Earth by Inside Up Games
Tags
inside up innovation earth asmadi

Earth and Innovation were this weeks morsels, both played at 2 player.

Earth has been played on a good number of occasions, whereas Innovation was newer, I'd played on yucata.de but sometimes the automated nature of online implementations means you don't always follow all of the steps and calculations accurately.

I'd picked up a copy of Innovation Ultimate from the BackerKit campaign back in 2023 but I don't always open and play games quickly. We picked out the Base deck, read the rules and got started. On your turn you are going to play 2 actions out of the 4 possible choices - draw, play, action and claim - that's not the terminology the game uses but it's familiar.

  • Draw 1 card.
  • Play 1 card, if it's a new colour (there are 5) then it goes straight down on it's own pile otherwise it goes on top of the existing pile and replaces the action on the existing card with the new one played.
  • Action enables you to follow the instructions on one of the cards at the top of one of the piles in front of you, you do need to be aware that if the other player(s) have the same or more of the key symbol that is being triggered they are going to play that action before you.
  • Claim enables you to take an achievement that you've fulfilled the requirements of.

    My opponent started and was soon stacking score cards enabling them to claim the first 3 standard achievements, then the game pivoted and my plays were stronger enabling me to grab a couple of achievements. Then my opponent played an action which gave me more benefit but it also released his position and 2 or 3 rounds later his play paid off and he then swept to victory!

    The iconography of the game is exceptionally clear and is easily visible across the table, there's minimal downtime and we found that there weren't really long periods deciding what to play next. We were very happy with the clarity of the base deck and we'll soon be mixing expansions in.