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+

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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. Dan : I agree, this is a lot more interesting than the original. I have played the earlier missions of the original and the final dozen or so, but not most of the ones in the middle because honestly I started getting bored after a few hands. I don’t want to play marathon sessions of the new one but it definitely holds my interest longer and I would like to play it more. Mission Deep Sea takes the core of the award-winning Quest for Planet Nine and adds new versatility. The original Crew is one of favorite games in recent memory, but I like this new version even more. Though Mission Deep Sea has fewer logbook scenarios, it feels like a “bigger” game due to the variability of tasks. In essence, it takes everything that made the original great and expands upon it without bogging down the gameplay.

It’s worth noting that these aren’t the only limitations to communication. They are merely the limits on using the sonar token. Sometimes, not communicating anything is communication. And also, playing a card offsuit tells everyone else that you are out of a particular suit, which savvy players can use to their advantage. The distress token’s “active” side. The other, “inactive,” side is blank. Image by Rob Huddleston 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. You can play the game with two or three players but we think both versions of the game play best at 4 or 5.

About Dale Yu

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. It’s time you joined our faction,” Dylan said. This could be a train-game thing, I concluded. (Dylan loves train games.)

If a player wants to communicate, they take a color card from their hand and place if face up in front of them. Then they place their communication token on the card. If it’s the highest of that color in their hand, they place the token at the top of the card. If it’s the lowest of that color in their hand, they place the token at the bottom. And if it’s the only card in that color, they place the token in the center of the card. So if at any given moment you had the 1, 2, 5 and 7 of a particular suit, you would only be able to communicate about the 1 (lowest) or the 7 (highest), but not the 2 or 5 as they do not meet any of the 3 communication criteria. Shuffle the color cards and the submarine cards together, and deal out all the cards to the players. (In a 3-player game, one person will get one extra card, which will not be played.) Give each player a sonar communication token, placed green-side-up. The player who was dealt the “4” submarine takes the captain token. Set the reminder cards to the side, as well as the distress signal token, face-down. So, it was with some trepidation and excitement that we turned to the second game in the series, Mission Deep Sea. From reading online stuff, it seems that the base gameplay is mostly unchanged – the big difference here is in the task cards. 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.

Can the whole family enjoy The Crew: Mission Deep Sea?

Yes, that’s right – they found a way to make a fantastic game even better. And I don’t think we’ll ever play the original again. Time to dive into the missions. The Crew: Mission Deep Sea may get the highest score yet on games we’ll play over and over and over. Even though a single mission may only take a few minutes to play, every time we pull the game out, we find ourselves playing at least an hour. Once the cards have been dealt, players will decide which person will take each task card that was dealt out at the start of the turn. Players can look at their own hand of cards to determine their ability to complete the tasks, but they may not communicate any of this information to one another. All the players know is which person has the highest value submarine card to start.

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. Without a sound, three figures in burgundy cloaks appeared to my left, each one wearing a hood pulled all the way forward to cover their faces.

How does The Crew: Mission Deep Sea score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

If a mission displays this symbol, a colour card is randomly drawn. A limit is applied according to the number: 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. In fact, it was exactly 2 years ago, in March 2020, when we reviewed The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine by Kosmos. We played it a TON leading up to doing our review. And then we played it even more in the months after that while we were all shut inside as the Covid pandemic broke out around the world.