Welcome to Dead of Winter!

Dead of Winter is a thrilling game of survival, where we’ll work together to achieve a common victory. But here’s the twist – each of us has our own secret objective to fulfill alongside the main goal. It’s a delicate balance between personal ambition and the greater good.

Mind you, while we’re all striving for success, it’s important to watch out for each other. Will you do whatever it takes to come out on top, even if it means throwing others under the bus? Or will you choose teamwork, ensuring everyone has a shot at winning?

Getting Started

Okay, let’s get started with the setup. First, place the main board right in the center of your playing area. Surround it with six location cards. Each player needs to grab a reference sheet. Next, everyone decides on a common objective to work towards. Take the chosen objective card and put it in the designated spot on the colony board. Make sure to follow the instructions on the card.

Now it’s time to deal with the secret objective cards. Shuffle them up and set aside two cards for each player, facing down. The rest of the secret objective cards can be put back in the box, as they won’t be used during the game. The betrayal objective cards also need to be shuffled. Add only one of them to the other cards that were previously set aside. Shuffle all the cards that were set aside together, and then deal one to each player.

When you play the game, it’s really important to keep your objective a secret. If another player finds out what it is, they might try to mess things up for you. So, here’s what you need to do: first, take all the crisis cards and shuffle them. Then, put them on the assigned space of the colony board. Next, you’ll need to shuffle the crossroad cards, exiled objective cards, and survivor cards. Make sure to keep them in separate decks next to the board.

Now, let’s talk about the starter item cards. Shuffle them up and deal five cards to each player. You can put the rest of the cards back in the box. The other item cards need to be separated based on where they belong. Make sure to put them on the location card that matches their category. And don’t forget about the survivor cards! Each player gets four of them. Take some time to choose two cards to keep and two cards to discard. The card you choose to keep will be the leader of your group.

Once the survivors have been chosen, one survivor card is placed on the player’s reference sheet in the colony occupants section. The standees and tokens are then distributed among all players and placed within easy reach. The player who has the group leader with the highest influence is awarded the starting player token. Now, we’re ready to start the game!

How to Play

The game is divided into rounds, and each round is made up of two phases: the player turns phase and the colony phase. These phases must be played in the specified order.

Player Turns Phase

When it’s my turn to play, I reveal the crisis and roll the action dice. The crisis is shared with everyone in the group. I get one action die for myself and one for each survivor I control. Once I roll the dice, I have to keep the results in my unused action die pool. Then, I can take as many actions as I want during my turn. The other players take their turns in clockwise order until everyone has finished.

Once all the players have taken their turns, the colony phase begins. In this phase, we pay for food, check for waste, resolve the crisis, add zombies, check the main objective, move the round tracker, and pass the starting player token.

Colony Phase

When you have a group of survivors in the colony, I’ll give you one food token for every two survivors. You can use these tokens to feed the colony and keep everyone happy. But here’s the catch, sometimes there might not be enough food tokens to go around. In that case, we don’t take any tokens, but we add a starvation token to our supply. And for every starvation token we have, morale takes a hit and decreases by one point. So it’s important to make sure we have enough food to keep everyone fed and morale high.

Once we’ve taken our food tokens, we need to check the waste pile. This is where we throw away all the cards that we don’t need anymore. We count the cards in the waste pile, and for every ten cards, morale decreases by one point. So it’s crucial to manage our waste and keep it under control to maintain high morale in the colony.

Now, let’s talk about what happens next. It’s time for the players to deal with any issues that have come up. We take the cards that were added to the crisis during the player turns phase and shuffle them. Then, one card is revealed at a time.

Here’s how it works: if an item card has a symbol in the prevention section that matches one of the symbols on the crisis card, it adds one point. On the other hand, if it doesn’t have a matching symbol, it subtracts one point.

After tallying up all the points, we compare the total to the number of players. If the total is equal to or greater than the number of players, hooray! The crisis is prevented. But if the total is lower than the number of players, we have a problem. The crisis must be resolved right away.

Once the crisis is over or avoided, we have to deal with the zombies. We add one zombie to the colony for every two survivors we find there. And for every survivor we find in other locations, we add one zombie to that location. If a location has a noise token, we roll an action dice for each one. If the result is three or less, we add a zombie to that location.

After all the zombies are added, we need to check the main objective. If we’ve achieved it, the game ends. But if we haven’t, the game continues. In that case, we move the round tracker one space down the track. When it reaches zero, the game is over. And just to mix things up, we give the starting player token to the player on the right of the current owner.

The game will keep going until it finally ends.

THE END OF THE GAME

There are a few reasons why the game may come to an end. It could be because the morale track or the round track reaches zero. Or, it might end when the main objective is completed. Once the game is over, it’s time to determine if we won or lost.

So, when the game does come to a close, if we managed to complete our objective, we win. However, if we haven’t finished our objective, then we lose. It’s possible for there to be many winners, but it’s also possible for everyone to lose.

Hey, I’m Ellie! Northeast Tennessee is my home. I adore all animals no matter their shape or size, and I’m a huge fan of fantasy novels and spending time outdoors. Lucky for me, I have an amazing husband who loves me almost as much as our two furry companions. Being a part of this fantastic community brings me so much joy.