Dead of Winter is a soul crushing cooperative game where each player leads a small team of survivors with different abilities in order to survive the winter in a zombie apocalypse. There are a variety of different things to keep track of to prevent death such as keeping everyone fed, taking out trash, killing zombies so you don't get overrun, and fulfilling the goal of each round. Each round there is some sort of crisis where you might need to gather tools, more food, medicine, or gas in order to keep morale up. Each player has their own personal victory conditions that are usually holding a certain number of items or completely certain actions. A small amount of goals are traitorous and involve completing goals and only succeeding if the group loses. If morale gets to 0 or, everyone loses. Gameplay runs from one to two hours and accommodates three to five players.
At the start of the game, the zombie apocalypse is in full swing and the group is struggling to survive. There are twenty possible scenarios to choose from that lay out how long the game will be, how many rounds, where the morale track starts, and what the ultimate goal is. Some goals can be just to stay alive for a certain number of rounds but others can have players killing all zombies. Each round has players using dice to complete actions (such as searching for supplies, building barricades, killing zombies, and cleaning up trash), doing free actions (such as moving to a different location, using items, or contributing to the food stores or the crisis for the round). The end of each round settles the crisis, has all characters consume food, has all characters attract zombies towards them, and sets up for the next round. Most crises have the opportunity for raising morale, but it costs many more resources. Players have to plan ahead and see if it's worth perhaps not having resources to settle the next crises or feed ourselves next round. Raising morale is incredibly rare in game because the zombie apocalypse isn't exactly a morale booster.
Each character is has some sort defining characteristic and set of stats that either suit them for battling zombies or searching or some other task. My favorites are the truck driver, the body builder, and the mall Santa. Each turn, another player has a crossroads card that will take effect if you take an action or have a certain character. Usually it's a tough choice like doing something that might kill you to get food or picking up more survivors at the expense of the group's resources. You have to weigh which decision is right and maybe discuss it with the group. I love this aspect of the game. Not all good decisions have benefits and not all bad decisions have punishments. If it all goes wrong, the whole game could be over in a just a few rounds. I've personally seen crossroads cards that kill 3 characters which lowers morale and proves devastating to the group. These situations put the group in the mindset of making hard decisions that are best for the group (unless they are a betrayer).
This game does have some flaws. It's obviously stacked against the players, which I don't really mind. However, some rules I find a little over the top. In game, venturing outside at all has each character rolling a dice to see if they are wounded, frostbitten, or bitten by a zombie. A bite is an automatic death plus anyone with them has to roll to see if they were wounded, frostbitten, or bitten by a zombie. Too many first rounds were spent losing up to 3 characters, so my group plays that only encountering zombies makes us roll the dice. Other than that, I find it to replicate the zombie apocalypse situation in winter, making it doubly hard, pretty accurately. You can look up different house rules people have to adjust the game as you like. The game has two expansions called Warring Colonies and The Long Night. I haven't heard much about either, but I'd be interested to see what they add to the game. It's already incredibly hard, so adding more goals wouldn't be very successful. I'm hoping for alternative ways to play instead of making it harder.
My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins
No comments:
Post a Comment