Two years ago we took off on a quest in space and now we’re searching the depths of the sea.

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.

Needless to say, we absolutely loved the cooperative, trick-taking, mission-based card game. We could hardly get enough of it, even making up our own challenging mission scenarios.

Since then, Kosmos has gone ahead and outdone themselves with the follow-up game 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.

 

How to play The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

Like its predecessor, The Crew: Mission Deep Sea is a cooperative, trick-taking card game. Players work together to complete missions in a logbook with progressively harder challenges. Each game brings a new challenge.

To begin, all the cards are dealt out to the players.

Then the 96 small task cards are shuffled and placed in a face down pile. These will determine the challenges the players will face. Based on the mission players are attempting in the logbook, they will face different degrees of difficulty. The mission will indicate how many tasks to draw from this deck.

The back of the task cards list a number next to the 3, 4, or 5-player icons. This is the difficulty level for that task card depending on the number of players. Players will keep drawing task cards until the sum of total of their degrees of difficulty matches the overall degree of difficulty for the mission. Some cards may be skipped.

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.

Once the sum is reached, the players flip over the task cards drawn to see the challenge that awaits.

There is a wide variety of challenges to be met through the task cards.

The player with the 4 value submarine card is the captain and begins the task selection process. The captain takes one of the task cards and then in turn order to the left players each select a task card they plan to achieve. If there are fewer task cards then players, a player may choose to pass from taking a task card.

Once the tasks are divvied out, the captain leads out with the first “trick”.

The deck of cards consist of 5 card suits: pink, blue, green, yellow, and submarine. The colored card values are 1 through 9 and the submarines are 1 through 4. As in most trick-taking games, one player will lead out and the rest follow suit.

Each player must follow by playing a card of the matching color, if they can. Once all players have played 1 card, the player who played the highest value in that suit wins the “trick”. The only exception is the submarine cards. These are trump suits and will always win the trick. If more than one submarine card is played, the highest value wins the trick.

The player that wins a trick will lead out for the next trick.

Even though players are working together, players may not talk about what cards they have in their hands. However, like in The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, players also have communication tokens that they may use between tricks.

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.

The goal of the game is for all players to successfully accomplish their chosen tasks. If the players do so, they successfully complete that mission and move on to the next mission in the logbook.

If even one task is not completed, all players fail that mission and must attempt it again from the beginning.

 

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

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea is a fantastic card game for the whole family!

As with the original, the rules of how to play cards and win tricks is simple. The challenge comes in trying to help everyone complete the tasks they’ve taken for that mission.

And that challenge is a blast!

The age recommendation is 10+ and we feel that’s a pretty accurate assessment due to the strategy involved in choosing which cards to play and when so that everyone can complete their tasks. Yes, younger players may be able to join in. But due to the lack of communication, it may take them a while to figure out the strategies.

So why do we love The Crew: Mission Deep Sea more than The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine?

Because of the the huge variety of tasks!

With 96 task cards in the game, the variety of the challenges themselves is great. And then you throw on top of that the myriad combinations of those tasks coming up together. The replay value is immense!

In the original, the missions mainly revolved around specific cards being taken by the players and the order in which they’re taken. However, in Mission Deep Sea, the tasks include things like the sum of card values, taking more or less tricks than other players, not leading with certain colors, winning as many of one color as another color, winning all the nines, or not winning a trick with a nine, and on and on.

As such, even though we’ve played tons of games, the combinations of tricks makes every game a unique challenge and we love it. Even when we fail!

Of course, whether we win or lose on a particular mission, we have a hard time stopping and putting it away.

 

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

Do we really need to answer this question?

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.

And because we’ve enjoyed playing so much, the game rarely gets put back in the game closet. It mostly stays on the kitchen counter so it’s easy to pull out and play whenever we get the itch to face the challenges together.

We highly recommend picking up a copy of The Crew: Mission Deep Sea for your family!