Dead Of Winter

[Nefaro]

Just got my back-ordered Dead Of Winter copy in from Plaid Hat Games.

The artwork layout looks great.  There's not a huge amount of components but they're nice enough to make me want to touch the cards and feel their texture quite often.  :D

Been watching Ricky Royal's playthrough of the solitaire rules.  Looks like it could get pretty brutal later in the game.  I will probably give that a spin after a brief learning stint with Xia. 

[Nefaro]

Took this shot for showing the pair of game mats I've been using on my table, in the DIY section, but I should add this here since it's a Dead Of Winter game.

It's one of the simpler 'designer' games I've played lately, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.  The solo variant played fairly quickly and there wasn't a ton of fidgety crap to remember.  The available actions and turn order drive the gameplay and those are listed on each player's card. 

It is primarily focused on resource/hand management, risk vs reward searches for those resources, and utilizing those resources for your own (randomly dealt) personal goal.  I think they call it semi-cooperative since there is not only a main group goal but each player also gets their own secret goal.  Usually the secret one says "complete the main goal, plus this extra stuff to win" but there is also a Betrayer card normally seeded into these cards. Which means that player will need to sabotage the overall group effort but still accomplish their own, in order to win.  That person will have to be sneaky for as long as possible because the group can vote to banish a player from the colony, which means they are then running solo in the outside locations. The default setup for these secret objectives means that not every game will have a betrayer so it keeps the tension on as to whether you may be banishing an innocent who could've helped the colony survive.


There are no blind die rolls for actions, such as combat.  You roll your allotted action dice at the beginning of the turn and then you must plan how you want to use them, as you will already know how many successes you could possibly have at specific actions (such as combat).  It expands the resource management & planning style of gameplay even further, to your actions and what you can accomplish every turn.  I believe this also helps the game flow more smoothly since players will already be able to formulate their plans during other players' actions, and plan ahead as a team (it is primarily co-op).

I can see why this is so popular for multi-player games, between the possible Betrayer mechanic and the Crossroads cards that can trigger tough (and sometimes morally questionable) thematic decisions, as both individual and group votes.  Yet it seems easy to teach & remember, and probably moves along at a decent clip without getting bogged down too much at certain points.

The solitaire game is light fun that seemed to flow easily without referencing a lot of rules.  Although you must make some adjustments on the Crossroads card triggers, as each is supposed to be secret until the condition is met that turn.  I just planned my turn's actions out beforehand, then drew the card to see if it would happen.  Thankfully, the game can still be challenging in solitaire play.  I went 1-1 in the two scenarios I tried.

The game is very elegant & streamlined in it's relative simplicity, yet retains a good amount of co-op decision making.