Sparky and Santa

 For the longest of time I had a game of Dead of Winter. Four players. No, make that five - because we had two games.

Game 1: Winter Has Come

Since it had been so long when we last played this, we took the "normal" side of Winter Has Come. Not the difficult side.

My characters were the mayor and the construct worker. My secret was the Revenge, where at least three other survivors needed to die. Well, it was the long game so I thought it wouldn't be too difficult.

We also had the soldier in our midst, which was a nice combo with the construct worker. At least seven survivors would be needed in the colony to chew through their abilities. The normal way, at least. Extra spawns from crises were another matter.

The colony had absolutely hideous luck with the crises, though. Scenario needed fuel, crises needed fuel or food. There was one junk crisis, but other than that it was either of those two. Like. Wow. Morale became quite of an issue.

And that's when our doctor started to experiment on things. And the first  time she did so, she got the "bitten" result. In the colony. Only bitten result in this game, mind you. This killed two survivors, which was good for me, but trying to kill more at such low morale was risking both the whole game, and could seem really suspicious.

And as morale had nose-dived to three or so by the fourth turn, and to two or so by the fifth and we were getting tormented by the crisis deck, I just couldn't find a way to complete my secret. Because it was the revenge, I thought it might make sense in the roleplaying way to make everyone go down with me. I had the megaphone in my hand, so I might just kill everyone in a location. (Reading FAQ as I write seems to deny this, so good thing I didn't use the megaphone.)

However, since it looked very much like survivors might actually win unless last crisis would knock things over, I decided to tell everyone that I will make us all lose if I'm in the colony. So I was exiled. And funnily enough, my new secret objective was Forgiveness. I would be able to make a valiant sacrifice as my last call for forgiveness by calling zombies to my location with a megaphone.

I did already say I didn't use it, though. We actually had a betrayer whom we did not expect past turn three or so. We even helped him in his endeavor. Morale dropped to zero from a dead survivor, and game was over. Betrayer secret was something like overtake?

So, a victory for the betrayer.

Game 2: Home Sweet Home

This time we had five players. One in particular had never played the game, and had the misfortune of being a betrayer. Even then he was kind of found out accidentally and exiled soon enough. 

Then his new end condition was misplayed, and it did have major impact on what decisions was made. 

For whatever reason, handling crises was way easier this time around. Morale was almost easy to keep at or above five. However, one player in exile caused trouble in building up the main objective. As a result, colony won only on the last possible turn. That was somewhat due to unfortunate blizzard that stopped investigators from moving.

My secret objective was to vote betrayer if we had one, so that was accomplished easily enough. Frostbitten Sparky secured their loner tendencies after the mall santa offed himself on the last turn.

One player failed to stash a hoard of medicine to be a junkie, which is a weird victory condition.

Either one or two out of five failed their secret objective, but colony was barricaded from the outside world, safe and sound nonetheless. 

Betrayer Hard Mode

Last weekend I didn't only play croquet. Three games of Dead of Winter (in the heat of summer) were played with four players.

Now and then it isn't a bad practice to read the rule book from start to finish. I noticed that the last 20 games of Dead of Winter before these (all games, that is) have been played incorrectly in regards to betrayer condition. I guess the actual rule and the variant rule had an unholy offspring in my mind, when earlier we have been using one betrayer card per player, not per game.

Uh oh.

Well, looks like games with two betrayers aren't going to happen from now on.

Anyway, first game was Raid Party. Police Station and Hospital were eventually picked as our raid targets, but we fooled around for quite a while before realizing there isn't quite enough time for rampaging through that many locations. If it wasn't for the plentiful weapon cache with two tactical rifles early in the game, I don't think we'd have eventually won.

Only one player couldn't achieve personal victory condition.

Second game was Eight weeks of darkness. This one was quite exciting game. First few weeks passed like they were a dream, most of us were probably thinking that can this really be this easy? But after half way the amount of zombies and slowly diminishing location decks escalated the difficulty.

With careful optimization it looked like we'd might be able to finish main objective. But then one player rolled Bitten, which instantly dropped morale to concerning levels, that is 2. Now we'd need a little bit of luck. But we did begin the eight week. Second last player rolled a second Bitten result from the exposure die, and, well. It was quite an anticlimactic ending, to be honest, for an otherwise thrilling game. Morale at 1 was impossible for use to navigate through.

I guess we survived seven weeks and five days, or something.

Last game was Find the Cure mission.

In this game there was one betrayer. Though I had my suspicions at times, I think I wouldn't have voted to exile the betrayer.

Main objective was completed in time, but only one played had also finished secret objective. Surviving for yet one more turn seemed unlikely, so the search for the last medicine was pretty hectic and stressful situation.

Winter continues

These are all the rest Dead of Winter games I played in Kuhmo. All of them were played with four players.

Game 1: Winter Has Come

Winter Has Come main objective is cleverly designed. At first I thought that damn... we're all really screwed if there is even one betrayer. But on second reading... even the betrayers need to pile in fuel during every colony phase. Failure in adding fuel doesn't drop morale to 0, after all. It just ends the game in loss. Only exiled players might benefit from this ending.

My secret was something like "have books equipped to survivors", so that's what I proceeded to look into right at the start. I made a mistake though when I entered school and not the library, because there might have been fuel in library. My survivors were the doctor and the janitor, and doctor found a "beginner's martial arts" book for the janitor.

