The world as we know it has ended and humanity lives in small colonies anywhere they can find food and shelter. Game publisher Plaid Hat Games decided that the Dead of Winter zombies are of the slow, shambling variety (seen in The Walking Dead, George Romero's Series) which is fortunate because we're going to need all the help we can get. We'll leave the fast zombies (Left 4 Dead, 28 Days Later, and World War Z) to the professionals.TL;DR
Dead of Winter is a blast, but there's a lot for a new player to take in. A single game of Dead of Winter can take up to two hours, so if your group typically doesn't have a lot of time, you should pass on this game. If cooperative games are something your group likes, this will be a hit. With it's huge cast of characters and decent selection of main objectives, Dead of Winter has a lot of replay value. The game is heavy with roleplay elements that are great for immersing your story-driven players.
Pros
Lots of variety
Immersive gameplay
Characters are unique and fun to play
Can play co-op or with a betrayer
Difficulty scales well with group size
Has a hardcore setting for a bigger challenge
Incredible theme with artwork and writing
Cons
Can be overwhelming for beginners
Mistakes can spiral out of control
Many, many small pieces
Needs a box organizer
Has some mature themes/gruesome art
Objectives
The players are members of a survivor colony trying to last through the winter with an ever-dwindling amount of supplies. Will they stand together in the face of adversity, or abandon all hope as morale drops to an all-time low? Dead of Winter suits 2 to 5 players, and definitely gets more fun as you add more people. It's nice to have games that go beyond 4 players, which seems to be a common cut-off point for group size. Having more players doesn't trivialize the game mechanics either, since they are tied to the number of players (or characters) anyways.
Winning the game comes down to completing the Main Objective, such as maintaining a supply of food or eliminating a requisite number of zombies, before the deadline. Each player also has his or her own personal objective that they are trying to achieve, such as having food, weapons, or fuel in their inventory as the game ends. Beware the betrayer, a player with a personal objective to sabotage the group as they struggle to survive. Most betrayer objectives involve reducing the groups morale to 0 and owning a particular set of items. Playing with a betrayer is optional, but it really takes the stress of surviving to the next level.
All is not lost if you have a betrayer in your colony. Colony members can call a vote to exile somebody from the colony at any time for any reason. The exiled player gets to keep their characters and equipment, but they draw a new personal objective card. From a player perspective, it's really nice that getting exiled doesn't mean, "Okay, Matt, you're exiled. Go sit in the other room until we're done playing. You lost." Exiled players can still play (and even win the game) alongside the non-exiled players.
Between the main and personal objectives, players typically have their hands full. Most games would say, "Alright thats enough to keep them busy." Dead of Winter is not most games. Each round has a "Crisis" that occurs, which also demands an amount of food, medicine, or fuel. Players are forced to make tough choices, "Do I use this medicine on myself, or put it toward the crisis? I will die if I take one more wound, and I need to scavenge for supplies. But there's two players after me before the round ends, maybe they can get the rest of the medicine. But they also might need to get supplies for themselves too." You can see how a single minor choice can impact the entire table.
The only reward for completing the crisis is avoiding the penalty for not completing it. You don't get anything, you just hold on for one more round. If you beat the crisis and then dump a few extra resources towards it, you can gain morale, at the risk of being short-handed next time. The penalty for failing to meet the requirements of a crisis varies from bad stuff to very bad stuff.
Gameplay
Dead of Winter's gameplay is riddled with choices, especially the press-your-luck kind. Each player only gets a few of actions each turn, and some require the player to roll for "exposure," the inherent danger in this frozen, zombie-filled wasteland the characters live in. It's a brilliant way that the gameplay reinforces the theme of the game. Exposure is rolled with a red 12-sided die, with six safe sides, two frostbite sides, three wound sides, and one zombie bite side that not only instantly kills your character, but turns them into a zombie that attacks all nearby survivors.
When traveling between locations, players roll exposure, since the characters are out in the cold and zombies are everywhere. Fuel cards can be spent in lieu of rolling the exposure die. This represents your character driving a car safely to and from the area, but at the cost of resources. It's that risk-reward choice again. "We need supplies, I could use some fuel to go scavenge safely, but that's one less resource we'll have, so I'd need to find really useful stuff to make it worth it. Or I could take a chance on rolling for exposure and maybe take a wound or even die outright."
