“So you see that you have to weigh the opportunities and risks, and assess the feasibility of the mission when assigning the tasks!” -The Crew: Mission Deep Sea Rulebook
Disclosure: completed all the missions
The Crew (in both currently available versions) is one of those games that we kept seeing again and again at bookstores in Germany. Even though they are very reasonably priced and The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine won Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2020, we weren’t able to bring ourselves to purchase it, because at the back it says (on the German version at least) that it’s for 3-5 players with a variant for two players. The risk of not enjoying the game and wasting 11 € felt too high for us. But after we finished and enjoyed playing both The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers trick-taking games we learned that they were inspired by both versions of The Crew. So, we decided to take the risk and try the second one: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea.
The components
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, just like its predecessor The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, is a cooperative trick-taking game. Except instead of going to space, in MDS players get to be a diving team on a mission to find the mysterious continent of Mu. We have to say right off the bat that we didn’t feel like we are on a deep-sea mission. MDS is not an immersive game. Unlike the LotR trick-taking games, there is barely any connection between the mechanics and the theme.
Just like other trick-taking games, its main rules are simple. MDS has the typical four suits, just referred to by their colors, and four submarine cards that function as trumps. The first player chooses the lead card and the next player must match the suit of the lead card. If they don’t have a matching card, they can play a card of any other suit or a trump card. The player who has the highest matching card or the highest trump card wins the trick. Since MDS is a cooperative game, simply winning a trick doesn’t mean that the players have won the game. All players should work together and fulfill all the tasks and mission objectives, which might include that one player’s task is to not win any tricks.
The Submarine Cards
The game has a communication limit. Once per round, before or after a trick, each player can reveal one card and place a sonar token on it to convey one of three possible facts. Those are whether that card is the highest, lowest or only card of its suit in their hand. Submarine cards cannot be revealed in this way. Later missions sometimes further restrict communication or forbid it completely.
Most missions in the 32-mission campaign simply have a difficulty number, which determines the total difficulty of the task cards drawn for this mission. While in early missions this means that often only one player will actually have a task, in later missions players regularly have two or more tasks each. In addition to the difficulty number some missions have modifiers, such as the stricter communications limit mentioned before or an optional timer. Some missions don’t have a difficulty number and simply introduce a special rule that has to be followed instead of completing tasks. In theory the difficulty steadily increases throughout the campaign, however the random drawing of the task cards can lead to combinations that are significantly harder or easier than expected. Some combinations are even impossible, which means one or more task cards have to be redrawn.
Whoever gets the four of submarines (the highest trump card) gets to play as the captain, a woman named Meg Diver. In the two player variant, we had to play as if there were three players. The “third player”, an AI called Tonoja, is controlled by the captain. Tonoja gets 14 cards, where seven of them are open and placed on top of the other seven facedown cards. Then the four of submarines is shuffled in and each of us then gets 13 cards. Being Meg Diver wasn’t easy for either of us most of the time. Much like controlling the third player in the LotR trick-taking games, being the captain and controlling Tonoja really inreases the mental load of the player in question, and it can get even more taxing for the captain as the difficulty increases. Depending on the combination of tasks drawn, this mechanic can also impact the difficulty. Still, there’s also a tension sometimes when one of us flips Tonoja’s cards which adds to the enjoyment of the game.
Our Final Thoughts: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea may seem easy initially. But as we progressed into the missions, it became more and more difficult. Some combinations of tasks can be very difficult for two players, but the game allowed us to try a different set of tasks whenever we couldn’t win the current set of tasks, which we think makes it less frustrating. The gameplay was a lot of fun and some combination of tasks led to really intense and brain tickling moments.
We like playing games with strong themes and The MDS doesn’t have that. But it’s the type of game that we can imagine playing to kill the time or to see the highest difficulty we can beat together. It’s not the best trick-taking game for two players, but it’s also not bad. It definitely has a high replay value and considering that it was only 11 € when we bought it, we can also definitely say that it was worth it.
What we both like:
very reasonably priced
interesting combinations of tasks
challenging missions
replay value
What we do not like:
unequal mental load for two players
almost no connection between theme and mechanics
What Max also doesn’t like:
the writing
high randomness in difficulty
Kaysee’s rating: 3.5/5
Max’s rating: 3.0/5
Combined rating: 3.5/5
Title: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea (2021)
Game Design: Thomas Sing
Illustration: Marco Armbruster
Publisher: KOSMOS
Amsterdam is an amphibious city. Water flows around it (the Ijsselmeer, over which most people used to come into the city), water flows through it (the Amstel river, after which it is named, and the canals dug later), and even the land on which the buildings stand was won from the watery marshes in a feat of human ingenuity. The need to work together in this communal enterprise did not only strengthen the peasants and craftspeople who had won this land themselves (instead of receiving it from a noble), but also their willingness to put up with each other regardless of differences – the first instance of the famous Amsterdam tolerance.
