Game Spotlight – The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

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The Crew (just kidding, here’s the English version)  is a cooperative trick taking game from KOSMO (KOSMO.DE / KOSMO.UK). In case you are curious, the Games Library also has Imhotep, Lost Cities and Ubungo in the inventory so if you are going to go on a KOSMO kick, you can start with these games.

In The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, a team of 2 to 5 of you play several hands of cards and try to take tricks as prescribed in a certain way. The game has four regular suits (pink, green, yellow, and blue) which number 1 to 9, and one trump suit (black) that numbers 1 to 4.  As per a lot of trick taking games, you take a trick by playing the highest card of the suit that was played first. Unless you don’t have any more of that color, then you can take the trick with the highest trump. Or if you don’t want to take the trick, chuck in an off color card (throwing off). That’s pretty standard and not very revolutionary.

What makes The Crew interesting is that you have to work together to ensure the “Missions” (The Crew’s term for the hands that are played) are accomplished.  There are 50 Missions included in the physical booklet but you do not have to play them all.  You don’t even have to play them in order if you have the physical copy (the online version is more strict about that).  The Crew starts you out easy with a scenario of “X player needs to take X card”. You play the hand and try to make sure that X person indeed takes the trick with X card in it. MISSION COMPLETE! (hopefully…if you know how to play trick taking games then 1 specific trick by 1 specific person isn’t too hard to finagle). Then it gets a little harder when 2 people have to take 2 tricks, then the tricks have to be taken in a certain order, then one person can’t take any tricks at all, and so on until you get to the final mission.

Throughout play, you are only allowed to communicate (“Comm”) one thing about your hand: A non-trump card of your choice is the highest card of that suit in your hand, the lowest card of that suit in your hand, or the only card of that suit in your hand. In space, no one can hear you tabletalk. 

I was introduced to this game online over at BGA and have been playing one game (no turn limit) since mid-march this year. It just ended last week and it took me quite by surprise. I guess we decided to play through 24 missions at the beginning and last week was the final mission It’s a lot different when you don’t have the rule book in front of you to follow along as you go through the missions.   Online play is also very different in that the computer is an AWESOME device to keep track of fiddly bits like trick order or who can talk about their cards and whatnot. The actual physical game has little chit markers that represent all the things you can do and believe you me, there are a few physical chits.

Things I liked: 

  • Cooperative trick taking with minimal communication is a lot of fun. BGA does have a chat channel which we used fairly frequently for “Uuuuh…oops. Sorry about that” or “Yikes, that’s a bad spread of tricks to have to take in that order” or to talk about how the trick went when we juuuuuuust squeaked it in…or not. In person it’s a little harder to not tabletalk given the addition of body language.
  • The first player is determined by who gets the 4 of trump and play proceeds in an orderly fashion after. That takes a lot of the thinking out of who goes first, plus the first player winds up randomly rotating from hand to hand so no one has to remember where the first player marker goes next after a hand is done.
  • The artwork is really neat – somewhere around June I realized (because I had the majority of a suit in my hand) that the cards make a panorama when laid out 1 to 9.  The cards also have different shapes near the corners for each suit so yay for friendly colorblind design!

Things I didn’t like: 

  • With a bad deal, it can become impossible to successfully complete a mission. I know that’s the nature of card games but it feels in poor form to set up a cooperative game that is doomed at the onset. The Crew allows you to retry failed missions so there is that.
  • The physical game has a lot of fiddly bits that the computer just takes care of. While it’s more fun to game in person, the book keeping the computer takes care of is so nice. No little trick turn order chits to go skittering off, no auxiliary deck that represents your trick cards to manage, and “Comming” virtually doesn’t take your card physically away from the rest of your hand where you might forget that you even have it. Again.

  • The missions are awfully wordy in their flavor text. I could play this game just as well if the description was “A specific person must take this randomly drawn card in a trick” rather than the above.