In the winter cave

Board games are a great way to slip into another world for a little while, taking on the role of someone else, and it's also a great way to get to know your friends even better by seeing how they act in different situations. In Dead of Winter, you'll find out if you can rely on your instincts when everything is at stake - survival or destruction.

The board game Dead of Winter is a cooperative game, but only partially so. The game is about groups of two to five people with their leader, who try to survive in the "winter cave". Winter spells will be more difficult to survive thanks to the excellent distribution of things to do during the game. Together, players have to look for food, tools, weapons, clean the colony, fight zombies and think about their own well-being. Eighteen different basic game tasks are possible in this board game, ranging from finding enough medicinal resources for all players to driving zombies out of the colony. Each group of player survivors has its own secret mission (there are seventy in total). These quests are very different, but very relevant to the story of the game. One player may have drawn a task that will require them to finish the game with no cards in their deck, another will be tasked with completing the game with a certain number of fuel cans and a certain number of barricades on the game board. The genius lies in the fact that among these seventy task cards there are twenty-two "bad" traitor cards. What does it mean? At the beginning of the game, the number of players at the game table is determined, multiplied by two - this is how many tasks of the "good" players are taken. One "bad" traitor card is then shuffled into this pile. The outcome is as follows - at the table, for example, five sitting players will draw their task one by one. The chance that one of these players is a traitor is 1:11, but there is even a tiny chance, and it is this nuance that will make the players paranoid throughout the game, because at no point can the players understand whether, for example, John equips his survivors with weapons, because he wants to successfully help fight the zombies, or he wants to turn those gun barrels against the rest of us at some point in the game. There is always a chance to vote out the "suspect" player, but at that moment he receives a new "ejected player" task (there are fifteen in total). Of course, if the players make a mistake in their choice and vote the right player, this will probably make him angry and make him do not so good things, or on the contrary, he will try to collect resources for his car and leave this forgotten place for good, which the players at the table called home.

As one of the biggest advantages of this game, I can mention that the scenario of the game will not be repeated neither on the tenth nor on the fiftieth time of the game. Do the math for yourself - each player must choose two of fifty game characters, agree on one of eighteen game tasks, pull one of seventy secret tasks, and deal with one of forty-two crises in each round of the game.

And about, in my opinion, the most interesting and unseen part of the game. As board game players, we definitely don't like the moment when you have made your move and have to wait for the other players to make their decisions. In Dead of Winter, this problem is solved with the help of "crossroads cards". How does it work? During a player's turn, another player to the right picks up a "crossroads card" and reads its condition. For example: "If a player moves from a place outside the colony to a colony and does not use a car." If at some point during the player's turn this condition is fulfilled, then the other player holding the "crossroads card" says: "Stop!" and reads the story on the card . For example, this card might say that a survivor has been attacked by three dogs while trying to return to the colony, and now has two choices - the first is to run away, discarding three cards from his deck, the second is to fight the dogs, and , if that character survives, he has a chance to put three food symbols into the colony's food pile. Sometimes the resolution of the crossroads has to be voted on by all players, and sometimes it is during these vital decisions that all players can draw their own conclusions about another player's motives. If the player is a traitor, he will almost certainly vote for the option that does not help the others.

This game is like a real work of art - great game components, beautifully illustrated characters, lots of different items to find in different parts of the abandoned city, and understandable game rules. Yes, this board game is in English, which will discourage many board game enthusiasts from buying it. Of course, if you understand English well and are willing to watch a few videos (in English) about the start of the game and the rules posted on the YouTube channel Watch It Played, then this game is worth every euro cent. I've played this game at six different companies since I bought it, and in all of them, after playing the first couple of rounds, the players have figured out the rules of the game.

Sitting at the game table, on which this wonderful board game is laid out, the main thing is to turn on one of the soundtracks created specifically for this game (found on youtube), immerse yourself in the game's story and forget about the windowed world for a couple of hours.

Also available is an expansion for the game: Dead of Winter: The Long Night

Author of pictures and article: Roberts