Actually, Innovation seems to share a lot of DNA with...
When you've been in the hobby for a while, ennui can set it. It's easy to become jaded and cynical about designer games. It seems like everything is a slight variation on something else. Heaven forbid you should ever be actually surprised by anything. So imagine how shocked I was to discover that there was a game that came largely out of left field to become what is perhaps my very favorite card game. Innovation is many things, but above all, it is blessedly surprising. That's a quality that almost no game can claim, aside from the estimable Cosmic Encounter.