Picture this. I go to game night and my pals say, “Sit down. We’re playing a cooperative trick-taking game.” It’s a cobbled-together version of a game that hadn’t yet made it here to the States. Three hours later and we were still going strong. One of the guys went into the game store and told them they should probably order a bunch of copies of the real game, because we all wanted one. We played it the next week. And the next. For hours.

Today I’m reviewing The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, a new card game from KOSMOS. And I’m calling it now: This game will win the Kennerspiel des Jahres. Let’s find out why!

The Goal

You and your teammates are astronauts making your way through 50 progressively more difficult missions. If you fail a mission, it was one hand of cards, so you just start over. If you succeed, you move on…or don’t! It’s totally up to you. Let’s dig into the details.

The Components

40 cards: 36 numbered 1-9 in four different colors, plus Rocket cards numbered 1-4—the trump cards
5 Reminder cards
36 small Task cards that are identical to the 36 colored cards
16 tokens for Radios, Tasks, and a Distress Signal
1 Commander token

The Setup

This will actually vary depending on the mission but let’s look at how most hands work. You shuffle all the cards and deal them out evenly to each player. You’ll also take the small deck of Task cards and shuffle them. Whichever player gets the 4 of trump announces that fact and becomes the captain of this mission, taking the Commander token. The fact that the Commander has the highest trump is the only info you have at this point.

Then you look at the mission briefing in the Logbook and see what this mission will entail. Things start out easily: You’ll flip over one of the Task cards. Whichever card is shown there is the card that the Commander must take in a trick. It can be the first trick, the last, or any one in between. But if anyone but the Commander takes that card in a trick, you lose and try again. If the Commander does take that card in a trick, you win.

But it’s a cooperative game, so it should be easy to do these tasks, right? You just tell each other what you have. Weeell….it’s not that simple. You can only communicate through a mechanism called a Radio. Each player has a Radio token, and once per hand—but not in the middle of a trick—you can use that Radio to communicate something about your hand. You take a colored card—not a trump card—place it face-up on the table, and place your token on the card. You place it on the top of the card if it’s the highest card of that suit in your hand, on the bottom of the card if it’s the lowest card of that suit in your hand, and in the middle of the card if it’s your only card of that suit in your hand. You can only communicate about a card if it meets one of those parameters. And since you can use your Radio at any point in the hand, you can wait until the card you need to communicate does meet one of those parameters, perhaps later in the hand after other cards have left. And you don’t change the Radio if the status of that communicated card changes—say, it goes from your highest to your only.

Other missions might have you dealing out more cards, and each person after the Commander takes one and must take that card in a trick. There are numbers sometimes, and now certain cards must be taken by a certain player, in a certain order. Sometimes your radio isn’t working so there’s no communication at all—and sometimes the radio is just on the “fritz” and you can still communicate about a card, but none of the specifics (highest, lowest, or only). The card must still meet one of those parameters—you just can’t tell your teammates which one it meets. And the game mixes up the missions even further. One early mission has the Commander asking each person in turn (after they’ve looked at their cards), if they feel “good” or “bad.” That’s all each person can say. The Commander has to decide who is ill for that mission, and that player can’t take any tricks—otherwise you lose. The missions are fun and varied.

You can try to play straight through the 50 missions…1-50. You can languish on a particular mission that was too easy the first time, or perhaps is just an intriguing challenge. You can play one mission half a dozen times because you can’t seem to pass it. (This DEFINITELY happened to us.) It’s up to you how you proceed. And that’s the game!

The Verdict

I said it at the beginning but I want to be clear: This game is terrific. I love cooperative games, and I love trick-takers. I’ve played a couple of them but they’ve all been small—often 2-player games. This one accommodates more players and feels bigger.

One of my favorite things about it is how quickly it can play. Because it’s played a hand at a time, and not to some set number like most trick-taking games, it’s easy to pick up and put away. Play a couple of hands while you’re waiting for friends to show up. Or play for hours like we did. Whatever!

I’m not the best trick-taking player but what I loved about this was that you have to take what you think you know about how to play trick-takers, and adjust it—learning some things and unlearning others. Each hand is a puzzle, and who doesn’t love puzzles?!

My game group liked it but I was curious about how it would work with the family. Everyone liked it! Even my wife and 15-year-old, who aren’t super keen on board games! And honestly, part of that appeal was probably that we could play it a few hands at a time. They knew they wouldn’t get “stuck” playing a 2-hour game. I was a little nervous since it would be the first time my 12-year-old had ever encountered a trick-taking game, but he took to it quickly and was already sussing out strategy to get the right card to the right person.

If there’s a downside (but it’s a small one), it’s that I think this is best with 4 players. It’s somewhat easier with 3, and somewhat more difficult with 5. There are 2-player rules, but I didn’t think it was great at that number—though I know some people quite like it at that number.

Firestone’s Final Verdict

I think The Crew will win the Kennerspiel des Jahres. (I suppose it could win the Spiel des Jahres, but it feels a bit more complex than the “family” aspect of that award.) Either way, it’s my favorite that I’ve played in the last year, and that’s including excellent offerings such as Underwater Cities, Concordia: Venus, and Sidereal Confluence.

I can’t remember the last time I played a game for hours and hours, weeks on end, and didn’t get bored. It’s tense, exciting, surprising, and just an excellent gaming experience. And it’s only $15! Talk about bang for your buck!

I love The Crew.

Thanks for reading! Have you played The Crew yet? What did you think? Let us know in the comments.

Theology of Games would like to thank KOSMOS for providing a review copy of The Crew. This in no way affected my opinion of the game.