BACKGROUND: Dead of Winter is a co-operative board game created Jonathan Gilmour, Isaac Vega in 2014, and published by Plaid Hat Games. Take the role of the last survivors of a zombie outbreak, with starvation, traitors, and frostbite as a few of the many threats throughout the game.
GAMEPLAY: Starting with the first player, each player takes their turns in order. The player to the right of the starting player draws and reads a Crossroad card, reading the italicized to themselves to check if it applies. If at any point the italicized is true during the players' turn, they read the card out loud. If its a numbered option, the player chooses, but if it's thumbs up/down, all players vote to determine the outcome. If the italicized text is never true during that players turn, it goes back to the bottom of the deck.
ACTIONS: During their turn, players may play any amount of cards from their hand, or put them in the crisis deck, move once per turn to an available location by rolling an exposure die to determine if they get a wound, request a specific item type to use immediately and not into the Crisis deck, give equipped items to a survivor in the same location, spend food to raise the value of a die, or use any of the players survivors that do not have a number. A player may also choose to vote a player to exile, preventing that player from returning to the Colony.
ACTION DIE: These actions require moving a die from the pool to the unused pool. A player can remove the top 3 waste cards, barricade a location to prevent zombies from coming, move 2 zombies from a location to that survivors location. By spending specific numbers, players can use certain survivors abilities. By spending a die equal to or higher that the Search rating or Attack rating on the survivors card, the player may respectively search a location they are at by taking the top card or placing a noise token to keep searching, or attack a zombie or survivor at their location.
COLONY: At the end of all players turn, the colony turns happens. First, the colony, if possible, spends the food in the supply equal to the number of Survivors and Helpless Survivors in the colony divided by 2 (rounded up). If not possible, the colony instead adds a Starvation token into the food supply and morale decreases by the amount of Starvation tokens. Every 10 cards in the waste pile decreases morale. Shuffle and reveal all the cards in the crisis deck. Every card meeting the crisis requirement adds 1 to the success, every card not meeting it subtracts 1. If the number is matching, the crisis is averted, but if not, the effect on the crisis triggers, and in both cases all cards contributing are discarded.
ZOMBIES: Zombies are added to the colony for every 2 Survivors and Helpless Survivors there, and are added to each location for every Zombie and Noise Token there. If there are more Zombies than locations, it's discarded, and the survivor with the lowest number in the top left rolls the d6 for each additional Zombie being added. If the roll is 3 or less, that survivor is killed. Then the round tracker goes down by 1.
DEATH: Death is real here, and punishing. Survivors die after 3 wounds or 1 bite, with equipment shuffled into the deck of the location they're at, or just dropped in the colony. That player loses a die, until they are down to 2. If a player loses all their survivors, they discard their hand, draw a new survivor and place the character on the board in the colony. If a survivor is bitten, they lose that survivor, the Morale tracker goes down by 1, and the player with the lowest influence on the board rolls to either survive or die and keep the spread going in that location, or die to end it.
EXILE: If a player is exiled, they draw the top card of the Exile deck and reveal their secret objective if they weren't the Traitor, and are given a new secret objective. If they were, they don't reveal, and their secret objective is slightly altered. All of the exiles survivors are moved immediately to any available location, rolling the exposure die. They cannot add cards to the crisis or Helpless Survivors to the colony, move to the colony, or use food tokens to adjust their die, only using food cards in their hand in the same manner. Any cards added to waste by the exile are removed instead, exiles cannot vote, and the morale doesn't go down if their survivors die. Morale drops to 0 if 2 non-traitors are exiled.
WINNING: After the zombies are added, the game ends if the Main Objective is cleared, or the Morale or Round tracker hits 0. In addition, each player is dealt a secret objective to complete before the game ends to win, some of which are traitors to act against the party. If the player completes their secret objective, they win. If not, they lose.
CONCLUSION: Ho boy, that's a lot of explanation. I usually try to summarize the rules for background, but this time was harder to do without losing the idea of how things worked. I feel like this game kept saying "but what about this situation". This is an interesting game about team-work, unity, and sacrificing for the betterment of the group. However, while I find the game fun for its strategy and cooperation, it's also nerve-wracking and mentally exhausting. Not only are the rules deep and complex, in game they are just as difficult to master. I like this game as I like This War of Mine, it's interesting, and there's some choices that make it 'fun', but this is easily a game that can split opinions, and a game that leads you to a crossroads makes it difficult to recommend to all players. This is for a specific group that can make it fun and be focused on it, but due to length and difficulty, it's really only for that group.
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