I continue my ongoing online games of Innovation with younger daughter Chen Rui, who is now away from home. We have moved on to playing with the expansion Cities of Destiny. I’m sure later we will cycle back to the others. Although the latest rules for Innovation have been implemented on both Yucata.de and BoardGameArena.com (available if you participate in early testing), we are still playing with the older rules on BGA. I think they work just fine. 

 

I had thought the Cities of Destiny expansion would be rather simple. I had played it a few times in the past, and it was mixed in with other expansions. I only skimmed the rules, and since it was mixed with other expansions, I didn’t assess it closely by itself. That’s a problem of being sloppy when I play games online. The cards from the Cities expansion do not have any dogma powers. They all have six icons instead of four. Cities can help you in gaining majority in icons. You get to draw a city card when you play a new colour, or when you splay a colour in a new direction. 

 

 

Cities introduces some new icons. The arrow icons let you splay your stack in a specific direction. The flag icon counts as an achievement if you have the most cards visible in that colour. This is a temporary achievement. It counts only when you fulfil the condition and the flag is still visible. 

 

 

The special achievements that come with Cities are along the lines of melding a city which lets you splay in a direction when the stack is already splayed in that direction, or tucking a city with a fountain or flag icon. You don’t draw cities that often, so these are not easy to achieve. 

 

 

This was one unusual situation. Chen Rui had four Age 10 cards, but her top green card was still an Age 1 card, the city of Jerusalem. Also she had many cards in her blue and yellow stacks, but till now they were still not yet splayed. 

 

We now play with the variant of requiring one extra achievement to win the game. This makes our games go a little longer. We reach the later ages more often. It’s always exciting to get there. Many of the powers in Age 10 are crazy. 

 

 

In this particular game, Chen Rui and I were tied at 6 achievements. We both needed two more to win. I had this Kuala Lumpur card in hand and it had a fountain icon. The fountain icon counts as an achievement as long as it is visible. It is better than a flag because it doesn’t require you have the most cards in the colour. On my turn, I managed to claim the Age 9 achievement, and then play Kuala Lumpur, to gain two achievements on the same turn. That ended the game. Chen Rui told me she could have gained two achievements too on her turn. She had Taipei city, which also had a fountain. It also had two clock icons, which would help her achieve the special achievement requiring 3 icons in all 6 types. So she just needed one action – to play Taipei. This was one very close game! 

 

Cities of Destiny introduces the endorse mechanism. You can use the dogma power of a card twice if you have a city which has the icon associated with the dogma, and you are willing to spend a card. Endorsed dogmas pack double the punch. 

 

This expansion is not as simple as I expected. I had thought it would feel like a mini expansion. It feels close to a full expansion experience. I am quite happy playing with just this one expansion by itself. It doesn’t need to be combined with other expansions to make a more satisfying game. And hey, Kuala Lumpur is in the game. That’s certainly a plus!