The crew

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The Crew:
Travel together to the 9th planet
Game data
author Thomas Sing
graphic Marco Armbruster
publishing company Cosmos games ,
etc. a.
Publishing year 2019
Art cooperative card game
Teammates 2 to 5
Duration 20 minutes
Age from 10 years on

Awards

The Crew: Travel to the 9th Planet Together is a cooperative and mission-based card game by the German game designer Thomas Sing , which was published by Kosmos-Spieleverlag in 2019 . It is a cooperative trick- taking game in which the players try to complete numerous tasks together.

The game was named Kennerspiel des Jahres 2020 and the Austrian Games Award as a game hit with friends .

Background and game material

The Crew is a card trick-taking game in which the players try to complete a total of 50 tasks or missions together. Thematically, the players take on the role of a team of scientists who are supposed to explore a mysterious new planet in our solar system. In addition to the instructions, the game material consists of a set of 36 large color cards and 36 small mission cards, four rocket cards and five reminder cards. The large color cards and the small order cards correspond and each consist of cards in four colors with the values ​​1 to 9. There are also 16 game tiles and a commander stand. The game instructions are also the logbook, which contains the 50 missions to be played.

Style of play

At the beginning of each mission, the 40 large playing cards (color cards and rocket cards) are shuffled and distributed evenly to the other players. Each player also receives a radio token and a reminder card for each mission, which he puts in front of him. The emergency signal tile is laid out face down, and the 36 small playing cards are shuffled and placed in the middle of the table as a face-down order pile. Then the mission to be played is read out loud in the logbook so that the players are familiar with the tasks it contains. Most missions require a specified number of assignments to be completed. To do this, take the appropriate number of order cards from the order pile and distribute them to the other players. The distribution takes place openly after the other players have looked at their hand of cards. The owner of the rocket card with the number 4 becomes the commander of the mission and receives the commander figure. Starting with the commander, the other players take one of the order cards in clockwise order and place them face up in front of them until they are all dealt.

The commander plays the first card and starts the first trick. The way of playing Die Crew corresponds to that of other trick-taking games, whereby the card deck consists of the 36 colored playing cards and the four rocket cards. At the beginning of each round, the other players have a hand of cards that they must keep secret from the other players. The number of cards in hand varies in the various missions and is determined by them. In each round, each player plays one of his or her hand, and the player with the highest card of the suit led wins the entire trick. In principle, compulsory operation applies ; a card played by the starting player of the round must therefore be served with a card of the same color, and only if you do not have a corresponding card can you put a card of another color to the trick (discard). There is no compulsion to stab; a player does not have to play the highest card of a suit if he can. The rockets count as trumps , they win the trick regardless of the suit played; However, even a rocket may only be played if the player cannot use the card played.

While most of the other trick games are about getting as many or as few or no tricks as possible, the aim of Die Crew is to get the right players to take the tricks and thus get specific individual cards. These are given by the small mission cards that the players received at the beginning of the round. An order is fulfilled when a player has received the corresponding order card through a trick.

In principle, the players are allowed to talk to each other. However, they are not allowed to show their cards to other players, tell them or indicate which cards they have in hand. The only permitted communication via your own cards takes place via radio tokens, of which each player can use one per mission. For this purpose, the player may openly display a color card (not a rocket card) from his hand, whereby the card remains part of the hand and can or must be played for a trick at any time. The radio token is placed with the green side up on this card in such a way that it indicates that it is the highest, the only or the lowest card of this color in the player's hand. The position of the radio plate may not be changed in the further game. The player who communicated a card takes a reminder card in hand to remind himself that one of his hand cards is face up.

A mission card mission is completed when the other players have completed all the missions specified in the mission description. As soon as a card from an order is passed on to a teammate who does not have this order, the mission has failed and the team has lost this round. Some missions differ from the pattern of the missions; the victory conditions for these missions are given in the logbook.

Expenses and reception

The crew was developed by the German game author Thomas Sing and was published in a first German version by Kosmos-Spieleverlag in 2019 . In 2020 it was also published by Kosmos in an English edition and, under license and in collaboration with other publishers, in Italian (Giochi Uniti), French (IELLO), Polish (Galakta) and Dutch (999 Games).

The game has been described mostly positively in numerous reviews. The games critic Udo Bartsch, for example, described it as “extraordinary” in his blog “Reviews for Millions” and wrote:

“In the right round […] it's a grenade. DIE CREW combines the classic trick play with cooperation in an impressively elegant and at the same time profound way. As if the two had always belonged together. "

It was nominated and awarded as Kennerspiel des Jahres 2020 together with The King's Dilemma and Der Kartograph . In addition, it received an award as a game hit with friends at the Austrian Games Prize .

In April 2020, Spielbox magazine published an expansion for the game entitled The Crew: The Flight to the ISS with three new missions for the game.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Official rules of the game for Die Crew , Kosmos 2019.
  2. ↑ a b Versions of Die Crew in the board game database BoardGameGeek (English); accessed on May 3, 2020
  3. ↑ Die Crew , review on the blog "Reviews for Millions", November 28, 2019; accessed on May 3, 2020.
  4. ↑ The 2020 winners can be found on the Spiel des Jahres eV website, July 20, 2020; accessed on June 28, 2020.
  5. ↑ Versions Die Crew: The flight to the ISS in the board game database BoardGameGeek (English); accessed on May 3, 2020

Web links