Dead of Winter review

While this site is pretty cluttered with coding info and pages, I’ll add some more fun stuff to this blog too.

So recently I got back into table top games after a long break from playing them. Started off again playing Munchkin and then added Pandemic into the mix. Then I saw Dead of Winter and decided to pick that up. So far I can say i’m not disappointed at all.

Here’s an overview for those who’re not sure what this game is or what it’s about.

You play as a group of survivors, trying to create a place to live, eat and sleep in safety from the impending doom of the zombie apocalypse. So you and your fellow players create a base known as “The Colony”. From here, you will stage all your strategies, feed your survivors and keep the compound clean of waste and refuse. Along with that you’ll need to protect your group, so you’ll barricade the gates to prevent the zombies getting in and kill any zombies that do break in. Sounds easy so far right? But wait, there’s more :). Just when you thought you had everything under control, you’ll be hit with a crisis to resolve each day. This is one of the most nerve wracking parts of the game for me, as it’s one of the ways you may find out if there’s a traitor in your midst, someone working against the group of survivors, someone who wants to see everyone else fail the teams main objective.

Game setup time can take a little bit, but follow the instructions and it’s pretty straight forward.

The game is divided into two phases. The player phase and the colony phase. The player phase can take a good 30 minutes or more to resolve on the first few turns, while everyone gets used to the rules. There’s a lot to do.

The players control their own groups of survivors. Starting off at two, they can add more through card draws, or lose them through death. No one’s ever actually out of the game when they lose their survivors though thankfully. That wouldn’t be much fun to have to sit out for an hour or two.
Each player has a secret objective they must complete in order for them to win the game. This secret set of objectives cannot be revealed to anyone, doing so would ruin the game play. Some of these secret objectives are betrayer cards. These are the ones that turn someone into the villain we all love to hate. The nice guy who you think is backing you up all the way, and will always be there when you need them. Then suddenly, they can’t help. An excuse is given, one you want to believe, but deep down doesn’t seem sincere. You’re torn, do you call them on it, or ignore it and put it down to stress or just a momentary lapse in cognitive skills.
The paranoia that starts sinking in to the players as the game goes on is extremely funny. This was apparent in both games my group and I played. I’ll go into those later though.

The game provides the groups of survivors with a common objective to complete. This can be something simple such as the recommended starter objective (collecting samples of the zombies to find a cure). Or something much more complex that requires multiple objectives to be completed before the goal is fulfilled.

Trying to complete the main objective, whilst also managing your groups secret objective and also handling the days crisis and keeping the colony fed, clean and zombie free isn’t easy. But this is where the game becomes so satisfying and very fulfilling. There’s a lot to do, there’s a lot going on and you really have to work as a team with all the other players in order to get things done that are needed.

On to the Crisis cards. These are what make the game very exciting and intensify the whole experience of the game and the game play. Everyone becomes fixated with the crisis and mistakes are made. Survivors start to die, the colony begins to starve, the zombies start to gather around locations outside of the colony. It suddenly becomes more than a board game. You start to feel the reality. One persons mistake can cause major repercussions across the entire board, spanning all of the groups. So it’s wise to keep the crisis in check. The problem occurs when people you think are helping start to throw in other cards to “contribute” to the current crisis. No one sees what you’re throwing into the crisis pool. And when the crisis resolution phase rolls around, the pool of contributed cards are shuffled and then displayed. This way no one knows who added what. If the wrong types of cards are added, they can cause a crisis to occur rather than be avoided. This is when you know there’s a person with a betrayal secret objective at the table. Watch all the eyes suddenly go wide with horror, shock, surprise, disappointment, anger and finally as each pair of players eyes will then begin to scan the table, everyone suddenly full of suspicion and no longer knowing who they can trust or count on. The plot thickens. Players can vote people out of the colony. Those players are then exiled and have to survive outside of the colony walls.

The groups of survivors all need to search for food, medicine, tools, fuel and weapons in order to continue to survive in this harsh winter at the colony (this includes resolving the current crisis as well as finding stuff to fulfill their own secret objectives and also to keep the colony safe and fed). To do this they must travel outside of the colony’s security and into the surrounding, zombie infested, badlands (does it sound scary? It can get pretty bad out there, believe me). Travelling to a location requires risking your survivors lives. A single dice roll that goes bad and you’ve gotten people killed. This can really cause a chain reaction of bad events. More on that in a bit. Locations are places that hold different types and different numbers of resources based on the location. Such as the grocery store is going to be the best location to find food. The gas station will be the best for finding fuel and the police station will be the best for finding weapons. The problem is, each of these locations will attract zombies when there are survivors at that location. The more survivors there, the more zombies will be attracted. So now the players are forced to ensure they are managing the locations well too. This will involve barricades, killing zombies and also searching for resources.

Survivors can be injured, killed and cause the zombie infection to spread throughout an entire location (effectively killing every other survivor at that location). The survivors must look after each other and keep everyone in good health. Frostbite is one of the worst things that can happen to your survivors. Make sure to fix it quickly.

Once all the players have taken their turns, then the colony phase begins. This is where the group of players will take care of feeding the colony, dealing with starvation effects, resolving the current crisis, managing morale and checking that the waste pile hasn’t gotten out of hand. Crisis resolution is the part that will have everyone tense, wondering, paranoid, you may even start to hear accusations fly. It could even instigate a vote to exile a player on the next day (the new player phase).

All in all, if you want a co-op/defector game and love the zombie apocalypse setting. Then you need this game. Don’t be put off by the learning curve, play through it. Keep playing and you’ll really find everyone gets into it and wants to play again and again.

I was going to post a walk through of my first and second game stories here. But I’ll create a new post for those. Stay tuned.