Amsterdam’s rise was also closely connected to the water: On the one hand, Dutch herring fishers found out about how to cure fish on the ship, enabling them to sail further and catch more instead of having to head home after the first big catch. And in the 14th century, the count of Holland decreed that all Dutch beer imports from Hamburg, then northern Europe’s brewery, must go through Amsterdam. The city thus became a trade hub, first for these staples of fish and beer, but the local merchants soon branched out to luxury goods, too, especially as the great voyages of discovery brought Europe in direct touch with south and southeast Asia as well as the newly-discovered Americas.
When the Reformation swept Europe in the 16th century, Amsterdam, unlike many other Dutch cities, did not adopt the new Protestant faith. Yet the city kept its unusual approach to differences of faith and tolerated the local Protestants. Neither Protestantism nor tolerance were acceptable to the ruling Habsburg monarch, Philip II of Spain, who had inherited the suzerainty over the Low Countries from his father, emperor Charles V. Yet while both Philip and Charles were ardent Catholics, they had a very different relationship with the Low Countries. Charles had been born and brought up there, living his happiest years not far from Amsterdam. Philip was a Spaniard in everything, regarding the Dutch with suspicion. And as they started rebelling against him – for the Protestant faith, for municipal independence from the monarch, and for the exemption of taxes funding Habsburg wars in faraway lands – he was resolved to bring them back into the fold by force.
The various factions of the Dutch struggle for independence are the player roles in Revolution: The Dutch Revolt, 1568—1648 (Francis Tresham, Phalanx Games) – Catholics, Habsburgs, Nobility, Burghers and Reformers. Amsterdam remained initially Catholic (and thus loyal to Philip), yet other concerns would be more pressing to the city than religion: When the Dutch rebels blockaded the city from the sea, thus causing the collapse of any trade profits and the food supply to the city, Amsterdam’s anti-Habsburg faction was ascendant. The city threw its lot in with the rebels in 1578. Its Catholic minority, however, would be treated as the Protestants had been before. Tolerance went both ways in Amsterdam.
Amsterdam had escaped its ruin from the naval blockade. Further south, Antwerp, the most important Dutch port, was not so fortunate. While the blockade strangled Antwerp’s trade, tens of thousands of Antwerp merchants and artisans left the city to find greener pastures elsewhere – most of them in Amsterdam. Thus, while the Dutch provinces were engulfed in warfare with the Habsburgs (which would only end with Dutch independence in 1648), the convergence of capital and know-how in Amsterdam turned the city into the commercial capital of the world.
The Center of the World
Amsterdam in the early 17th century was buzzing with commercial activity. The merchants did not only find new trade routes, they also invented new ways of doing business altogether: The Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (United East India Company), or VOC for short, founded in 1602, was the first chartered company in the world. Anyone could buy a share in the company and thus partake in its profits – or sell the shares to others in what would become the Amsterdam Stock Exchange (also the first of its kind in the world). Amsterdam ships carried goods all over the worlds, Amsterdam shipwrights built them, Amsterdam craftspeople produced many of the finest objects for sale, and Amsterdam painters and writers catered to the pursuits of the minds. In the mid-17th century, a staggering 30% of all the new books in the world were published in Amsterdam, taking advantage of the liberal approach to the exchange of ideas in the metropolis.
Construction boomed in Golden Age Amsterdam – the city had much outgrown its medieval limits. In an ambitious scheme to not only expand, but also re-order the city’s flow of people and goods, Amsterdam took on its characteristic form, the city center surrounded by three belts of interconnected canals (grachten).
Amsterdam’s canals and the narrow houses built along them (for taxes were paid according to the width of the building’s front) have their own board game dedicated to them: Grachtenpand (Zach Hoekstra, Wulfhorn Games).
To my knowledge, no board game portrays the construction of the grachten. That’s a shame, because the scheme that led to their creation is worthy of the most cunning table strategist: Mayor Frans Oetgens knew of the plan to expand Amsterdam and dig the canals before it was public, so he and his associates bought up vast stretches of land at bargain prices and sold them back to the city at astronomical profits.
This act of self-interested entrepreneurship embodies Amsterdam’s preoccupation towards individual gain. It speaks to Amsterdam’s character as an individualist, bourgeois city that its most recognizable sights are not palaces and cathedrals, but these canals and the private houses along them.
