Team-based trick-taking card game The Crew is receiving its third proper installment, debuting at Gen Con in the summer of this year.
Thames & Kosmos' third title in the cooperative board game series is titled The Crew: Journey to the Ends of the Earth. Whereas the first took place in space and the second was under the sea, this game will see your team racing around the globe, scaling Everest and braving rainforests in search of "Charlemagne's secret treasure". We've got geography and history in this card game.
On the publisher's website, preorder details tell us The Crew 3 is priced at $14.95, and expected to ship from July 30 - August 12, in line with the start of Gen Con.
The theme has never been all that important to The Crew, so we're actually much more interested in how the gameplay will change and what makes it worth buying if you've already got its predecessors. Unfortunately, on that front, we don't have a lot of details.
The Crew 3 has apparently got 25 missions (fewer than the base game and sequel, which had 50 and 30 respectively) and "new mission mechanics" are promised. But our choo-choo train of hard facts has now run out of track. We can't go further without plunging into the gorge of speculation.
The Crew is a trick-taking board game, where you must work as a team to ensure the right players win the right cards. On top of that the campaign missions add wrinkles to the game and on top of that, you have extremely limited communication, only able to signal once per game by placing a radio token on a particular card.
The sequel, Mission Deep Sea, spices things up with more interesting tasks, challenging you to beat missions while never leading with a particular number or demanding you win the first and last trick. There was also a kid-friendly version in 2024 that replaced the trick-taking game with a core based on Crazy 8s or UNO.
How The Crew 3 will shake up the concept remains to be seen. Thames & Kosmos claims it has something for beginners and returning players.
What do you think of trick-taking games? Let us know on the Wargamer Discord.