Review Details

Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game

Product Review (submitted on September 7, 2016):

Quick Word

I am a little sick of Zombie games, lemme just get that outta the way from the start. I traded Zombicide (without even playing it), and still have Zombie Dice, Last night on Earth, Run, Fight, or Die, City of Horror, Zombies!! + like 30 expansions (that I refuse to play) and like a few other ones I cannot think of. I don’t really go looking for new ones as I have gotten more and more into games I can play with my family and the graphic content involved in these games prohibits that. That all being said, after the initial eye roll reaction I had when this game was announced I kind of forgot about it as a whole. That is, until my brother told me he had pre-ordered it as a gift (but not from the company so I did not get my promo characters, the sadness…). Planning on selling it unopened I went online to find a review. There was one or two video reviews but I was at work and could not watch them so again, I forgot about it. The day came and the package arrived and I went online only to stumble over the Geek & Sundry video.

I called up my brothers and we played the game that night because Ashley Johnson can sell anything.

Brief Game Synopsis

In Dead of Winter players assume the roles of a colony of survivors as they attempt to live through the hellish nightmare of a long winter in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. A specific scenario the colony follows and a personal objective each player secretly holds combine together to guide the choices made each round by the group in order to a achieve a successful and happy ending to their story. The rub is, each player’s secret objective might put them in a direct conflict with another player or the colony as a whole.

The specific rules are covered nicely elsewhere (although I would just watch the video and then reference Universal Heads rules summary in the files section).

Toys With Rules

The rulebook is pretty nice to look at visually, and is laid out in a clear and logical format that makes reading through it quite easy. Despite the efficiency of the rulebook, it is still easy to miss things your first time through and as such, I recommend not only watching a gameplay example and downloading a rules reference but also playing through a round or two yourself before bringing the game out with your group.

One of the greatest things about Dead of Winter is also one of the worst things about it; there are many choices a player can make on their turn and variety of unique options and decisions to be made that it can make teaching the game quite difficult despite the – and let’s be honest here – fairly uninteresting game mechanics.

The dice allocation for your actions has been done before (but c’mon, what hasn’t) and the battle mechanics are nothing to write home about. Wait though, because I am not really complaining. I think they do their job quite well because they are streamlined and don’t really take you away from the action…once you get the hang of it anyway. And the theme and action are what sell the game and what players will get lost in.

I will say games with a hidden traitor mechanic can sometimes hurt the game as they can make everything a little too difficult for the survivors and boring if the traitor is discovered. That is where the exile mechanic of this game shines. It prevents player elimination and keeps everyone engaged. I have even been involved in a game where the traitor outed themselves (although I do not remember why now but I know they had a compelling argument for it at the time) and one instance where we knew we had no traitor but exiled someone because…well, their objective hurt us and the player was prone to Analysis Paralysis so they deserved to be punished.

Boards ‘N Bits

Whereas Fantasy Flight does a simply stellar job of creating games with wonderfully rich and beautiful components that sometimes feel pasted on, the folks over at Plaid Hat Games know how to create games oozing theme that enriches gameplay in a thematic way. Dead of Winter features simply gorgeous artwork and has such an unusual cast of quirky characters that you find yourself drawn to them and playing as you think they would. Are you the grungy Mall Santa or the honorable looking Ninja or the skeezy looking Mayor or the freaking PIRATE? In most games I have played of Dead of Winter the characters physical representation somehow seems to influence the player controlling him…sometimes to funny conclusions, sometimes to infuriating choices made that hurt the colony as a whole.

I know when I first unboxed this game some of the people in my group were initially upset that there were cardboard standees instead of miniatures (the beautiful miniatures in Redwall – er, I mean Mice and Mystics may have gotten them spoiled). However, once I pointed out I don’t know how to paint miniatures and that the cardboard standees more clearly give a visual feeling for (not to mention make it easier to differentiate) the character on the board(s). Everyone not only quickly agreed but ended up talking at length about how much they enjoyed the art as new characters came out.

The bluish dice are functional as are the other card board tokens. The exposure die looks really cool and the first player knife token has resulted in a lot of silliness – not to mention Crocodile Dundee and Rambo movie quotes.

I have seen some mods to make canned food and frosted/blood tipped dice but am skeptical that they are needed as I already feel fairly immersed in the game (and am also just not very good at doing those kind of things myself).

My Thoughts

Okay, so I Loved this game. Like with a capital “L”. If I were Tracey Jordan, I would say something along the lines of, “I love Dead of Winter so much, I want to take it behind a middle school and get it pregnant”. Which is not to say the game is without its flaws. Some of the secret objectives are very unbalanced in comparison to the others and some scenarios feel a little watered down as a whole. Five player games tend to drag on a little at times and players who suffer from Analysis Paralysis can really kill the fun in this kind of game. Also, Alpha gamers can be a bit of a problem here if not checked (reminding everyone that they could be a traitor). Actually, the Alpha gamer is the same guy who suffers AP in our group. To remedy it, people in my group have the audio files on their fancy phones that they play with quotes from The Big Lebowski telling him to shut the…well, to be quiet in a very firm fashion. This is used so often that we have gotten into the habit of saying, “the Dude abides” when answering Crossroad cards.

This has created a need in our group for Plaid Hat games to step up and make Big Lebowski themed characters to add into the game as promos. Donny, Walter, and the Dude would make this game epic beyond belief. Just saying…

In fact, as a whole the gaming community should stop the never ending demand for Cthulhu expansions (although I am totally addicted to them myself) and start demanding the Big Lebowski be injected into every game. They could totally work in games like Animal Upon Animal and T.I.M.E. Stories and SpyFall and Star Wars: Rebellion…right…well….amiright?

Fine. I may be alone on this one. I don’t care, because “the Dude abides”.

Guest’s Thoughts

Obviously, Dead of Winter is not suitable for my five year old (although I suspect he would like it and be better at it then some of those in my group) so I asked a friend to share with me his thoughts:

What stands out most to me? Well, it has been a few weeks since we last played it but I remember feeling that games tend to drag on and on and <NAME WITHHELD> really killed parts of it for me because he just took to darn long. Maybe it was the volume of choices available or that we were maxing out the player count or that he just really sucks at these kind of games but I think I liked our three player run through much, much more. That weird variant (Prisoners Dilemma) you had us use was fun. I think we also used it when just you and I played.

I’ve only played a half dozen or so times now but I know we got one guy who hates the game because he finds it boring. I think his real issue is a complaint I share. I have only triggered one or two crossroads cards and he has not only never triggered one.

I also feel that when you boil away all the theme and crap, it is actually a simple game with simple choices – although there are a healthy amount of them available. But the learning curve is not support by the games simplicity and as such feels really heavy to light gamers and really light to heavy gamers.

But yeah, I like the game. A lot. I actually think about it a lot and think of fun characters and scenarios and what not I would like to add. I would give the game two thumbs up or whatever arbitrary unit of measurement you use to rate games (I don’t rate games).

Pro’s

+ Grueling choices make you feel the rich theme
+ Great use of traitor and exiled mechanics
+ Visually stimulating

Con’s

- Difficult to teach as seems more complex then really is
- A lot to setup (especially when you have no help…cough cough, Steve, cough cough…
- Downtime can be an issue (especially with higher player counts on the longer scenarios)

Purchase, Play, or Pass

Although I am sure I will purchase Dead of Winter: Long Night when it is released I would still only be able to give Dead of Winter a Play simply due to the mixed responses I have received from the various people I have played with. On a personal level, this is easily in my top 10 games but I have issues rounding up more than two other people willing to play it at a time (thank you God for the Prisoners Dilemma variant).