The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

December 30, 2021
Games Standard

One of my favourite games of all time even though generally I don’t dig cooperative games. What separates this for me is you still feel like your personal performance matters, even though you’re working as a team. You’ll experience such highs and lows as you and your team try to grok out how to pull the mission off.

Year of Release: 2019
Number of Players: 2-5
Playing Time: 20 min
Listed Age: 10+
Mechanics: Trick Taking, Cooperative
Theme in a Nutshell: Space Exploration

What I like:

I really love trick-taking games, so this is right up my alley. It really hones some important skills for higher-level trick-taking play: counting cards, learning when to trump, knowing when to slough, playing attention to people’s leads, all that kind of stuff.

The tension that builds up as you get to harder and harder missions, and the satisfaction of pulling off something that seemed impossible is tremendous.

Small and inexpensive, really great bang for the buck, and doesn’t take up much space on the shelf. Great for travel too, if that’s a thing that ever happens anymore.

I really like the implementation on BGA, though miss-clicks are very tragic.

My Rating: 10/10

What I don’t like:

Recently we’ve found that it’s really much harder at 5 players. There’s a rule that gets introduced in round 25 I believe that takes some of the sting out of it, but it’s still harder than it should be since you have to get everything done in 8 tricks. It’s a bummer.

Is it good for kids and families?

It depends. If your kids and or family members know Hearts, Spades, Wizard, or other trick taking games, this would be an easy teach, and they’d pick it up quickly. If they don’t, this would be a very bad introduction to trick-taking games. Start somewhere else first.

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