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+

Product Information

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. Now, Sing has found a way to incorporate those sort of twists and shenanigans into every game. Just brilliant. It feels less like a sequel and more like a further developed version of the original.

Since then, Kosmos has gone ahead and outdone themselves with the follow-up game The Crew: Mission Deep Sea!Enter The Crew: Mission Deep Sea. This game builds on the formula of the original. The central mechanisms of the game remain virtually the same, but there are a few key differences. If even one task is not completed, all players fail that mission and must attempt it again from the beginning. The card art also shows a continuous underwater scene. If a mission displays this symbol, place two fewer sonar tokens in the middle of the table than there are crew members playing. In other words, no crew member has their own token. Whoever wants to communicate takes one of these sonar tokens, without any discussion or announcement, and immediately communicates according to the usual rules. Like all games with limited information, there is a great sense of frustration when a teammate makes a decision that is so obviously the wrong one. There’s also the utter disappointment when you are the one who makes that blunder. And then there are the times when it’s unclear who exactly is to blame for the loss and it’s simply the mission’s difficulty that gets the better of the team (er, the crew). This is the third member of the team that players will use in a two-player game. It works better than you might think. This little addition to the players’ repertoire of choices stops this being competitive and starts being cooperative. You can only share one fact per game, so it’s integral that what players share helps. We found that knowing your co-adventurers didn’t help all that much as you aren’t trying to outsmart them. You’re trying to help them, and no amount of strained or pained looks will say “have you got any pinks?” as clearly as sharing it in a card. Final Thoughts

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. Come with us. You are about to take your first step into a larger world,” one of the cloaked figures said to me and the fact that he was quoting Obi-Wan Kenobi made it clear that it was Andrew Smith under that particular hood. I was hesitant to comply, but if I’m being honest this wasn’t even the strangest experience I’d had to start a Tuesday morning at Board Game Quest. I shrugged and followed. 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.A player completes a task by fulfilling the condition that is indicated on the task card. However, if the missions are impossible to complete only due to the mistakes of the players, this counts as a failed mission. 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. Even if you skip the “story” contained in the logbook entries, the sheer fun of playing The Crew: Mission Deep Sea will pull the group immediately into another game after you finish the first one. And who knows… playing might even grant you access to an entire subculture within your office. A larger world, as it were.

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. Of course, whether we win or lose on a particular mission, we have a hard time stopping and putting it away. The submarines are the trump suit. Due to the ban on open communication, it’s a more heads-down, strategic affair than you might expect for a cooperative game. But if you’re up for the challenge, it’ll give you a lot of entertainment for a tiny outlay. The Crew: Mission Deep Sea review: Also consider 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.As if that wasn’t enough to keep on your toes, later missions introduce further wrinkles as well as increasing the difficulty of tasks you must undertake. There might be additional limitations on how you communicate, who does what, or the way in which you go about tasks. Like the expanded set of tasks, there’s a lot of imagination on display in mission design. The Crew: Mission Deep Sea review: Verdict Once the sum is reached, the players flip over the task cards drawn to see the challenge that awaits. Newcomers to the series should be fine beginning with either game. The original is a hair simpler to understand since all tasks are basically the same, but in both cases, the logbook helps ease players in scenario by scenario, so either version can be a good starting point. You have to wait for the timer to start before playing any cards or communicating. If the time runs out before the mission is completed, you have failed. 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.