This will usually require the survivors to gather a particular type or combination of resources and contribute them to the crisis. When the colony starts to starve, morale begins to drop, and the more times people go without food the faster morale goes down.Įach round there will also be a crisis card to resolve. The more people at the colony, the more food you need to have in the stores each turn. The people at the colony need to be fed, and this can include Helpless Survivors who consume food but don’t contribute anything to the colony. If at any point during your turn the trigger requirement is met, that player reads out the card, which usually presents a choice of two or more options for dealing with a situation that has arisen. Each turn, the player to your right will be holding one of these that has a secret “trigger” event on it. Doing especially well on a Crisis can increase morale.Īnother fun element of Dead of Winter is the Crossroads cards. Morale can drop for a number of reasons, such as when a survivor dies, as a result of a Crisis or Crossroads event going badly, or by having too many cards in the waste pile (discard pile) at the end of the round. Run out of morale (you guessed it) the game ends. Complete the main objective, the game ends. When the turn counter hits zero, the game ends. Each scenario (main objective) has a certain number of rounds that it goes for, and a certain amount of Morale that the colony starts with. Usually this will be to complete the main objective and an additional requirement, except for the betrayal objectives which do not need the main objective to be completed. There are a few ways the game can end, and when it does everyone checks the win conditions on their secret objective. To further complicate matters, exiled players get a modification to their secret objective–which can include looking to get vengeance on the colony, or seeking redemption.
Also, since for a non-betrayer player to win they need to complete their secret goal as well as the main objective, there will be times when someone is not working towards (or deliberately slowing down) the completion of the main objective.Īdditionally, you only get to vote out one person per game. The betrayer will be doing their best to hide their secret agenda as long as possible, and a lot of the non-betrayer secret goals can lead to some suspicious-seeming behavior, such as hoarding supplies that could benefit the rest of the colony. Players can try to identify a betrayer and vote them into exile, but this isn’t as easy as it sounds.
At the start of the game, secret objectives equal to twice the number of players are shuffled together with a single betrayer card and one is dealt to each player, so no one knows for sure if there is a traitor among them or not. There may not be a betrayer at all, though. As an added complication, there is a chance that one of the players is holding a Betrayal secret objective and is working against the rest of the group. The colony as a group has a main objective that everyone (or almost everyone) is working towards, but in order to win each player must also complete a secret objective. One part of the game that I particularly like is the secret objectives.
What makes this game stand out for me is that it has a number of fun mechanics that can lead to some subtle game play, interesting social/group interactions, and bring out some of the popular elements of the zombie apocalypse genre.