As long as you understand the concept, you will be able jump into any mission. You may select your current mission either in story order or willy-nilly from the list. The Crew offers you the opportunity to experience 50 missions that vary in difficulty. In other words, you think you have the cards available to take the trick that contains that card. Beginning with the player who holds the #4 rocket card and moving clockwise, you select a task card that you feel you’ll be able to accomplish. Place those in the center of the table for all to see. After everyone has their cards in hand, turn over a number of task cards as identified by the particular mission. Failure to meet even one of those and the mission needs to be scrapped. Most missions include tasks that you’ll need to complete in order to claim success. Shuffle the small task cards and form a deck. Provide each player with a radio communication token and reminder card. Shuffle the large cards and deal them out to all crew members equally. The setup will vary slightly from mission to mission, but for the most part, you can expect to do the following. The first few missions only take about five minutes while later ones are more in-depth, incorporating more bells and whistles.
Actually, it’s meant to be done in stages as you absorb and enjoy the story that goes along with it. Designed with 50 missions, you should not expect to complete the entire game in one sitting. The Crew is a cooperative trick-taking card game. While I don’t expect to see average people boarding commercial space flights, I can embrace the idea through games like The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine from Kosmos. Like something out of a science fiction movie, a whole new generation was recently able to witness the next step in space travel when SpaceX became the first commercially made spacecraft to leave this earth and deliver astronauts to the International Space Station. It’s hard to believe that these things were unheard of when my grandmother was born. I watched countless F-117 Nighthawk Stealth Fighters fly overhead when we lived in Palmdale, California and more recently stood atop the S-1C Static Test Stand that was used to test the Saturn V in 1965-66. But in 2006, Pluto lost that classification and science classes revised their lesson plans to teach about only eight. When I went to school, there were nine planets in our solar system. Space discovery extends beyond space shuttles though. Then a couple decades later witnessing Columbia’s demise during reentry was a reminder not to take space exploration for granted. I remember my high school Latin teacher letting us watch the Challenger launch during class only to see it explode shortly after takeoff. My list of memories relating to these topics is extensive, but here ones that left the biggest mark on me. Many have been positive while some have been somber. Science and space exploration have made immense strides in my lifetime.