By Kaysee and Max

Disclosure: completed all the missions

The Crew (in both currently available versions) is one of those games that we kept seeing again and again at bookstores in Germany. Even though they are very reasonably priced and The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine won Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2020, we weren’t able to bring ourselves to purchase it, because at the back it says (on the German version at least) that it’s for 3-5 players with a variant for two players. The risk of not enjoying the game and wasting 11 € felt too high for us. But after we finished and enjoyed playing both The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers trick-taking games we learned that they were inspired by both versions of The Crew. So, we decided to take the risk and try the second one: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea.

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, just like its predecessor The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, is a cooperative trick-taking game. Except instead of going to space, in MDS players get to be a diving team on a mission to find the mysterious continent of Mu. We have to say right off the bat that we didn’t feel like we are on a deep-sea mission. MDS is not an immersive game. Unlike the LotR trick-taking games, there is barely any connection between the mechanics and the theme.

Just like other trick-taking games, its main rules are simple. MDS has the typical four suits, just referred to by their colors, and four submarine cards that function as trumps. The first player chooses the lead card and the next player must match the suit of the lead card. If they don’t have a matching card, they can play a card of any other suit or a trump card. The player who has the highest matching card or the highest trump card wins the trick. Since MDS is a cooperative game, simply winning a trick doesn’t mean that the players have won the game. All players should work together and fulfill all the tasks and mission objectives, which might include that one player’s task is to not win any tricks.

The game has a communication limit. Once per round, before or after a trick, each player can reveal one card and place a sonar token on it to convey one of three possible facts. Those are whether that card is the highest, lowest or only card of its suit in their hand. Submarine cards cannot be revealed in this way. Later missions sometimes further restrict communication or forbid it completely.

Most missions in the 32-mission campaign simply have a difficulty number, which determines the total difficulty of the task cards drawn for this mission. While in early missions this means that often only one player will actually have a task, in later missions players regularly have two or more tasks each. In addition to the difficulty number some missions have modifiers, such as the stricter communications limit mentioned before or an optional timer. Some missions don’t have a difficulty number and simply introduce a special rule that has to be followed instead of completing tasks. In theory the difficulty steadily increases throughout the campaign, however the random drawing of the task cards can lead to combinations that are significantly harder or easier than expected. Some combinations are even impossible, which means one or more task cards have to be redrawn.

Whoever gets the four of submarines (the highest trump card) gets to play as the captain, a woman named Meg Diver. In the two player variant, we had to play as if there were three players. The “third player”, an AI called Tonoja, is controlled by the captain. Tonoja gets 14 cards, where seven of them are open and placed on top of the other seven facedown cards. Then the four of submarines is shuffled in and each of us then gets 13 cards. Being Meg Diver wasn’t easy for either of us most of the time. Much like controlling the third player in the LotR trick-taking games, being the captain and controlling Tonoja really inreases the mental load of the player in question, and it can get even more taxing for the captain as the difficulty increases. Depending on the combination of tasks drawn, this mechanic can also impact the difficulty. Still, there’s also a tension sometimes when one of us flips Tonoja’s cards which adds to the enjoyment of the game.

Our Final Thoughts:
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea may seem easy initially. But as we progressed into the missions, it became more and more difficult. Some combinations of tasks can be very difficult for two players, but the game allowed us to try a different set of tasks whenever we couldn’t win the current set of tasks, which we think makes it less frustrating. The gameplay was a lot of fun and some combination of tasks led to really intense and brain tickling moments.

We like playing games with strong themes and The MDS doesn’t have that. But it’s the type of game that we can imagine playing to kill the time or to see the highest difficulty we can beat together. It’s not the best trick-taking game for two players, but it’s also not bad. It definitely has a high replay value and considering that it was only 11 € when we bought it, we can also definitely say that it was worth it.

Kaysee’s rating: 3.5/5
Max’s rating: 3.0/5

Combined rating: 3.5/5

Title: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea (2021)
Game Design: Thomas Sing
Illustration: Marco Armbruster
Publisher: KOSMOS

Photos by Kaysee

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