Innovation Ultimate

We're overdue for an update on an important part of the game: the box!

Unfortunately, our first concept for the insert with crossing card wells for sleeved/unsleeved did not quite pan out. The math was not there, and trying to force it was leaving open too many problems. Fortunately, we've come up with a more simple solution that should accomplish everything we wanted to - with some bonus unexpected functionality!

The box will be 9"x11.5"x3.5" - a good chunk smaller than our earlier estimates. It will contain 12 primary insert wells, each of which is capable of holding 120 unsleeved cards or 60 sleeved cards. They will hold the 720 main cards for the game. 

Not pictured below, there are two small card wells in the center, that will hold any additional cards (Age 0 deck, Special Achievements if you want them split out).

Using my immense rendering skills (spoiler: i do not have immense rendering skills), I've build an approximate rendition of the insert - note, this very rough render is missing all the little features, finger holes for getting cards out easier, etc. 



The rulebook (8.5x11") and reference cards will sit on top.

One feature we didn't think was feasible was a box insert that's useful during play. But, with our transition to 12 wells from 6, we stumbled into some luck. 12 is one more than 11, and 11 is the number of ages in Innovation Ultimate! So, if table space is at a premium, you can arrange your cards in a way that let you use the insert as your card dispenser:


Personally, I prefer to play with cards on the table, in the clock form. But if this is something that's useful for you, go for it! It comes for free with the box :D

If you're playing with expansions, it may be even more useful:


If you store your cards sorted by age instead of expansion, you can simply rotate the expansions you're playing with in a given session 90 degrees.

Warning: Storing your Innovation cards like this in the box within reach of a Cat will result in an immediate incursion. You are taking away its natural sitting habitat. We are not responsible for any consequences of such an action. 

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With this squared away, our last hurdle before factory processing + production has been cleared, and we can proceed! 

As we start into Production Time, we've begun the process of locking in orders that've been placed - this is locking in *what* you've ordered, shipping address lockdown will be months from now when the games are ready to ship. As part of this process, we'll be charging cards for shipping + add-ons starting next week. First up are non-case orders, and case orders will follow in July (we have to do a couple extra things to prepare for that!)

If your order is locked down and you decide that you need additional copies, or if you need a refund, or if you'd just like to tell us we've made a cool game, feel free to reach out directly by email ([email protected]). The next couple months are going to be a bit wild with Gen Con, dealing with proofs for this, and our upcoming One Deck Dungeon: Relics of the Forge campaign, but I will respond as quickly as I can!

Hope everyone is staying cool and safe in this Heat Dome if you happen to be in the US Northeast. If you're not, I hope you're having a good Thursday.

Files

We've made all the changes and updates we plan to make to the rules and cards, we'll share print proof versions of those in the next couple weeks. The only errors we'd be looking for at that point are the "Oh no, that card is Orange" or "Did you mean to spell Napoleon with a Q?" variety! 

Sincere thanks to everyone who put effort into sharing feedback, we took lots and lots of it into our heads and I think the rulebook is much better for the changes. We're really excited to get this out to you all :) 

Greetings and happy Tuesday! Today we are pleased to share with you all the rulebook for Innovation Ultimate, along with the Reference Cards which will house the many points and achievements (plus forecast/secrets1) that you'll be accumulating in the years to come.

Rulebook Organization

This document is a rulebook for the entirety of Innovation Deluxe - both the base game and all its expansions. We've built it with the goal in mind of being useful both for folks teaching/learning the game, and also as a reference while playing. The rulebook is split into three parts:

Pages 1-4 (Introduction and Teaching/Learning)

In addition to basic introduction (and a "what's new" section), we've included a section each on how to learn the game for newcomers, and advice on how to teach the game for folks about to introduce their friends to Innovation. We hope these pages are useful to folks in those situations!

Pages 5-19 (Core Innovation Rules)

This is the bulk of the rulebook, and everything you need to play the base game. While these sections are largely devoted to base innovation, there are a handful of notes for expansion play that're in clearly marked boxes with expansion icons attached. We considered a variety of approaches ranging from "absolutely zero expansion content in the core rules" to "fully explain all expansion mechanics where relevant".

Ultimately (heh), we decided on the approach you see in the rulebook - trying to explain every bit in the core rules resulted in bloated pages and a lot of repetition in the expansion sections.

Importantly, there is a full spread (p12-13) listing all the Dogma Keywords (including the new junk, self-execute, and super-execute) that should be a good reference during play.

Pages 20-32 (Expansion Rules)

Five full expansions requires a lot of extra rules pages! This section is organized to begin with an overview of the expansions with one page(p21) devoted to general expansion rules that affect all expansion play (Bonuses, for example), and then 2-page spreads for each of the five expansions. Figures gets 3 pages, Unseen gets 1, reflecting their levels of complexity. 

