Thanks for the feedback! The Player/CPU portraits at the top were a holdover from when we started - it was going to be a "balance of power" thing, which turned out to be not fun so we removed it.. but the UI elements stayed. Oops!
The game is actually quite hard, and getting some 13s in your "starting hand" makes for a tough victory for sure. Best bet is to never let them level up by only sending them on high enough level missions they'll have disadvantage for. No doubt, though, it's tough. We pivoted a couple times over the weekend and ultimately ran out of time (not an uncommon theme I imagine..), but your feedback is great. With more time, we would have liked to fudge the numbers a bit, either by ensuring victory is possible (high level crew in the "pack" would grant some high level missions for them to FAIL on, or perhaps by maxxing out the crew at 11 or 12).
Again, thanks for the notes, and thanks for playing our game!