Dead of Winter Magazine
Dead of Winter Magazine
Winter has settled in the city and tonight there are more deadly things in the air than frost. The generator barely holds back the severe cold and ... What is this?
Is anyone stealing from a food supply or has something much worse crept into the colony? Read the full Dead of Winter review below.
- SURVIVAL GAME: Dead of Winter Crossroads game is an experience ...
- STRATEGY: Players often have to make difficult decisions ...
- COOPERATIVE GAME: While the survivors are all engaged in their ...
A brief overview of the dead winters
In Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game, you and your surviving co-workers will keep the colony afloat despite the severe winter cold and the ever-present zombie threat.
Each player will control a small group of survivors who are loyal to themselves first and the colony to others. Every player will have a hidden agenda and not everyone is in the greater good.
The game is a pseudo -cooperative game. The overall goal will be to end the game. If a group is able to meet an overall goal, it wins as a team. And if the player is also able to fulfill his personal hidden goal, he will win the personal victory himself.
However ... there is one main caveat. When solving hidden goals, there is less than a 50% chance that one player will have an issuer goal. Their goal is for the colony to collapse with the loss of all its morals.
Everyone will give preference to their groups first, but which of you is willing to sacrifice the colony to ensure their survival.
Variations and extensions
Unpacking Dead of Winter
The game doesn’t have a massive board, and the colony has its own board in which everyone survived and some of the main elements of the game, such as goals and a pile of trash. Each location in the city has its own board showing how many survivors and zombies can be displayed before it exceeds it, and there is a place for a search panel that you will draw every time you search for that location.
There is a First Player token that is in the shape of a knife (I saw a cooler one).
- SURVIVAL GAME: Dead of Winter Crossroads game is an experience ...
- STRATEGY: Players often have to make difficult decisions ...
- COOPERATIVE GAME: While the survivors are all engaged in their ...
Dead of Winter uses cardboard clippings on zombie stands and player chips. If you want to distinguish which player is which player, he will get a color-coded base so you can quickly spot who’s who.
I really like the artwork in the game, and the token characters and zombies work well. I like them a lot more than Miniature and Last Night on Earth . The artwork matches the advertising posters and looks connected, creating a fun themed element.
Some characters may be a little silly, but choosing between them contributes a lot to the repeatability.
You will see several decks of cards that you will want to separate.
- Crisis cards
- Crossroads
- Item cards
How to play Dead of Winter
Dead of Winter has some sharp game mechanics. Apocalypse survival is never guaranteed.
Crisis cards
At each step, the group will have to deal with a crisis card. It’s an apocalypse after all, and it’s all awful.
Players will redirect the crisis card they will need to complete or suffer the consequences in each round (not in each turn). Some will be bad and some will be really bad.
You may lose your morale, die survivors or even zombies spawn in the sanctuary. Every player will eventually have to invest in the community community, otherwise bad things happen. Sometimes you can catch a break. If your survivors kick and exceed the requirements, they may receive a reward.
Crossroads tickets
At the beginning of each player's turn, the player will draw a Crossroads card on his right. If the current player meets the condition on the card, the card is read aloud in full.
Crossroad cards add a themed rocket to the game. Each scenario is different, but it forces players to make difficult decisions.
After all, this is an apocalypse.
I won’t spoil any cards, but they force you to make some tough decisions.
Each round you will roll dice equal to the number of +1 players.
- SURVIVAL GAME: Dead of Winter Crossroads game is an experience ...
- STRATEGY: Players often have to make difficult decisions ...
- COOPERATIVE GAME: While the survivors are all engaged in their ...
Actions that require dice:
- Attack
- Barricade
- Search the page
- Clean waste
- Attract zombies
Cube DOOM!
Each time a player moves, he must play a 12-sided exposure cube. Players can't get anything done (best case scenario), they can get cold, they can be bitten or they just DIE! Don’t pass Go, don’t perform a rescue throw, nothing can save you.
Every time you move, there is a 1/12 chance of immediate death. If the bite and possible infection of other players was not bad enough, immediate death is always a gamble away.
The end of the circle
Take away the trash you've been drooling over!
When a player searches for supplies, discarded cards go in the pile of trash. Because who cares about garbage in the apocalypse?
Given that the lack of hygiene probably led to an outbreak of the zombie virus and the resulting apocalypse, you may want to keep your living space clean ... What, who wants to live in the trash?
For every 10 cards on the pile of trash at the end of the round, the colony will lose morale. And remember: no morality means the game is over.
Adding zombies
After dealing with garbage, it’s time to deal with zombies. The number of zombies that are created depends on the number of survivors (not the number of players).
- If a player is inside the colony, 1 zombie will scramble for every 2 survivors.
- If the player is outside the colony, 1 zombie will fight for every 1 survivor.
Solve the crisis
At the end of the round, the cards set up to resolve the crisis are shuffled (to remain anonymous) and then revealed. Congratulations on successfully preventing the crisis! Hopefully you are one step closer to not dying.
