Thames & Kosmos The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, Cooperative Card Game, Family Games for Game Night, Games for Adults and Kids, For 2 to 5 Players, Ages 10+

Product Information

As a result, you can no longer tell what a player is communicating about a card (only that they have it, and that it is either their lowest, highest, or only card of that suit. The goal of the game is for all players to successfully accomplish their chosen tasks. If the players do so, they successfully complete that mission and move on to the next mission in the logbook. If a mission displays this symbol, place two fewer sonar tokens in the middle of the table than there are crew members playing. In other words, no crew member has their own token. Whoever wants to communicate takes one of these sonar tokens, without any discussion or announcement, and immediately communicates according to the usual rules. You do not have to play in real time if you do not want to. In that case, simply perform the task allocation in the same way, but there will be communication restrictions or a higher degree of difficulty depending on the mission.

At the start of every mission, a certain number of task cards will be dealt with depending on how difficult the mission is. The number of these cards varies based on their individual difficulty. So, there could be three easy and one medium difficulty task to complete or two very hard ones. This is how a round might look at its end. The Submarine card will win because it’s a trump card. For example, the mission may have a degree of difficulty of 7. Players will draw cards until the sum of the numbers on the task cards equal 7. If they draw and get to 6, then they only need a 1 value task card. If they draw a 2 or 3 value, they skip it and keep drawing until a 1 value is drawn. Come with us. You are about to take your first step into a larger world,” one of the cloaked figures said to me and the fact that he was quoting Obi-Wan Kenobi made it clear that it was Andrew Smith under that particular hood. I was hesitant to comply, but if I’m being honest this wasn’t even the strangest experience I’d had to start a Tuesday morning at Board Game Quest. I shrugged and followed.If a mission displays this symbol, a colour card is randomly drawn. A limit is applied according to the number: Since players cannot communicate information about their hands (thematically this is because of equipment difficulties on the crew as they dive into the ocean) they do each have one token that they can use every round to reveal a small amount of information about their hand. The token allows them to inform their teammates that a certain card played in front of them is their highest of a color, their lowest of a color, or the only card they have in that color. This is all done just by the placement of the token. Players also have access to a submarine token that acts as a distress signal of sorts and has players passing a single card to their neighbors to give a little bit of additional information. If a mission displays this symbol, you are allowed to talk freely among yourselves about how to distribute the task cards, but you are not allowed to disclose which playing cards you have. If even one task is not completed, all players fail that mission and must attempt it again from the beginning. The card art also shows a continuous underwater scene. Of course, whether we win or lose on a particular mission, we have a hard time stopping and putting it away. The submarines are the trump suit.

The logbook contains a set of boxes for each mission so that players can mark off when they complete a mission. In theory, a game of The Crewinvolves playing through all of the missions in the fewest number of tries possible. The 50 missions were of varying difficulty, and I believe that I’ve managed to win all 50 missions at least once, but I have not managed to win them all with the same group… While I really liked the game, it did seem to be best with 4 players. Many of the missions were quite easy with only 3 players, and many if not all of them were impossible with 5 players. The gamers in my local group got to the point where they would only play the game when we had exactly 4. Not a deal breaker, but definitely makes it harder to get a great game to the table when it doesn’t scale as well as you’d like. Like all games with limited information, there is a great sense of frustration when a teammate makes a decision that is so obviously the wrong one. There’s also the utter disappointment when you are the one who makes that blunder. And then there are the times when it’s unclear who exactly is to blame for the loss and it’s simply the mission’s difficulty that gets the better of the team (er, the crew). This is the third member of the team that players will use in a two-player game. It works better than you might think.The basic communication mechanics (in terms of which cards you may choose to communicate) are unchanged, but the communication token must be placed in the centre of the card. However, those three attributes—highest, lowest, and only—are the only things they are allowed to communicate. So if they know that a partner needs to take the 7 of a suit, and they have it, they can’t communicate that fact unless it fits one of those criteria. If they have the 8 or 9, and any cards lower than 7, then there’s simply nothing they can do. A player completes a task by fulfilling the condition that is indicated on the task card. However, if the missions are impossible to complete only due to the mistakes of the players, this counts as a failed mission. And that challenge is a blast! Draw until the task difficulty is reached for the mission. The logbook says degree of difficulty a 6 and we have 4 players. The sum of task cards add up to 6 for 4 players. Now, Sing has found a way to incorporate those sort of twists and shenanigans into every game. Just brilliant. It feels less like a sequel and more like a further developed version of the original.