The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

The Game

The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine is the 2020 Kennerspiel des Jahres winner (German Game of the Year - Expert Category). Even before it won the award, it received high praise. I recently found that it is available at BoardGameArena, So Han, Allen and I gave it a go. Since we were all non-paying users, we could only play up to Mission 10. The base game comes with 50 missions. The BGA monthly subscription is pretty reasonable - EUR 4.00, which is less than MYR 20.00 / USD 5.00. If you subscribe for one year, it's half price. Sorry I'm starting to sound like their salesman... 

The Crew is a trick-taking game. What's unusual about it is it is a cooperative game. When you play a mission, there will be a number of tasks you must complete. To win, you must complete all tasks. Once you fail at any one, you immediately lose. The deck has cards in four suits numbered 1 to 9. In addition to that, there are four rocket cards numbered 1 to 4. The trick-taking mechanism is pretty standard. At the start of a game (mission), you deal out all cards to everyone. Every round there will be one player leading - playing the first card and thus deciding the suit for that round. All other players take turns playing a card. They must follow suit if possible. Only when they don't have cards in that suit anymore then they may play any card. Among the players who have played cards in the suit of the round, whoever has played the highest card wins the trick and becomes the lead player next round. The only exception is when anyone has played a rocket card. Rockets are trumps, and if any are played, the highest rocket wins the trick. So far these mechanisms are all pretty common. 

After cards are dealt and before you start playing, a number of tasks cards are revealed. The player with Rocket 4 is the captain and will also be lead player for the first round. He must pick one task first. Everyone takes turns claiming tasks until they are all taken. There are a few types of tasks. The basic task requires a player to win a specific card, e.g. the Yellow 6. 

In this screenshot above, there were three tasks we needed to distribute - Yellow 9, Pink 8 and Pink 4. Han (top right) had the captain marker, which meant he was holding the Rocket 4. I had Pink 7 and 9, and Yellow 7 to 9, so it would be easy for me to complete those two high numbered tasks. However there were three of us playing, so each person must take exactly one task. I couldn't claim both. 

When we played we used only 3 suits, to make it more challenging. 3 players playing 4 suits tends to be easy. 

One key rule in this game is the restriction of communication. Without this the game would be too easy and would not work at all. Players are not allowed to discuss their cards. There are specific rules to allow limited communication. In the screenshot above you can see that each player has one green round token. These are communication tokens. Every game you are allowed to communicate exactly once. You'd better make good use of the opportunity. When you decide to use your communication token, you place a card from your hand face-up in front of you, and put your token on it. Where you place the token communicates some information to your teammates. If the token is placed at the top edge, it means this card is the highest numbered card you have in this particular suit, and you have other cards of this suit. E.g. if I reveal a Yellow 4 and place my token at the top edge, it means Yellow 4 is my highest Yellow, and I have one or more other smaller Yellow cards, so don't expect me to win any high Yellow cards. It would be very difficult for me to do. If the token is placed at the bottom edge, it means this is your lowest card in the suit. If the token is placed in the middle, it means this is your only card in the suit. 

At the top left of this screenshot you can see Allen had revealed a Blue 4 and placed his token at the top edge. That meant 4 was his highest Blue card. His task (the smaller card) was to win Blue 4. This was going to be challenging since 4 was a small number. On his task card, the purple 2 meant the task must be the second one to be completed. At this point the first task had been completed (by me, lower left) so the order of task completion was not a problem. Now we had to be careful so that Han and I would not accidentally win the Blue 4. 

Instead of the exact order of completion, some tasks only specify the relative order. E.g. A must be completed before B. Let's say you have four tasks, A, B, C and D. In such a situation you can complete the tasks in the order of A-B-C-D, A-C-D-B, or D-A-C-B. As long as A is before B, you are fine. Sometimes a task is required to be completed last. There are also some tasks which don't come in the form of cards. These are weird ones which have to be described in the mission briefing. Some missions further restrict communication. 

The base game has 50 missions. Generally they get harder as you progress, but the card draw does affect the difficulty, making some missions much harder or much easier than normally expected. A mission takes 5 to 10 minutes. If you sit down for a game session, you can comfortably play 5 to 10 missions. 

The Play

I don't often play trick-taking games. We were rather slow when we started off, needing some time to grasp the tactics. One key technique is getting rid of one colour as soon as you can. Once you do that you gain much freedom. Whenever a teammate leads with the colour you don't have, you can now play any card in your hand. You can allow a lower lead card of one colour to win a higher card of another colour. It is important to remember which teammate has run out of which colours, so that you fully utilise this freedom. 

The moment the cards are dealt, you already need to roughly plan how to play out your hand. You need to analyse your hand to determine how to pick tasks from the pool to maximise your chances of completing them. 

In this screenshot, my (bottom left) task was to win Yellow 9. At the top right, Han had used his communication token to tell us that he was holding Yellow 9. His task was Pink 2. Allen (top left) had communicated that he had only one Pink card - Pink 3. This was a highly useful clue, because I now knew exactly what other Pink cards Han had, Han knew exactly what I had too. 

This was the 10th mission. It came with four tasks. We had completed both the Pink tasks. The remaining two tasks were both mine (bottom left) - Yellow 6 and Blue 1. Allen had just played Yellow 4. If Han had Yellow 6 and played it, I would be able to win it by playing my Yellow 7. However he might not dare to play the Yellow 6 even if he had it, because he could not be sure I had a high Yellow card. 6 was a moderately high card. If I did not have any Yellow higher than a 6, his 6 would win the trick, and we would lose immediately. 

Playing The Crew was a fun exploration for us. It was interesting trying out what worked and what didn't for the various situations we found ourselves in. We gradually developed some unspoken rules in how we played. We overcommunicated from time to time, not intentionally, and had to catch and stop ourselves. While we played on BoardGameArena, we had video conferencing on to allow us to chat. 

The Thoughts

The Crew is certainly fresh, because it combines trick-taking and cooperative games. In a way this is like an exit room game. You are trying to solve a series of problems together. I can't say I'm a big fan. I was curious, and now that I have played it, I'm glad I have experienced it. It's that kind of game for me - I'm happy to have tried this gourmet food, but it's not something I keep going back for. Still, if I get a chance to try the harder missions I will go for it.