The move-in was fine, thanks. For a lot of reasons, I'm glad to be back in sunny California, PA. One of those reasons is that earlier this summer, I picked up a board game that I've been just itching to play, but could never convince anyone to learn with me. Luckily, I can always count on my roommates here at Cal to embark on all manner of tabletop misadventures with me. And misadventures were had. If you thought you hated your friends after a game of Monopoly or Settlers of Catan, then wait until you try Dead of Winter.
Title drop, table flip.
Dead of Winter, by Plaidhat Games, is a harrowing semi-cooperative board game for two to five players. As the name suggests, the game follows a colony of living survivors of a zombie apocalypse. Having played The Walking Dead games made by Telltale, I'm aware that a common survival strategy in zombie fiction is for the characters to seek out frigid climates where the dead will freeze out in the elements, rendering them harmless. The jury is out on how well that works for the scruffy survivors of The Walking Dead (at least as far as the games are concerned -- I'm unfamiliar with the comics or TV series). But Dead of Winter is clear on the matter: the cold season only compounds the problems of the living. Starvation and exposure loom ever closer to our heroes, as mobility and visibility are restricted by the harsh weather. Social tensions caused by these grim conditions might lead some to become suspicious, belligerent, and confrontational towards their fellow colonists. You can't be sure who's interested in the common good and who's just looking out for number one. Division. Betrayal. Tragedy. This is the picture that Dead of Winter paints, and every brushstroke is a masterwork.
Touch that can of beans and it'll be the last thing you do.
Every game of Dead of Winter has the players ostensibly cooperating to reach a primary objective. For our session, we were saddled with a group of helpless mouths to feed and told to hold out for eight rounds of play. Easy enough. But in addition to that goal, each player is also dealt a secret objective from the beginning of the game which they may not divulge to the group. When players draw for their secret objective, there will always be exactly one traitor card in the deck, but nobody but they will know who the traitor is, or even if there is one. It's possible that nobody will draw the traitor card. And if that wasn't enough, each player must also risk activating a Crossroads card on every single turn, which set unpredictable events into motion when triggered by a particular action, and usually have multiple options for how to handle the situation. The threat of tragedy is really around every turn, as all those little defeats chip away at the morale tracker and push your party ever closer to the edge of ruin. When morale reaches zero, that's it. Game over. Your survivors have given up on their namesake.
When the game's rules collide with the players' knowledge, intentions, and actions, they give rise to all kinds of brilliant emergent stories. My secret objective was to control only one survivor by the end of the game. Well, everybody starts with two, and a Crossroads card had at one point caused me to pick up a third follower as well. This was not a traitor objective, and yet the only way to complete it seemed to be to willfully slay my own characters by any means necessary. My plan was to take big risks with my two weaker survivors and keep my leader safe. I would keep rolling the dice, collecting whatever gains I could for the good of the colony, until my luck ran out. I found myself on one of the last turns, running out of time, with one too many followers still breathing. She was scouting the school for supplies with zombies filling the entrances. It was sloppy, but I had to leave her there to die, even as my teammates were telling me to move her to safety. I had no apparent reason not to do so. For my negligence bordering on manslaughter, my teammates suspicions led them to exile me from the colony. Players are exiled by majority vote, and are banned from re-entering the colony or contributing to most common goals. Exiled traitors are less able to harm the group, but banishing two innocent players spells an instant game over. Either way, any exiled player discards their previous objective and picks up a new one. And what new goal should I receive but "end the game with three survivors in your party!"
A two-handed facepalm: insufficient.
But you know what? I did it! It took me all of my action dice on the final turn, but I managed to scare up two more unwitting survivors who apparently hadn't heard what happened to the last two. Everybody won that game. Of course, not every emergent story ends so happily. In our second game, I realized we wouldn't be able to prevent a loss due to starvation, so I urged my teammates to exile me, even though I wasn't the traitor. Our food stores would last for just one more precious turn, and though my survivors surely would not last long on the outside, their deaths would not affect the morale tracker. So, I made the sacrifice. My selfless act did not go unrecognized. The replacement objective I received? "Atonement: You win if the main objective is completed." Things looked good at first, but... Well, when survivors move without spending fuel, they must make an Exposure roll. The twelve sided die has a chance to give you wounds, frostbite, a free pass... or with a one in twelve chance, instant death via zombie bite. I unfortunately received the latter result for a moving survivor before I was actually exiled. Minus one morale. On the last turn, when one of my roommates was moving out of a zombie infested location to the certain safety of the colony... another stroke of bad luck. One in twelve. Chomp. Gone.
My last survivor was Talia Jones, a fortune teller. She was at the hospital on the last turn, when the starvation took its toll, and zombies filled every doorway. I imagined her watching from the rooftop as morale collapsed, her friends and comrades gave up hope, and the colony collapsed. I imagined her seeing, as I could, that her sacrifice was ultimately in vain.
I wonder if she saw it coming.
Dead of Winter is a game that will push you to squeeze everything you can out of each turn. The objectives might seem simple at first, but as the turns roll on and morale takes hit after hit, you'll start taking more risks just to survive it to the next round. Relying on your teammates could get you killed. Trying to go it alone could get you killed. To risk or not risk; to trust or not trust. That's the choice that Dead of Winter offers. How would you survive?
If you want to see the game in action, check out this video of Wil Wheaton, Grant Imahara, Dodger Leigh, and Ashley Johnson playing the game on Geek & Sundry's TableTop series.