Another very Amsterdam trait which has stood the test of time is the love of flowers, especially tulips. Yet never was this passion greater than in the 17th century, when it intermingled with the other great passion of Amsterdammers – commerce. Unlike the controlled trade of goods and shares in Amsterdam’s port and stock exchange, the Amsterdam Tulip Bubble developed unregulatedly in taverns where buyers and sellers met over a glass of wine. The price of tulips skyrocketed in one of the first documented speculation crazes – until the bubble burst, as is the inevitable outcome of Tulip Bubble (Kouyou, Moaideas Game Design): Players want to partake in the profitable trade, yet must try to sell before the end of the mania, for all their tulips in hand will be worth nothing at game end.
The allure of 17th century Amsterdam, this great laboratory of capitalism, is so great that it has become a widespread board game setting – just behind Vikings, zombies, and trading in the Mediterranean. Even the behemoth board game franchise Ticket to Ride has an instalment set in Amsterdam. Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam (Alan R. Moon, Days of Wonder) deviates from the tried-and-true setting of trains in favor of route-building in Golden Age Amsterdam 200 years before the first rail was laid. I especially appreciate that the game sticks with the original names for places in Amsterdam, so that players who don’t speak Dutch can attempt to pronounce Korenmetershuisje (Little House of the Grain Measuring Officials) and Oost-Indisch Huis (East India House).
Finally, the great master of eurogames has also designed a Golden Age Amsterdam game: Merchants of Amsterdam (Reiner Knizia, Rio Grande Games). And despite Knizia’s reputation of producing mathematically sound, but often themeless games, it might be the one which captures Amsterdam in 17th century best: Not only is the central mechanism that of a Dutch auction (that is, an auction which starts at a very high price which continues falling until someone buys the asset in question at the price asked), but its map depicts the Amsterdam surrounded by four world regions with which the players can trade – Amsterdam, the commercial center of the world.
Amsterdam’s preeminence could not last forever. Despite its naval and commercial advantages, the Dutch Republic was a small country compared to England or France, and eventually fell to these rivals. The rampjaar (catastrophe year) of 1672, in which England challenged the Republic on the seas and France invaded the Netherlands, ended the Dutch Golden Age. Amsterdam was only saved from French occupation when the Dutch pierced the dikes and flooded a large area of their own country to prevent the French onslaught.
As the Dutch Republic shrunk in importance, so did Amsterdam. London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin eclipsed it as centers of modernity in Europe. Even within the Netherlands, the city fell behind: Its disadvantageous geography meant that Rotterdam, situated directly on the North Sea instead of the Ijsselmeer, became the country’s premier port. Amsterdam, however, remained a center of the arts, and an iconic city of individualism and tolerance.
In the 20th century, these values brought Amsterdammers to adopt a liberal attitude toward prostitution (openly practiced around the Old Church) and drugs (marijuana is not legal, but its consumption in specialized establishments (coffeeshops) is tolerated). That openness has made Amsterdam a dream destination for those wishing to uproot traditional lifestyles (at least for a moment) – from Yoko Ono and John Lennon staging their “Bed-In” for world peace in Amsterdam to the ubiquitous bachelor party trips there. Surprisingly, not a single board game seems to be dedicated to this side of Amsterdam.
When board games are set in modern Amsterdam, they often allude to traditional Dutch themes: Gift of Tulips (Sara Perry, Weird Giraffe Games) has its players once more compete for the finest flower bouquets at the city’s annual tulip festival. Amsterdam’s rich artistic history also often features: In Masters of Crime: Shadows (Lukas Setzke/Martin Student/Verena Wiechens, KOSMOS), the players aim to conduct a painting heist, whereas in EXIT: The Game – The Hunt Through Amsterdam (Inka Brand/Markus Brand, KOSMOS), they want to recover a lost Vincent van Gogh painting. My detective instincts say that these are the same painting! Finally, Amsterdam’s slide to modern metropolis sans its erstwhile very specific features is exemplified by the game set in Amsterdam with the single highest number of ratings on BoardGameGeek: Mechanically, the crime/mystery game Shadows: Amsterdam (Mathieu Aubert, Libellud) could be set in any big city. There’s nothing Amsterdam-specific about private detectives looking for evidence and avoiding the police’s official investigation. Yet the artwork on the tiles sometimes gives a little glimpse – for example, houses along the gracht.
A good introduction on Amsterdam’s history is Shorto, Russell: Amsterdam. A History of the World’s Most Liberal City, Doubleday, New York City, NY 2013.
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