Every time you touch that red die, your character has a, 8.3% chance of outright dying and possibly killing everybody else around you. But hey, you have a 50% chance of being totally fine. How much of a gambler are you?
Finally, you've made it through the snow and ice and zombies and you're at the gas station, now it's just a matter of grabbing everything and getting the hell out of there. Wrong. You get to draw one card and keep it. Don't want that card? Well, you could look at another card, if you don't mind taking a risk (seeing a trend yet?) Each additional card you look at adds a "noise token," up to four extra times. It's the character looking more thoroughly in the area, tripping over debris and knocking shelves over. Stumbling around in the dark looking for cans of food, bullets, and pill bottles is not a quiet process, and zombies get attracted to the sound. Again, the mechanics reinforce the theme. Anyways, at the end of the round, zombies are added to locations, a 6-sided die is rolled for each noise counter on an area, for every 5 or 6 rolled, a zombie is added. Additionally, one zombie per character at a location is added automatically. Most non-colony locations can only fit 3-4 zombies, and if an area fills up, characters there get overrun and die. Are you seeing how this can get out of hand? So maybe you don't want that fuel card you drew, but how badly did you want something else?
Characters
There are a lot of characters in this game. The base game comes with thirty unique characters, and there are three promo characters that have been released as well. The characters have their profession listed on the card, which gives you some nice context for their special ability. You have your typical pre-apocalypse jobs like accountant and lawyer, and a couple of oddball ones like pirate, ninja, and stunt dog. Yes, you can play as a golden retriever in the zombie apocalypse. You should, too, if you get the chance.
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| With an army of characters to choose from, each game is different. |
There's no hard limit to the amount of characters you can control, but more characters attract more zombies and consume more food, so you'll need to make sure you can support them all. If all the characters you control die, you're not out of the game, just draw a fresh one and try not to turn this one into zombie poop.
Crossroads
It's called Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game, after all. In addition to those tough decisions, each player has a "Crossroads" card that comes up on their turn. Crossroads cards are activated in different ways, such as "A character from the colony goes to the gas station." Once activated, the card presents a particular choice to the player or group.
"You find a map, it looks like coordinates for a supply drop back when things weren't as bad. Maybe it's still out there. Option 1: Follow the map to the supply drop. Gain 3 food. Roll for exposure twice. Option 2: It's not worth the risk, I'd freeze to death before I found anything. Nothing happens."
Alright more choices: Do I want to hunt around in the cold for some much-needed supplies, or play it safe and stick to what I can find in the gas station? Three food is a lot, and it won't even cost me an action. This could be a big turn for me. On the other hand, I might die out there, and we really need this character's ability.
Additionally, every character has a crossroads card in the deck that is specific to them. It might only trigger if they are in play, or offer a special option if they are in play. Going back to the previous example, the crossroads card might say, "Option 3: If so-and-so the survival expert is in play, he leads you to the supplies with no trouble. Gain 3 food. Do not roll for exposure." It's a good feeling when your character gives your team a bonus through the crossroads mechanic. The crossroad cards bring more depth to the characters this way, you see how they respond to problems and (sometimes) get a peek into who they were before the world went to hell.
Before we move on, I offer you three words: Sparky's crossroad card.
Theme/Immersion
I feel like I don't really need to make this it's own section, but I'm going to anyways. Dead of Winter is one of the most immersive games I've ever played (aside from roleplay games like Dungeons and Dragons.) If immersion is something you and your friends want, this game will not disappoint. I'm not even a big zombie fan and I thoroughly enjoy this game.
You don't even have to take my word for it (even though you should.) Dead of Winter won two awards for best theme in 2014, one from Dice Tower, and one from BoardGameGeek. If that still doesn't convince you, then you're in luck because I have more stuff typed out down here.
All of the visual designs for Dead of Winter are spot-on. The cards, game board, and location sheets all have this worn edge design to them that makes it look like they were written on whatever scrap was on hand. The crisis cards convey the feeling of hopelessness, emergency, or misfortune. It's especially cool how the images on the crisis cards are colored using only shades of gray and bright red. It really makes the world seem bleak and desolate.
