Table of Contents
The weather has begun to cool down, days are getting shorter and the final leaves are beginning to drop from the trees.
Winter is a wonderful time of year!
Hot cocoa, blankets, sitting in front of the fire and… zombies?!
Welcome to Dead of Winter, a semi-cooperative survival horror game where you play as a group of survivors who come together to form a colony in an old warehouse that shields them from the harsh winter conditions of a world that has been taken over by zombies.
Players: 2 – 5
Duration: 60mins – 120mins
Price: Check Latest Price on Amazon
Dead of Winter Board Game Review
Dead of Winter is a game that casts players as a group of survivors living in a zombie apocalypse, working towards goals that will be different each time you play.
Players need to search for supplies, deal with crises, build defenses and of course – kill zombies.
Dead of Winter is an amazing board game that is a perfect mixture of survival, cooperation, horror and betrayal.
With the use of individual player secret objectives, no one knows the true motivations of their fellow players, making for a very tense and exciting game, with a ton of player interaction.
What's Inside the Box?
The box for Dead of Winter is standard size, but don’t let that fool you. The thing is heavy and for good reason. It contains over 32 different components:
- Rulebook (of course);
- Objective cards including (dual side main objective cards, secret objective cards, betrayal secret objective cards, and exiled secret objective cards).
- Survivor Cards (30);
- Player reference sheets;
- Item cards (starter items and items for all locations on the board);
- Crisis cards;
- Crossroads cards;
- Tokens for tracking various stats;
- The colony board;
- 30 Action dice;
- 1 Exposure dice.
As you can see there is an insane amount contained in the box. To keep everything organized you will need a bunch of bags (there are so many different decks of cards) or a handy foam insert like one of these.
Game Experience
Dead of Winter is one of the games that my group of friends and I keep coming back to.
While the game can easily be passed off as ‘just another zombie game’, when you scratch the surface you will find the game is so much more than that.
It’s easy to learn and does a great job of immersing players in the story. Everything from the components, cards and mechanics – including the cooperative and betrayal aspects, really have you feeling like you are a paranoid survivor trapped in a warehouse with strangers trying desperately to survive another day.
Players are all given a main objective to strive towards, but also have secret objectives they need to accomplish to win the game.
These personal objectives create a sense of mistrust that is so popular with hidden identity games – and produces situations where players need to decide, should I do what’s best for me? Or best for the group?
Dead of Winter has a high replay value with a bunch of objective cards included in the core game with play times clearly marked so you can choose whether you want a quick game or a marathon like campaign.
The game also includes so many non-betrayer and betrayer personal objectives that you can literally play the game hundreds of times and never have one that plays the same.
Character abilities in the game provide a real sense of difference, with some characters being better at some tasks than others, generating a real need for everyone to work together to get things done…
However, you need to be careful doing tasks that are above and beyond – as you may be helping someone else edge closer to victory.
One mechanic of the game I really enjoyed was the exile mechanic. A player (and all their characters) can be exiled from the colony if there is a unanimous vote amongst the other players.
The exiled player needs to take an ‘exiled secret objective card’ as well as physically having to leave the other survivors on the board.
The exiled secret objective card essentially eliminates all prior tasks for the player and creates new ones.
Exiling a traitor player can be a huge boon to the team, however if you get it wrong it can be hugely detrimental to the game!
Gameplay
Setup
At the start of the game the board is placed in the middle of the table and contains the starting location of the colony as well as all locations that can be discovered and searched.
Each location has its own deck of cards that contains supplies and survivors that can be found in that area.
The board also contains two tracks the ‘round’ and the ‘morale’ track.
The round tractor will go down once every turn, whereas the morale tracker will be moved up and down based on your actions in the game if either of these ever get to zero the survivors lose.
The crisis deck also gets placed on the board and the survivor and crossroad decks are to be kept nearby.
Next all players are dealt 4 character cards each of which they will pick 2 to play with (known as their following) and are also dealt their secret objectives randomly – the cards have a less than 50% chance of containing a betrayer card.
All players are also randomly given 5 cards from the starter items deck to get them started.
How to Play
Once the setup is complete – players need to read the section of the handbook as detailed on the main objective card which will outline the background of the story you will be playing as well as the win condition to end the game.
If you are able to complete the win condition of the main objective AND your secret objective – then congratulations you have survived the apocalypse and won the game!
Rounds of the game consist of the ‘player turn phase’ and the ‘colony phase’.
Player Turn Phase
At the start of the players turn phase, players will reveal the ‘crisis’ for that particular turn by drawing the top card of the crisis deck (yes you read that correctly. There is a different crisis every turn)!
The crisis card tells the players three things that they need to complete to resolve the crisis (as indicated by the symbol on the card which matches the symbols on different supply cards).
Crisis can range from illnesses to starvation and will cause penalties to the colony if they are not resolved before the end of the turn.
The next thing everyone does is roll their dice and place them on their player mat. As each player has two survivors in their following, they’d roll three dice (players always have the same number of dice as they have characters plus one), and then it’s time for players to take their turns.
Players have a number of actions they can perform each turn and these can easily be referenced on the player mat. Actions available are:
- Attacking a zombie or another survivor*;
- Moving a survivor;
- Search an area*;
- Barricade an area*;
- Clean rubbish*;
- Attract zombies with noise*;
- Use the survivor’s unique ability*;
- Vote to exile another player;
- Spend food tokens; or
- Trade items with other players.
* Actions with an asterisk require a certain dice roll (rolled previously) in order to carry out.
Colony Phase
During the colony phase, seven different effects take place:
- Food is paid for with food tokens – if there is not enough food starvation begins (which impacts morale).
- Waste is checked – again if the colony is filthy it affects morale.
- The crisis is resolved – either completed or failed.
- Additional zombies are added to the game depending on player location.
- The main objective is checked to see if it has been completed.
- If the main objective is not complete, the round tracker is moved forward.
- The ‘first player’ token is passed on to the player who played last in the previous round.
Players continue to play through rounds and search different areas of the board and ultimately try to complete both their secret objective and the main objective.
Along the way players can add to their survivor pool as well as discover super beneficial items like weapons that can make quality of life in the colony that much better.
Pros:
- Betrayer mechanic always makes the game intense
- Huge replay value
- Great story and theme, highly immersive
- Ability to choose game length
Cons:
- Best played with 3 – 4 players
- Can be pretty crap if you are exiled early!
Final Thoughts
Dead of Winter is a highly enjoyable game that brings together the best parts of coop, dungeon crawl, hidden identity and RPG games – to create a unique experience that is super fun and super tense to play.
The semi-cooperative nature of the game means that players are constantly interacting and trying to second guess each other and, even if its not their turn – they are paying close attention to others actions.
I love board games that keep players involved and chatting, so to me Dead of Winter is winner in my eyes as it ticks this box in a big way and is super entertaining to play!
