Accepting one's fate

Travelling again, this time with Dead of Winter and Dungeon Lords.

Yesterday we started with Dead of Winter.

We had three players, and again we had to start with We Need More Samples. I'm getting slightly bored of it.

But at least in the first game something happened that has never come to be earlier.

My following was... a lawyer and a pilot, I think. And my secret was Justice - main objective completed and all betrayers exiled. I thought the lawyer with her ability to look at other players' cards might give hints about betrayers - if there were any.

Now. Soon enough it was clear we had a betrayer, as somebody was sabotaging crisises. It was really, really difficult to judge who was the betrayer. Both players had been making rather questionable moves, but that might be just because this was their first Dead of Winter game ever...

4+ sample collecting from zombies was easy this time. I think only two or three rolls failed, so game looked like it'd be over quite soon. And because of my secret, I had to take action to vote. Towards the end of the game there was a perfect spot for that when we had eight samples collected, and I was the last player in one round, and first in second. So I got to elect a vote twice in a row. So hopefully I'd be able to flush out the betrayer, and with an unlucky guess perhaps also an honest player. But that'd have been unavoidable casualty that potentially would cost that player a victory, but hey. I demanded Justice.

I thought that the betrayer would happily vote off the "good" player if given chance. And all of us knew that we had a betrayer in our midst, so I was counting on that a right guess or wrong guess, somebody would be kicked out.

So second last turn I elected a vote. And then I was baffled, when I "lost" that vote. Nobody got kicked out.

Well. I got a second turn at least, and I elected a second vote to get rid of the other player, then, who just had to be the betrayer, or nothing would make sense any more.

And yet the vote was lost again, and other players questioned my loyalties, because I was suddenly calling votes in quick succession!

I had accidentally killed a zombie, and dealt in the ninth sample. I decided that if I wouldn't be able to win the game, and the honest player had such a poor judgement that she/he suspected me... Hell. I'll see the world burn, then.

I hampered the colony as much as I could, and then moved all of my survivors to locations that were already full of zombies.

As a consequence I was cast out from the colony. That's what I wanted, though. Perhaps I'd get "Exiled" secret that gave me another victory condition other than exiling all the betrayers.

I don't remember what I got, but it didn't remove the exile condition of my original secret. So I would lose anyway.

And the actual betrayer couldn't drop morale before the colony phase, so we had only one victor: the "honest" player, who revealed that it had actually been he who sabotaged the crisises just for the fun of it.

Uh.

No wonder it'd been difficult to judge who was the betrayer. Had he not done that, I doubt I'd have suspected there was a betrayer at all.

Well played.


Game 2:

Second play was with the "We need to find the cure" or something like that, where players needed medicine from non-starter items to win the game.

This time, however, I had "Accept your fate" betrayer ending. It required one of my survivors to have at least two weapons, and three non-starter medicine items in my hand. And morale at 0.

My initial following was the nurse who could search Hospital pretty effectively, and the most fated survivor of all - the fortune teller.

Soon enough it looked like there might be two betrayers - or there might be yet another saboteur just for giggles.

My nurse found the drunken mall santa from hospital, and he promptly entered to search for weapons at the police station. And he found the Tikka precision rifle. Using her mystic powers the fortune teller got the weapon, and shot zombies from hospital.

Somebody else entered police station, too, and caused so much noise that it killed my mall santa. That was kind of okay for me, though, since it lowered morale and didn't raise that much suspicion to me.

Whole colony failed at least two crisises in row that spawned tons of zombies to police station, library, hospital and gas station. It was a bit annoying that I honestly tried to succeed in one of these crisises so that hospital wouldn't be so full of zombies. I needed those medicines, too!

Well. Next few crisises required a lot of food, and waste pile also started to negatively affect morale. In fact it started to look like morale might reach 0 faster than I'd get my betrayer goal completed.

Soon the psychologist Meyers joined my following, and he was sent to gas station to search for weapons. Fortune teller had the precision rifle, and I had two non-starter item medicine cards at my disposal, though I had been scavenging the hospital like crazy. I only found drunken santas and psychologists there.

But with four action dice and plenty of decibels the nurse was able to find an adrenalin shot, and psychologist got a lighter.

Crisis would most definitely fail thanks to my contributions. And morale was at 1.

Whee. And with last turns the other players didn't even vote me out, so it was a victory for a betrayer. Only one, though. There were two betrayers, so finding the cure had been doomed to fail almost from the get-go.