The characters look great on their cards. Thirty-three characters in total, and they all look (mostly) different. The way these people are portrayed gives some insight into their personality; the brazen sheriff takes off a zombies head with a baseball bat, the methodical doctor tests samples of zombie flesh, the weary trucker sits down with a beer and a thousand-yard stare. Bright red accents make another appearance in these illustrations, but on a handful of them it is suspiciously absent. The instruction manual gives credit to Fernanda Suarez for illustrations, while David Richards and Peter Wocken are noted for graphic design. Great job guys.
Writing is equally important for theme, and Dead of Winter has some real talent on hand in that department as well. The passages in the instruction manual waste no time getting you right into the story. Each main objective has it's own introduction paragraph that you read out before you begin, and they're all great.
"Is today Groundhog’s Day? I can’t remember anymore. Weird how hunger lets one dwell on such trivial thoughts. Shouldn’t every brain cell be conserved right now? The canned goods ran out a week ago, and the grains followed soon after. The chickens are gone and so is the last of the venison. We’re living off what scraps we find in town, but they aren’t enough. I’ve never thought myself an evil man, but God help me, my thoughts are dark of late. I know I’m not the only one. There just isn’t enough food to go around, and it’s hard not to feel bitter when it has to be shared with people who don’t pull their own weight. These thoughts are wrong. I know that. It’s no one’s fault that the skill they possess belong to another world. Another time. Our intellectual capacity is what separates us from animals, yet when our most basic needs cannot be met, it’s hard not think and act like animals."
So good! How's that for immersion? The colony is balanced on a razor edge, trying not to fall away from everything that makes them human. They're starving, cold, and living in constant fear. Survival instincts within the people are telling them to shed morality and do what has to be done in order to live.
Speaking of humanity (or lack of) there are several passages that you read if the betrayer wins. All of them are dark, grisly outcomes and there is one for each betrayer mission. My advice is don't let the betrayer win (easy, right?) because these conclusion paragraphs will bum your table out for the rest of the night. The manual tells us that Mr. Bistro is the mind behind the incredible writing in Dead of Winter.
The Pieces
Oh, the pieces. There are a lot of them. There's over 190 parts in the box, and most of them smaller than a nickel. Now, you won't need all of those pieces every game, but you will need them on-hand. You can use twenty different little plastic bags for everything if you want, but I would absolutely suggest getting a box organizer if you intend to play this game more than once. I got mine from thebrokentoken.com and it was $28. The price is well worth it. The organizer is solid wood, great quality, and doesn't come apart when you pick it up. It will cut your set-up time down drastically and you won't have pieces falling off the table left and right or decks of cards getting knocked over.
With that said, the cards and pieces in Dead of Winter are decent quality cardboard. They don't feel flimsy and they have held up well over the course of many games. The character standees have great detail, making it easy to pick your doctor, librarian, or sheriff out from across the table. My only complaint, and it's a minor one, is that the fortune teller's standee looks a lot like a zombie. We've had a couple mix-ups with her in the past, but it didn't break the game or anything.
The zombie standees are equally detailed, but there are only 3 different designs for them, so you'll be seeing that same guy-in-a-tan-jacket zombie a lot. I wish the game included a few more zombie standees, because it only comes with thirty. After you've got all thirty zombie standees on the board, you have to switch to the little flat zombie tokens for the extra. I'm thankful they included those so that we don't have to use pennies or something, but they get easily overlooked and sometimes we unintentionally cheat. I suppose running out of zombie standees is the game's subtle way of telling you to get your act together and start cleaning house.
Conclusion
I think just about everybody should own a copy of dead of winter. I would only suggest against it if you only play with young children, or if you simply never have the time for a long (90+ minute) game like this. Its pricing of $42 is about the average cost of this kind of game. The mechanics work well, the characters are vibrant and fun to play, and the variety of main objectives gives you the reason to play again and again. Get out there and team up with your friends to smash some zombies, fortify your colony, and survive the Dead of Winter.
