Innovation Echoes of the Past (Third Edition)

This expansion for Carl Chudyk's 2010 Innovation mirrors the structure of the base game: Both contain 110 cards each, 105 of which are divided into ages 1 to 10, plus five cards with special achievements. All 110 cards in the expansion are completely new.

Innovation is a civilization-like game in which players initially use weaker cards from Age 1 and gradually work their way up to more powerful cards from later ages. New cards are stacked on top of older ones to expand one's power base. By playing, scoring, and performing special actions, called Dogma actions, players compete for achievements. The first player to reach 4 to 6 achievements, depending on the number of players, wins the game.

What changes with the expansion

Echoes of the Past introduces several new features to the game. For each age, there are now two separate draw piles: whether you draw an Echoes card or a base game card depends on the contents of your hand. In addition, the maximum number of players increases to five.

Two new mechanics are particularly interesting: With Foresight, a player can stash a card under their tableau and bring it into play in a later round as soon as they play a card of the same or a higher age. With the Echo mechanism, a player receives additional actions when performing a Dogma action, which are shown on the played card and on all visible cards of the same stack.