RogerBW's Blog

This Meetup-based boardgames group remains on-line for the moment; as usual we got together on Jitsi and then played some games online.

Just one specific game, this time: The Crew. For the few people who don't already know, it's a cooperative trick-taking game (four players, four suits of 1-9 plus four special cards, 10-card hands) with variable winning conditions: for example, a specific player might have to win a trick that has the green 3 in it. That's easy if that player has the green 9, but they probably don't, and it can need some quite careful setting up.

You're also limited in communication, and unlike many limited-communication games this one specifies exactly what you're allowed to say: once per hand you can indicate that a particular card is the highest, the lowest, or the only one of its suit in your hand. That's it. (And the group will collectively have multiple tasks to be achieved, so you can't use all four of the table's communication opportunities on the same task.)

It went pretty well; we played eleven hands in our two-hour session, and only lost once. (It looks as though at least part of the setup is random; in the hand we lost, we had to give someone a win with a green 5 before someone else got a win with a green 6, which I think may not be possible depending on the deal. But when we re-played that "level", we got a much easier configuration.)

The theme is so thin that it doesn't bother me; this is effectively an abstract game with some space art on the cards. Good fun, though I think not one I'm likely to buy even when in-person games are possible again.