The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine is the best cooperative trick-taking game and one of the best cooperative games at any player count. The missions create a graduated difficulty structure — the first missions are almost trivially easy, the later ones require precise coordination and communication. The no-talking-about-your-cards rule creates interesting constraint.

The Mission Deep Sea sequel adds radio communication tokens that expand the communication options and increases the design space. Both are worth owning. They are compatible enough to combine mission decks for extended campaigns.

For groups that include players who grew up with trick-taking card games (Spades, Hearts, Euchre), The Crew translates that familiar mechanism into a cooperative framework that creates entirely new challenge. The learning curve for experienced trick-taking players is essentially zero. The payoff is immediate.