Plentiful Diagrams

If we squeezed, we probably could've trimmed a few pages off this rulebook, but we decided to err on the side of more examples, diagrams, images to break up the text. Rob has been hard at work over the past weeks translating all my notes and partial images into what we hope is a rulebook product you all will appreciate and enjoy using!

The PDFs!

Rulebook (PDF, 24 MB)
Reference Cards (PDF, 2 MB) (5 of each of the 2 reference cards will be included with game)

No restrictions on sharing info on these. As they're not finalized, we'd ask that you refrain from posting them to, say, the files section on BGG. Please wait for the finished docs for that sort of thing. This rulebook will be printed at 8.5"x11", and will be 32 pages. We've kept the font sizes at what we hope are reasonable levels.

The text on the Reference Cards is a bit smaller to fit more stuff on it - especially the expansions. You'll be happy to know that we did find a way to include all the special achievements on the backside of the expansion Reference Card!

Feedback

Commenting on the rulebook will be open from now until Sunday Night, June 9. What does Night mean? It means Monday morning when I wake up, I'll close the form.

Feedback Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfo48nbOqFa7D71M_V2bk51i_u-n1hSwhhcEAbg-KaOs1DfgA/viewform?usp=sf_link

You can submit via the form an individual issue, with page # and description, or use the long-form text box. You can submit the form multiple times. If you have questions, you can post here, or email me directly at [email protected]. 

What are we looking for? (in order of priority)

What are we not looking for:

Overall, we thank everyone for all the effort they put in to help out the game (it's this game!) they love. We received a lot of feedback on the cards, and were able to make many changes based on the things folks shared. Not every suggestion was taken, but we read through pretty much everything that was sent in. I apologize if I didn't get to send a direct reply - moving was hectic and soaked up a LOT of time over the past 3 months. We're now all moved in and happy with the new place! 

We are very much looking forward to getting Innovation Ultimate to print and out to you all, this editing is one of the last hurdles to clear to press the print button. Hurray! 

Hello! With the move complete, we've been hard at work finalizing all the rulebook text for the rulebook, the reference cards and other in-game materials that need rules text (special achievements, etc). These will all be available for proofreading next week, took us a bit longer than anticipated this week to nail down some ambiguities and whatnot. We want this rulebook to be definitive, clear, and pretty!

Let's take a look at one spread:



A PDF version of this spread is available here.

The rulebook will be 32 pages, 8.5"x11", with lots of images and examples throughout. It will contain both the rules for the base game and all its expansions. This example spread is representative of the look and feel throughout, and we're excited to share the whole document with everyone next week to read!

Special Achievements

One of the things you may notice about the image above is that achievements are now tucked horizontally under the right edge of your reference card, to show the age name and stripe at the bottom of a card back. We've redesigned the look of the special achievements as well, so that they tuck in the same fashion. One side contains the game information, the other side is a neat image with a tuckable title at the bottom. They'll stand out from standard achievements once in your pile, because they're indeed pretty special.



Decrees and Museums follow the same pattern. We're pretty happy with how they all came out! 

Each of these cards also carries an expansion icon, which will make finding which achievements to put into play during setup easier. 

Hope everyone has a good long weekend, or for folks who are not in the US, a good normal sized weekend. I DEMAND you eat delicious foods! If you do, draw and score a [5]!

Hey all, wanted to pop in with a quick update. Thanks to everyone who's been sending us notes and taken a look through the hundreds of cards in Innovation Ultimate! A few sneaky typos have been quashed, and some misinterpretable cards have been clarified. So far no real functional changes, hurrah. 

A couple notes on the process:

1) I've tried to respond to as many emails as I can, but things are wild right now because of our move (Both I and our office are moving to a new place, landlord unexpectedly decided to sell our house/office! Yuck.). I'll be offline mostly the next 3 days as all the furniture moves/internet gets transferred/cat explores new apartment. We have looked through almost all the feedback sent.

2) A few folks have been offering large quantities of writing style advice. We appreciate the enthusiasm, but we are unlikely to change the way that the game is written to fit [insert grammar/style preference here]. Sometimes cards with similar effects are written slightly different from one another for space concerns, sometimes to add extra clarity, and sometimes because it we think it sounds better. 

3) Some of the cards are indeed missing, they're being worked on now. Special Achievments, Decrees, Museums, and of course the reference cards will be put together for the next wave of proofing, which will include the rulebook. 

4) A couple folks shared access outside the group I'd let in, which I am disappointed in, but it is what it is. Please don't! 

I'll be back up and running hopefully Monday in our shiny new place, and will have a lot more time to do Games Stuff instead of Panicked Packing Everything Up Stuff. Happy Spring, everyone!