How to play The Crew

2–5 players (best at 3–4) Low–Medium — co-operative trick-taking with communication constraints

What is The Crew?

The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine is a co-operative trick-taking game by Thomas Sing for two to five players. Rather than competing for the most tricks, you and your crewmates must steer specific cards — called tasks — to the players who have been assigned them. Complete every task and the whole crew wins the mission; fail a single one and everyone loses together.

The game unfolds as a campaign of 50 missions, each adding a new rule or constraint — a required order of task completion, a prohibition on certain leads, or a limit on how many times you may communicate. Because you cannot openly discuss your hand, every card you play is a clue to your teammates. Reading the table well and trusting your crew's signals is the real heart of the game.

Setup

Before you deal, choose your mission: Open the mission booklet to the mission your crew is attempting and read the full card — it tells you how many task cards to put into play and lists any special constraints.

Shuffle the four colored suits (values 1–9 each) together with the four rocket (trump) cards, numbered 1–4 — 40 cards in total. Deal the entire deck as evenly as possible among all players; some may hold one extra card.
The player dealt rocket 4 is the commander and leads the first trick.
Reveal the task cards called for by the mission. Starting with the commander and going clockwise, each player drafts one task card at a time until all are claimed. Place each task face-up in front of the player who must win it.
Apply mission constraints: if the mission includes ordering tokens, place the numbered token on each affected task to show the required completion sequence. The order is strict: task 1 must be captured before task 2, task 2 before task 3, and so on — capturing a higher-numbered task while a lower-numbered one is still unsolved loses the mission immediately.
Each player turns their communication token to the face-down (undisclosed) side — it may be used once per mission, on that player's own turn.

How to play

Play proceeds trick by trick until all cards have been played. The commander leads the first trick; the winner of each trick leads the next.

Playing a trick:

The lead player places any card face-up to start the trick.
Each other player, in clockwise order, must follow the led suit if they hold any card of that color.
If you have no card of the led suit, you may play any card — including a rocket.
The trick is won by the highest rocket played, or — if no rocket was played — the highest card of the led suit. All other cards are irrelevant to winning.

Tasks: Each task card shows a specific card that a specific player must win. Winning a task means that player captures it in a trick they take. A mission is lost immediately the moment a task becomes impossible — for example, if a player wins someone else's task card.

Communicating: Once per mission, you may use your communication token to reveal one card from your hand. Stand it face-up and place the token below the card (your lowest of that suit), beside-and-above the card without touching it (your highest), or directly on top of the card, resting on its face (your only card of that suit) — 'beside-and-above' and 'directly on top' are distinct positions. No other discussion of your hand is permitted.

How to win

Your crew wins the mission the moment every task has been completed — meaning the correct player has won each assigned task card. You lose the instant any task becomes impossible to complete (another player captures it first, or the required order is broken).

Think before you lead: consider who needs to win each task and whether playing a high card will block a crewmate's task or hand them exactly the trick they need. Use your communication token early enough that others can adjust — a late reveal is often too little, too late.