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Given the experience of those 58 plays on a purchased copy of the game, I thought it time to present a video overview of this design by Thomas Sing and KOSMOS, while adding a few written notes beyond the simple "do this, then do that" rules explanation that I included in my earlier post.
The short take of The Crew is that it's a co-operative trick-taking game in which each hand of cards constitutes a game, specifically a mission with one or more tasks that the players need to complete in order to complete the mission and win. Fail any of the tasks, and you lose the mission. The game includes fifty missions that escalate in difficulty, and you can play them in any order — but if you're new to the game, you should absolutely not play them in any order, but instead start at mission #1. More on that later...
To some degree, the challenge of The Crew is the same as in other trick-taking games, with you needing to manage your hand strength, void suits, assess the hands of others based on how they play, and so on — but all of those skills are put to different use since you're not assessing how many tricks you can take, trying to score points, or do any of the normal TT goals. All that matters is you — that is, all of you — completing the tasks and therefore the mission, and the particulars of that round's mission change how you assess your hand, thereby providing more variety than the relatively straightforward goals of taking the most points or making a successful bid on tricks taken.
Don't get me wrong; I love "normal" trick-taking games with those types of goals because each hand of cards is a new challenge for you, yet a challenge that draws on the experience of every other TT game you've played. The Crew just twists how you need to assess that hand, and even though I've now played the early missions more than a dozen times each, I've not tired of playing them.
What's more, I would encourage you to start from mission #1, no matter what skill you have with TT games. Two of the lovely people shown above had played The Crew previously and disliked it, and (not coincidentally) both of them had been introduced to the game (in different groups!) by launching them on a mission in the 20s. One person was, in fact, commander of the mission with three tasks to resolve on their own, and they just froze: "What am I supposed to do here?"
As simple as mission #1 might seem — with the commander needing to capture a card determined at random, a challenge that can often be achieved with only one or two tricks being played — play it anyway! Play through those early missions because they teach you through experience how The Crew differs from other TT games. Sure, you're smart and can probably figure it out for yourself and would totally be fine jumping into missions in the 20s, but as a favor to everyone else, start with #1. I did so with the group above, and they came around to appreciating the game instead of writing it off.
The only drawback I've found to The Crew is that the card quality is not good. The game was produced with a price point of €13, and the cards suffer as a result of that, with mine getting gummy after only a couple dozen plays. At BGG.CON 2019, I spoke with Tom Wetzel from Thames & Kosmos — the North American branch of KOSMOS — about this, and he informed me later that the card quality would be increased in the English-language version of the game due out in the first half of 2020. (Wetzel thinks the game will be available in Q1 2020, but he can't guarantee this.)
My guess is that KOSMOS has determined the audience for this game is broader than anticipated, so it's willing to boost the card quality since the quantity produced will also be increased, thereby keeping the costs about the same. I've heard others declare that The Crew will be nominated for Spiel des Jahres in 2020, if not win it outright, but as I explain in the video below, while I love the game, I'm not certain it will be picked up by a mainstream audience as quickly as it's been adopted by hobby gamers. We'll see whether others take up that mission in mid-2020...
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