for many years. Now finally it can see some use. Chen Rui and my default mode in playing Innovation is with this expansion now. 

The card backs in this expansion are green, so you can easily tell the cards apart. During game setup, the expansion cards are kept separate and stacked below the base game cards and rotated by 90 degrees. The expansion cards are only drawn under specific situations. Normally you only draw the base cards. When one stack of base cards is exhausted, that age is considered to have ended and you move on to draw base cards from the next age. You don't continue to draw expansion cards from the current age.

Cards in Figures in the Sand are all famous people and leaders from history. You can only have one active leader at any one time. Whenever you have two leaders as your top cards, you must remove one of them and place the removed leader in your score pile. Figures in the Sand is the second expansion for Innovation. It uses some mechanisms that were first introduced in the first expansion. For me to be able to play this expansion, I need to learn the rules to both the first and second expansion.

This is one of the leader cards. In the game leaders are called figures. The figures themselves do not have dogma abilities, which means you do not directly activate them or use them to perform any action. Instead they enhance other actions you take. In this photo above the light square with text inside is an echo, a mechanism first introduced in the first expansion. When you perform a dogma action on a splayed stack of cards, you get to execute every echo power from bottom to top before you perform the dogma action itself. 

This is called a decree. It is a new type of achievement introduced in Figures in the Sand. To issue a decree, you need to have three figures from three different ages in hand. You return them all along with all other hand cards to issue a decree. This is very expensive, but a decree is a very powerful. You not only get to perform this powerful action, you also get to claim the decree card, which is an achievement. That means you are one step closer to victory. A decree is vulnerable, as in you might lose it. If another player issues a decree of the same type, you will be forced to return your decree card to the centre of the table. After that, whoever issues the same decree again gets to claim the decree card. There are 5 types of decrees, one in each colour. Due to the introduction of decrees, The win condition is increased. When playing with this expansion, you need one additional achievement to win.

That copper coin at the bottom left represents points. Now you get points not only from cards in your score pile but also from visible copper coins in your play area. If you have multiple copper coins, only one of them counts based on the value shown. Other copper coins are worth only 1 point. 

The fuzzy circle is an inspire power. Inspiring is a new game mechanism which is roughly an enhanced version of the draw action. When you perform an inspire action you must first pick one specific stack in your play area. You will be performing a draw action based on the top card of this stack only, not based on the highest top card in your whole play area. However if there are visible inspire powers in this stack, you get to execute them all before you perform this draw action. 

I have played several games using this expansion, but up to now I still have not used the inspire power even once. I wonder whether it is because I have been playing only two player games, so the game ends earlier and we do not have much opportunity to splay many cards or reveal many inspire powers.  

The Play

The figures introduced come with lots of interesting and strong powers. Figures are drawn only under two situations. Firstly, when an opponent claims a normal achievement, i.e. based on score. This makes claiming a figure a catch-up mechanism. Your opponent is making progress, you get a figure. Secondly, when you perform a dogma action and your opponents who are stronger than you get to piggyback on your action, you also draw a figure. This is also a catch-up mechanism, because your stronger opponent is taking advantage of you. This second situation creates incentive to intentionally take dogma actions even when it can benefit your opponent. Sometimes you want to do this for the sake of drawing a figure. Sometimes a dogma power may not be very useful for your opponent, or it might even hurt your opponent. You can intentionally force them to use your dogma power and at the same time let you draw a figure. Sometimes the weak can bully the strong.

The decrees are terrible! When I read some of these powers, I imagine the victim losing it and flipping the table. That bad. It is not easy to issue a decree. You don't get to draw figures all that often, and you need figures from three different ages. However there are some figures which make it easier to issue decrees.

Some of the figures in the expansion affect things I have never seen before. For example some figures temporarily increase your number of icons based on specific conditions. This translates to your civilisation being more powerful as long as this particular leader is still around. Some figures add cards to the achievement area. Normally there is one copy each of cards numbered 1 to 9 in the achievement area. If cards are added, it means more opportunities for everyone to claim achievements. There is an additional challenge if you try to claim a numbered achievement which you already have. For example to clean the number 2 achievement you need to have 10 points. If you want to claim your second number 2 achievement you need 20 points. If there is a third one, you'd need 30 points before you can claim it. Some figures grant you a virtual achievement which does not require adding any card to the pool of available achievements if you fulfil a specific condition. So you can see how figures can really shake things up and give you surprises.

When I play with this expansion, I feel that 80% of the time I am still playing the base game, in terms of the cards I actually play with. You don't draw figures all that often. However they can have a big impact. The game play experience changes significantly even though only a handful of figures ever appear each game. I like this change. I don't mind that Innovation is still mostly Innovation.

When I was back in my hometown Kota Kinabalu, Chen Rui and I played using my mother's mahjong table. The size of the table was just nice. If we had three players it would not be enough.

This was one interesting situation we had. I only had one icon type - castles. I had many castles and nothing else.

Younger daughter Chen Rui

In this particular game we managed to draw an Age 10 card. This is very rare. We do 2-player games and normally our games end at Age 6 or 7. Sometimes we reach Age 8, but it is very rare to get to Age 9 or 10. This particular card helped me win, because at the time I had more achievements than Chen Rui. 

Both these figures help in issuing decrees. If you have one of them as an active leader you only need two other figures (of any age) to issue a decree. 

The unusual thing about this particular game was we skipped most of the Age 2 and 3 cards. We had access to Age 4 cards, and after playing them as top cards, we continued drawing cards from there on. 

When mum and the aunties needed to use the mahjong table, Chen Rui and I played using the coffee table. Thankfully the size was just right. 

The Thoughts

I don't quite remember whether I have played the first expansion of Innovation - Echoes of the Past. I probably did. I quite enjoyed Figures in the Sand. It has many interesting and fun cards. There are quite a few new rules, so this is meant for experienced players. I still remember Innovation the base game was hard to learn for a new player. Don't start your Innovation journey with any expansion. For experienced players, it might take a few games to get comfortable with all the new rules. Once they become second nature, the gameplay is smooth. 

My gut feel is you should not play Innovation with more than one expansion. Now I have not tried this yet, so this is just my guess. With more than one expansion, my guess is it might be too much work and too many things to think about all at the same time. The latest version of Innovation is called Innovation Ultimate, and it is being released now. I have preordered a copy. It has all the previous expansions plus one all new expansion. I'm going to try two expansions at the same time to see if it works well. My copy of Innovation is the first edition. By now the base game is up to the fourth edition, and it has been tweaked. I'm pretty happy even with the first edition, and I don't feel it needs to be tweaked. Well, maybe I'm not expert enough at it yet to see issues that others see. I'm actually a little worried whether I would dislike the tweaked latest edition because I'm too used to the first edition. 

Chen Rui is going overseas to study in September. We won't be able to do impromptu Innovation games like we do now. I found out that the game is free to play on BoardGameArena.com though. So maybe I can still arrange to play with her on BGA.