Hey everyone! It's Kylie at Games Unlimited,
and today I'm gonna show you The Crew. This
is the Kennerspiel - the Gamer's Game - winning
Game of the Year for 2020. Phenomenal trick-taking
game! We played this at the tail end of last
year and almost to a person here in the store
we said "This is going to win the Spiel" and
it did. We've played a ton of it. Let me show
you how it works. So this is a cooperative
trick-taking game. Cooperative is pretty straight
forward. You're all working together to beat
the game. Trick-taking games some of you may
be familiar. For those who aren't, think of
something like Euchre, Hearts, Spades, games
that you play with a standard deck of cards
where you have to follow suit. So if someone
leads, say I lead with the 3 of, in this case,
Green, everyone else who is going to have
a hand of cards, in turn order, has to play
a Green card. Whoever ends up laying the high
one, the highest Green card, wins the trick.
So everyone's played one card, whoever's played
the highest wins the trick, takes it, that's
theirs. They then get to lead the next trick.
And you're going to do that until everyone's
played all the cards in their hand. Now in
traditional trick-taking games sometimes it's
every person for themselves like Hearts, and
in Hearts you're trying not to take tricks,
you're trying not to take the Hearts. In Spades
that's commonly a partnership game, Euchre
as well, where it's four players, you have
the people across from each other are partners
so there's an interesting bit of communication.
You're not allowed to talk of course, you
can't say "I have this in my hand", but you're
playing cards, trying to communicate to your
partner what you have and what you don't have.
What makes The Crew unique is it's fully cooperative
aspect. I actually liken it to playing something
like Bridge. The complexities of trying to
understand card play really tickle your brain
in this game. So the way it's going to work
is, I just showed you here, we have, you have
four suits and they go from 1-9 in each suit.
Plus you have four trump cards. These cards
if you can't follow suit, if someone leads
Green and you can't play Green, you can play
any other card you want. If it's not Green
you won't win the trick unless you play one
of these Rockets, these trump cards. However
plays the highest one of those will win the
trick. So, but it's cooperative. So what you're
trying to do is get certain players to take
certain cards. So there's a little miniature
deck of cards, of the whole deck, and you're
going to shuffle these up, and so for the
first mission, say, you're gonna reveal one.
Alright, it's the 4 of Blue. What's going
to happen is one of the players is going to
be tasked with taking the 4 of Blue. So they'll
put this in front of them. Now everyone knows
that player has to take the 4 of Blue, wherever
it is. Maybe they have it in their hand, maybe
someone else has it in their hand. The whole
deck is dealt out so somebody has that 4 of
Blue, and without talking to each other we're
trying to play cards, figure out who's got
what, figure out how are we going to make
sure that that player gets the 4 of Blue.
There is an interesting tidbit of communication
that you can do, though, and this is really
the crux of the game. Every player, once during
the game, is allowed to give a clue. They
can take a card from their hand and play it
on the table. So I'm saying "I have this card,
I have the 1 of Green". You put a little token
on it. You can put it at the top of your card,
or from your perspective the bottom, and say
"That's the highest Green card I have". You
can put it at the bottom to say "It's the
lowest Green card I have", or you can put
it in the middle to say "That's the only Green
card I have". So when you give that piece
of information it has to be true. And you're
gonna learn to use that piece of information
to tell people something. So, for example,
this player who wants to take the 4 of Blue,
maybe the person who has the 4 of Blue wants
to put that out there so everyone knows where
it is. But maybe they can't because it's not
their only Blue, it's not their highest and
it's not their lowest. So there's a lot of
finagling that you need to do to get the information
you need out there and make sure the right
people get the right cards. Now this was just
an example of the first mission where one
person has to take one card. Eventually you
start getting missions where there are a couple
of cards - ooh they're both Blue. So we've
got the 9 and the 1 and players are going
to take turns picking which card they want
to have to take. You're going to get more
complicated things. There's gonna be missions
that say, you know what, somebody has to win
a trick with a 1 which is the lowest card
of each suit. There are actually 50 missions
in this logbook! So me and my group we've
gone through, I think we're on mission 30.
They get more and more complex as you go on.
You start having things where, in addition
to taking, you know, specific cards, you have
to take them in a certain order. You've gotta
take the 6 of Blue first, then the 1 of Blue,
then the 9 of Blue. So there's tons of depth
and replayability in this game. I've personally
played it over 100 times at this point. I
cannot recommend it more highly. It's only
$14.99. If you have any interest in games
like Euchre or Hearts or Spades definitely
pick up The Crew. It's a game of the year
winning game. We've got plenty in stock. You'll
see a link below, you can go straight to our
webstore and pick one up. I'm Kylie at Games
Unlimited, and as always, go play some games.
