What a great game.
Basically, Dead of winter is a mostly co-operative resource management game and a race against the clock. This is probably our favorite zombie game, definitely easier on the wallet than going 900 bucks into zombicide.
Zombies are treated as a resource that needs to be managed, along with food, tools, weapons, helpless and useless mouths to feed, books, and medicine. The game is divided into 2 phases: each players independent turn, and the groups team phase. Every team phase will introduce a new "challenge," which is just a resource that must be gathered, and donated to the group pile, before all the players' individual turns are over. The group will have a main game goal, which everyone generally tries to accomplish, such as: kill so many zombies, keep people from starving for so long, save so many other survivors. On top of this main goal, each individual player has their own goal to accomplish, and some of them run counter to the main groups goal, a few of them are "betrayal" goals, which usually spell disaster for the main group. In order to win, players must defeat the board's countdown, manage group resources to accomplish the group's goals and challenges, and accomplish their own individual goal.
The long night introduces a few new elements, which are mostly beneficial for the players: improvements for the base, additional areas to search, additional items for each area, and 20ish new survivors. On top of these new elements, the generic items have been updated to include additional abilities, and some tokens had reverse sides which turn barricades into explosive traps or useless survivors into unruly survivors for example.
We play the snot out of this game. most scenarios generally take us 2ish hours to play through, setup takes 10-15 minutes. expect a little longer for your initial runthrough of the game.
Couple great elements of this game :
a zombie bite = a dead character and the chance to spread the bite. This is great, definitely adds to the survival horror feel, we appreciate this mechanic than those in games like zombicide or last night on earth, where you take multiple zombie bites to kill off a character.
Crossroads cards add a semi roleplaying / storytelling element to the game. each individual player turn someone will draw a card, and check to see if it's circumstances are met. If they have been met, a story gets read, and usually the player who's turn it is usually gets to choose an option, sometimes good, sometimes simply less bad.
The game manuals are very clearly written, and include a campaign types playthrough option, which is designed to introduce the newer elements to the expansion gradually (in the long night) or increase difficulty gradually and tell a story in the original game.
Some things to keep in mind. Long Night is not required to play the core game. The core game gets mostly replaced with the Long Night. If you have to choose between one or the other, I would grab the Long Night first, as it includes more than the original. The original survivors are still very playable in the expansion, as are all of the other cards. you can include 18 or 19 of the survivors from the expansion to the original without any trouble, the other two require elements from the Long Night to take advantage their abilities. Also, don't ebay the special release characters for $20 each, Plaid Hat lists them on their website at a reasonable price. One more thing the Expansion has over the original, the cardstock / paper stock cutouts for the areas you explore during the game have been replaced with high quality, thick, game board material. Plaid Hat, you guys hit the ball outa the park on this one. I laminated my old ones, and I'll probably do it with the new thick cutouts, but It's definitely not necessary.
Dead of winter has replaced Last Night on Earth as our default Zombie game, and the game play is different enough that we still play Last Night on Earth also.
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Revised Review - Get original
Pro* Video rules online* Random events* Different objectives* Good Re-Play* Bandits* Raxxon* UpgradesCons* Special zombies* Lots of things to remember* Setup and cleanup* Raxxon* Story isn't as good as original* Not as many main objection cards* Theme(This will basically be the same review for Dead of Winter)I pre-ordered this game directly from Plaid Hat Games.I hate zombies, I am not a zombie fan, in fact, I am sick of the whole zombie craze. THIS GAME IS FREAKING AWESOME!Wow, where do I begin with this game? Things you need to do in the game:- Worry about your secret objective- Find the person that is the betrayer (if there is one)- Deal with the Crisis each round (bad things happen if you don't)- Deal with the trash building up- Deal with the main objective- Deal with the Crossroad Card if it gets played- Deal with feeding all the helpless survivors- Deal with moving and rolling the exposure die- Deal with the bandits- Deal with Raxxon- Deal with the zombiesLike I said, there is a lot in the game, and it really keeps you on your toes.I've played with 1 and 4 player games of this, but just like the original, I think it would scale well with 1 - 5. I prefer to play with 2 and 3 players better, mainly because it seems easier, it may not be, just seemed like it. Many of the main objectives and most of the Crisis cards say something to the effect of needing say food cards for every non-exiled player x2. So if you have 4 players, and nobody has been exiled yet, you need 8 food cards, but you also need food to feed your people. If you only play with 2 people, then you need 4.The exposure die SUCKS! Every time you move unless your character says otherwise, or you use a card, you need to roll for exposure. This can be anything from nothing happens, to getting a wound (3 kills you), getting frostbite (1 wound each round), or getting bit. Getting bit kills you if you moved to a location where there are other survivors, one of them is infected, and you can either kill them, or roll the die. If you roll the die and get anything other than nothing, they die, and another survivor gets infected. Every time someone dies you loose a morale, if morale goes down to 0, you loose.Some issues with this version. Raxxon, I both love it and hate it. Having to give dice away to 'seal' the special zombies from getting loose every round SUCKS. My group adds the audio logs that releases the zombies in with the normal search deck. Then, if you search and take the top card, and the next one is an audio log, you have to deal with it. Makes it a bit more dangerous to search there (every search you also have to roll the exposure die).The bandits suck too. You can kill them, or be their leader if you are not the betrayer and get exiled, but they can take good things from the search piles you need. They also take up space so you can't go there, and help an area get overrun faster! Least you can go to their hideout and try and get items back.Another new good addition to the game are the upgrades you can do to your colony. You can add turrets, hunting blinds, DVD player, gardens, etc.. All are very helpful, and is a very welcome addition to the game.My biggest issue with this version is the story of the game. In the original, you had a good amount of main objectives to pick from, and then read a little story before playing. This one, much less main objectives, and only one that would take 5+ hours to play has a story to read. I personally pick from the original game's main objectives to play this version.If you are good at keeping track of things and can deal with the pressure, and anxiety, this is an awesome game! If you are thinking of getting this game, get Dead of Winter: The Long Night instead, it is just as good, better in some ways, but worse in others. Still, a better copy to get.*** UPDATE 5/31/2017 ***Dropped a few stars for me. I do like DoW:The Long Night, but DoW I think is just better. This version really pulls you out of the theme more, if feels rushed. Recently had a Crisis card state that if we were unable to complete it, we would lose 2 food, and everyone playing had to share a secret that nobody else at the table knew about us or loose another food. Really? That card, along with the lack of main objective cards and story for each main opbjective puts the original game on the top shelf.
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