The Crew. Also Die Crew. Also THE QUEST FOR PLANET NINE (NINE NINE NINE)
October 9, 2020 | ≈ 588 words | The Crew
Thoughts on The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine Nine Nine Nine
OK, so basically whoever decided to make this game that teaches people how to play trick taking games in both subtle and overt ways needs a Nobel Prize. It goes without saying that I think this game is genius, but the thing that constantly blows my mind is that I absolutely fucking hate trick taking games, and yet this game completely won me over. The reason is very simple: they take out all the stupid shit about table talk and angle shooting and bullshit meta and people thinking you’re an idiot because you played a bad card which makes you and also that person lose and lets someone else win and you’re the fucking idiot even though you’re playing a game with people for fun and don’t understand why people are mad you for making a mistake yourself because of your own skill and lost but somehow they have to remind you of that and the point is people take trick taking extremely seriously because it’s easy to figure out who has what cards and you have to play it with more than 2 people so someone fucking up means someone other than the “optimal player” wins.
All of that bullshit is removed when people decide to play games collaboratively. Not cooperatively (easily mistaken), collaboratively. When people collaborate on what moves to make, how to play best, what they should and shouldn’t do, and why they want to do something, the entire experience of playing a dry and calculated game becomes a shared experience of learning and spreading knowledge. Learning that someone did something because of the cards they had, or that the move that put them in check was actually the move that gave them the combination to turn the check around. Playing games collaboratively makes a lot of games that might be soulless lifeless experiences into Pretty Ok Board Game Memories, whether intended or not.
The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine nine nine nine takes the insane cleverness and feeling of eureka when playing those trick taking games and removes the stupidly pretentious wall by forcing you to keep your damn mouth shut. You are not allowed to communicate about the cards in your hand, and for that matter anything else about the game while you are playing the game. Huh, wait a second. Wouldn’t that make it hard to collaborate? No, it specifically makes it hard to be a dick. But also I would argue that by disallowing communication between all players, players new to trick taking learn the game strictly through play and constantly thinking “what should I do here, I wish someone would tell me what cards they had omggggggg”, and players who know what they would want to say, foster the desire to convey the thought of “holy shit I wish I could tell them not to play their rocket why would they do that”, but that thought comes after the game to talk about how to complete the mission and what to know for next time in order to better the group as a whole, instead of complaining about someone else’s mistake because they need the feeling of being better and winning in a game to feel good about themselves.
Instead of the goal of good players being about them winning or losing, the goal of the game collaboratively becomes making people better at trick taking games. That’s good shit. 👌