Thames & Kosmos - "The Crew: Mission Deep Sea"

Updated: May 2

Photo above is property of Thames & Kosmos

Company: Thames & Kosmos

Game: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

Country: USA 🇺🇸

Language: English

Type of Game: Tabletop Games 📬

Genre: Trick-taking, Cooperative Card Game

Date Played: June 30, 2022

Difficulty (based on 2 players): Scales up

Size of Team: 2-5 Players (Ages 10+)

Time: Approximately 20 Mins/ per mission

Price: $14.95

🆃🅷🅴 🆂🆃🅾🆁🆈

You are a team of deep-sea explorers, led by Captain Meg Diver on the research ship Pyke. You have been hired to follow up on some mysterious underwater archaeological finds…but the people in charge have been surprisingly cagey as to any details. What could be in store?!

While the story only marginally impacts gameplay, the little flavor text for each mission does help to set the sea-n and make you feel more like part of a subaquatic exploration team!

🆃🅷🅴 ❞🅻🅾🅾🅺🆂❞

This is primarily a card game, with both a 40-card main deck and a deck of 96 task cards. The main deck has some understated but lovely artwork showing 9 different underwater scenes. It’s easy to miss these in your focus on the suits and numbers while playing, but it’s worth taking the time to appreciate them! Thoughtfully, the four main suits are represented not only by color but also by symbol, providing a great alternative to identify them if distinguishing colors is a challenge. There are also several robust cardboard tokens (1 distress, 5 sonar) and a sturdy cardboard standee, representing the captain for the mission. Overall, everything looks and feels well-made, and gives off those deep sea vibes!

Photos above are property of Thames & Kosmos

🆃🅷🅴 🅶🅰🅼🅴 🅿🅻🅰🆈

"The Crew: Mission Deep Sea" is described as a mission-based, cooperative trick-taking game. For each mission, the 40 cards will be dealt out to the players. Whoever has the 4 of subs is designated the Captain for the mission, and will lead the first trick. Based on the difficulty of the mission, there will also be at least one (typically more) “task cards” to be divvied up amongst the captain and crew. These task cards encompass a variety of individual challenges, such as taking or avoiding specific cards during tricks (e.g., win the blue 5, win a trick that only has odd-numbered cards, or don’t take any green cards) or winning a certain number of tricks (e.g., take five tricks, or take fewer than everyone else). Although each task is associated with one player, the crew must collaborate to accomplish them all. Based on the mission, these may be chosen or assigned in different ways. In cases where players can choose what challenge(s) they take, they may not communicate why they choose (or don't choose) the tasks. Play proceeds as in a typical trick-taking game. One person leads, and then play moves clockwise, with each person playing one card in the same suit if they have it. If they don’t, they can play whatever they like. Highest card in the led suit wins, unless a trump card (a sub, in this case) is played, in which case the highest trump takes it. Whoever won the trick leads the next one. This continues until all tasks have been successfully completed, a task has been irreparably failed, or all cards have been played.

There are two other mechanisms to help you complete your missions. First, once tasks have been assigned but before you begin playing, any player can activate the distress beacon, which means each player will pass one card to another player. The cards must all be passed in the same direction (right or left), but you can decide as a group which way you want to pass. Whether you feel you can’t complete your assigned task or are concerned that your hand will interfere with someone else completing theirs, this is a great way to try to make the hands more favorable to completing the mission. It feels a bit like cheating (at first), but is a great way to ease into the different strategies needed to succeed. Second, while you can talk as you play, you are not allowed to give information about your cards, with the exception of using your sonar token. Once per mission, you can place a card on the table, and use a sonar token to indicate that it is either your highest, lowest, or only card of that suit. (There is a handy “reminder” card you then place in your hand, to help you remember that card on the table is still in play!) This is a great opportunity to share some critical info with your teammates to help you all achieve specific tasks.

There are also ways that the missions can be made more challenging, in addition to simply having more tasks that you must accomplish! These include restrictions on the use of the sonar tokens, specifications as to how tasks must be assigned, and time limits on completing the mission (though this one is always optional).

There are 32 missions in the logbook, with a final challenge to keep your team going after that! They do a nice job of easing you into the difficulty and different mechanics, with the first few missions being quite simple, but scaling up greatly in their challenge over time!

The main game is meant to be played by groups of 3-5, and the number or difficulty of tasks that you will get is scaled to the number of players that you have. They also have a 2-player variant that we tried out. In this case, the Captain for the mission also directs “Tonoja,” assigning their tasks and choosing which cards they will play. They initially have a row of 7 face-down and 7 face-up cards; when a face-up card is played, any remaining card below it can be turned face-up. This variant was an interesting challenge because the Captain had incomplete info on Tonoja’s hand, yet was trying to play it. However, the non-Captain player had more information than usual as to what was in another player’s hand. So it seemed to balance things fairly well.

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

🆃🅷🅴 🅿🆄🆉🆉🅻🅴🆂

This is not a puzzle game, but it will work some of the same muscles. You will be practicing your collaborative communication skills, in some ways like a split information puzzle with limitations on your communication. Assessing your own cards, deciding which tasks you might be able to achieve, re-evaluating your strategy as you gain more knowledge each round, and determining the best strategies as you play in each trick also has a bit of the feel of solving a complex puzzle, where you gain new clues as you go.

🅲🅻🅾🆂🅸🅽🅶 🆃🅷🅾🆄🅶🅷🆃🆂

We really appreciated the scalable challenges in The Crew: Mission Deep Sea! The missions start off very easy to help you learn the rules and gameplay, but they get incredibly challenging and complex as you get deeper into them. We are big fans of collaborative play, and this was a great implementation of a cooperative trick-taking game. The scalability of player size from 2-5 also seems very well-done (though we only actually played at 2, 3, and 4). We will note that this may not be the best one to play with children or people who are less familiar with trick-taking games, unless perhaps everyone is at that similar skill level. As it can be clear when other players have made an error that made a task impossible, having one less-skilled player can end up making them feel self-conscious or frustrated. Yet, when we played as a couple or with other gamer friends, it worked really well. If your group has a habit of playing games like Hearts, Spades, and Euchre, this game would make for a fantastic change of pace! It provides those same moments of joy and frustration as it unfolds. The variations across the mission parameters as well as the 96 possible tasks cards gives this game a lot of replay-ability as well, as you work to make your way through all of the missions in the logbook (and beyond)! The short duration of each mission also makes this a great game for when you only have a little time, though we often played multiple missions in a row. Overall, this is a fun and challenging addition to our game shelf, and portable enough that we can easily bring it along to game nights or when we travel!

Check out our interview with the creators to understand more on the development side of the game:

Video above is property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

BUY NOW

(If you do decide to try this game, give us a shoutout or tag us on social media so we know you heard it from "ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)

Disclosure: We thank Thames & Kosmos for providing us with samples of the game. Although a complimentary experience was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.