How to play Mole in the Crew

Watch before you play

The story

A crew is about to open the five locks of the Meridian Bank vault in a single night. But the police have bought part of the crew: the Moles are inside. The Crew has a secret weapon, the Contact, an informant who knows where the danger smells from and cannot say it out loud.

Goal

• The Crew wins if it opens 3 locks and then the Moles fail to find the Contact in the Getaway.
• The Moles win if 3 locks blow, or if after the Crew opens 3 they identify the Contact in the getaway car scene.

What is public and what is secret

Role deal by player count

Table for the classic game (5 locks). With 5-6 players the two Moles know each other and there is no Snitch; from 7 players one of the three Moles is the Snitch.

The rest of the crew is filled with Contact, Lookout, Driver and plain Crew member, in that order. With 5 players: Contact, Lookout, Driver and two Moles; with 6, also a Double. With 8 or more players an innocent (the decoy) is added to the Contact's set.

One lock, step by step

1. Role deal

   Each player checks their role in secret (one phone: by passing the phone; several phones: on their own screen).

2. Propose a team

   The Boss points at as many players as the table asks for that lock. They may include themselves.

3. Talk and public vote

   Players discuss and everyone votes at once, with names. More than half approves; a tie rejects. Three rejections in a row blow the lock (the Patrol).

4. Secret cards

   The approved team secretly plays Clean or Sabotage. Cards are shuffled and revealed one by one.

5. Open or blow

   With a single Sabotage the lock blows; otherwise it opens. The number of sabotages is announced, not who played them.

6. The Getaway

   The Crew wins with three locks open and the Moles with three blown. But if the Crew opens three, the Moles get one joint accusation to name the Contact.

File and alibi

After a lock blows with cards and the game goes on, everyone gets a private file inside their voting turn. Only the Lookout receives an alibi in it (a team member who played Clean); everyone else reads “Nothing new in your file” with the same design, so nobody gives themselves away.

The Getaway: the car scene

With the third lock open, the siren sounds and everyone climbs into the car.

• The Driver protects one person, or nobody.
• The Moles and the Snitch have one joint accusation: each marks on their own and sees, anonymously, how many teammates have marked each person. No chat.
• Everyone else sees the same marking screen, with no effect (decoy).
• The plurality of the Moles' marks wins; a tie is settled at random between the tied.
• If the accused is the person the Driver protected, the accusation is void and the Crew wins. If it is the Contact, the Moles win. If it is anyone else, including another Mole, the Crew escapes and wins.

Variants

The classic game has two optional variants and an option for small groups: the Quick game (3 locks, about 5 minutes), the Vault (7-10 players) and “Snitch (advanced)” (5-6 players).