If you haven’t gotten enough funds or if the traitor has given the wrong resources, it’s time to pay for the pepper. Follow the instructions on the card to see what happens. It can be a moral decline, loss of resources or injury. It is never good (unless you are a traitor).
Feeding time
The next thing you need to do is feed your people. Every survivor in the colony must be fed. For each survivor in the colony, you will need to burn 1 food source. These include useless survivors who just fill the space. They still have to eat.
If you don’t have enough food for everyone, leave what you have, add a starvation token in stock and stock.
Then you lose 1 morale for every sign of starvation in the colony. This folds so that you will lose 1 morale in the first round of hunger and 2 morale in the second round of hunger. This becomes dangerous very quickly.
At the end of the round, if you meet all the criteria for the main goal, the game ends and you can then reveal your hidden goals to see who wins.
If not, you better connect and go back to the city. I hear it's cold at this time of year.
Your first game Dead of Winter
To start the game, each player will choose 2 players and 5 random items.
Establishment of a committee
Installing the board is quite easy. Lay down the main board of the colony and place all the novice survivors in the space. Then set the locations. Each city location has a separate deck that is shuffled and put in place. This way, when you go to the grocery store, you know that you are more likely to get food stamps than if you were elsewhere. Note that there is a greater possibility that is not guaranteed.
Your first goal
The suggested goal of your first game is “We need more patterns”.
It's pretty simple: collect 3 zombie samples per player. If you are playing a game with four players, you will need along with 4 zombie patterns. Killing zombies doesn't automatically get a pattern. After each zombie murder, spin the D12 and get a pattern at 6 or more. If the effect of a barrier or card removes the zombies, it doesn’t count. In fact, you have to survive the attack and kill him.
- SURVIVAL GAME: Dead of Winter Crossroads game is an experience ...
- STRATEGY: Players often have to make difficult decisions ...
- COOPERATIVE GAME: While the survivors are all engaged in their ...
A traitor or no traitor? That is the question
If you really want to have a more streamlined version for first play, just to set the rules down, you can play without having a traitor. This can focus the group and make the game much less tense and should speed up the game. For vet players and those who may be just awful people, you can add a treacherous card. This is personally one of my favorite aspects of the game.
Hidden goals
Then everyone needs a goal. Some will be lighter than others, but they are quite balanced. There is no one on our table who wins regularly, so don’t worry.
If you’re looking for a fully collaborative experience instead, there’s a version of the game in the rules that allows everyone to collaborate without a traitor and without hidden goals. The overall goal of the game gets harder, but no punching would bother you.
Advantages and disadvantages of Dead of Winter
Good
The game is tense.
If we add the possibility that someone from your client will betray, the whole dynamic changes. In most hidden traitor games, it’s certain that one of you is a jerk and not on your team. By adding an option instead of definitely increasing the tension and giving everyone a chance of denial. It also forces everyone to guess about everything at once, wanting to believe that no one is bad.
The Plaid Hat games did a great job with the artwork and designed themed elements of the game. The characters can be funny and still fit the world. I especially like Mall Santa, Forest Plum. He’s super creepy looking, he attacked great and he looks like he’s going to hit someone in a dark street. His special ability is also to remove him from the game to raise morale. He's stupid, but he fits the game so well.
- SURVIVAL GAME: Dead of Winter Crossroads game is an experience ...
- STRATEGY: Players often have to make difficult decisions ...
- COOPERATIVE GAME: While the survivors are all engaged in their ...
Bad
The game can take a long time. 3 - 4 players seem the ideal number, as 5 and 6 players can get stuck in the game. Each player has multiple characters and sometimes turns into a screaming match with anyone trying to find a traitor.
As with most hidden traitor games, it can get a little awkward if the gaming table takes them to heart. I’m not going to play the traitor version with some of my friends because they totally hate it. Fortunately, there is a completely different version in the rules that works pretty well. This is an advantage, and if you know that one of your friends would do well if you stabbed him in the back, you can change the rules.
Review of Dead Winters (TL; DR)
- Best with 3-4 players (5+ pulls).
- It is very tense because it is cooperative in itself, but with the possibility of a traitor.
- Several different game modes if you don’t want to play with a traitor.
- 20 scenarios.
- Crossroads cards add very themed mini events throughout the game.
Conclusion: a verdict?
I’m a big zombie nerd, so I totally love the game. On the other hand, there’s Kendra, who couldn’t possibly care about zombies and was also great at it. I really like co-op board games and traitor games. Although both mechanics seem to have the opposite intuitive in one game, it works so well.
The tension of trying to figure out if everyone is on the same team or if he is a traitor raises the game from good to amazing. It’s fine as a Five-Player Game , but having 3 -4 players is perfect and they’re normal game group sizes nonetheless.
- SURVIVAL GAME: Dead of Winter Crossroads game is an experience ...
- STRATEGY: Players often have to make difficult decisions ...
- COOPERATIVE GAME: While the survivors are all engaged in their ...
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