Situation at the colony was nightmarish. Two of the first crises were no other than "use fuel or a legion of zombies appear." We failed both, but lost no survivors. For the record I think this was the first game where there was game-making-or-breaking, meaningful use of "attract zombies" player action. Also, it helped immensely that the mother survivor and a helpless survivor came to the colony to clean up the zombieful situation there. And a pilot with a shotgun.

Other players had been voicing quite a lot of suspicion about betrayal towards me. And I can't really blame them. I had been scavenging through library and police station like crazy, and caused tons of noise and attracted zombies to non-colony locations - yet I never added an fuel to main objective, or the crises for that matter. Well, except for one where I added three cards to make for an extraordinary success.

But my intentions were honest and true, but luck was not on my or our side. I had been spending most of my action dice into searching, and the doctor had already found library blueprints and police station blueprints. Imagine how it looks to other players when you draw something like eight cards in a turn and yet "sorry guys, I just don't have anything to help the colony." But the truth was that I really did found nothing of use.

Well. I wasn't voted out at least. Nobody was.

I wasn't the only one suffering from the fuel shortage. We survived till fourth round I think, when we had to face the fact that nobody had a fuel card to spend.

Turned out there were no betrayers at all.

A bit of an annoying loss. We were doing pretty well, all things considered. It was mostly because of amazingly poor luck that we lost. Mostly.

So the game was a loss for everybody.


Game 2: Leave It All Behind
So. The colony required a lot of food, and every player needed at least one equipped gun.

Very early in the game a crossroad card made moving around even more dangerous than it already was - we were chased by well armed cannibals. But that was a choice - a choice that one of the players had to make. They were something like "roll exposure few times" and "from now on when a survivor moves, roll a normal die. On a result of 1-2 the survivor takes a wound."

Then next turn somebody sabotaged a crisis and caused loss of two morale. I had contributed two cards, and one other player contributed only one. So the crisis would fail anyway - but at the "resolve crisis" step of the colony phase it turned out somebody had contributed junk instead of medicine. I knew for sure that I had contributed only medicine...

So once it was my turn I called for a vote to exile that player, and betrayer he was, as suspected.

But. Then one of the most characterful little stories within Dead of Winter happened.

Price, the student (exiled player's survivor) was at the school with the bald principal (my survivor.) A crossroads card triggered, and caused a mugging. I had to give all but one cards from my hand to the exiled player or take one (or two?) wounds. There were enough wounds on the principal that the crossroads would kill him, so there really was no option for me. The student mugged the principal at the school. I guess he wasn't in good terms with the principal. What a troubled youth.

To me that was a serious blow as I had "The Hoarder" secret.

The colony didn't survive for long after this. The exiled player started to attack survivors, and morale fell in rapid succession. The student even went to kill the principal. What a troubled youth.

After the loss all of us revealed our secrets. There were three ordinary secrets and Serial Killers betrayal objective... what a troubled youth indeed.




Game 3: Raiding Party
2x betrayers wins, gluttony + all for one

Last game we played Dead of Winter was about scavenging. Two location decks needed to be completely emptied of cards.

I had the Gluttony secret betrayer objective. Fortunately for me, I got the student (Price something... surely not Vincent?) and Andrew Evans, the Farmer. That meant I'd be able to drain four cards from the Grocery Store location per turn with just two dice.

Or so I thought. Two rounds in a row I rolled only one 3+ for my three dice. But I wouldn't give up, no! I needed food! So I ate our supplies to raise action dice results. I tried to mitigate any suspicion towards me by playing enough food to the supply to not cause any problems with my... heh. Gluttony.

My first truly suspicious act was to not play food to one of the crises that came up. After all I had been digging the grocery store for quite a while. But I was the last player before colony phase, and there was only one contribution. I'd have needed to contribute three cards, which is quite a lot. It might be possible that I didn't have all three even if I wasn't a betrayer...

Well. I wasn't voted off at least. I guess it was believable enough that I was draining the grocery store pretty fast.

Major setback for the colony was when a third survivor entered the hospital and rolled a bitten result from the exposure die. Second player decided to roll the die hoping for a blank instead of any other result, yet it was a wound. Last survivor did roll a blank, but that was two dead survivors in one go.

Otherwise everybody was playing well and making good choices. Zombies were masterfully manipulated and destroyed, and even food wasn't a problem once the cook survivor entered colony.

But all the hardships had lowered morale down to 1, which is a good place for betrayers to thrive.

However. Gluttony required six non-started food cards in my hand, and I only had four. And there was only one card left in grocery store - and I knew for sure it wasn't a food.

By then I had grown my following with the pilot and the park ranger.

Stretching my luck, the Pilot searched at the gas station like crazy (found two food cards), and then entered grocery store to deplete it. It had four zombies there, though.

Current crisis required junk to complete, and generously I contributed three cards when there was already two contributions. One more, and colony would gain a morale bonus! Well. Except that I added two medicine cards and an outsider card.

Last two remaining players managed to bring the hospital to just one card remaining. But at least five survivors would die to the failure of the upcoming crisis.

So, a victory for me! The grand betrayer! The unsuspected master planner, who sneaked one more victory under the radar of vigilant watchers that were the three other followings in the game!

... right?

well. Almost.

There was one even more cunning master player at the table who also won the game as a betrayer. She had All for one betrayer secret, and got everything she needed for victory.

People had at least been voicing some questions about my true intentions... but nobody suspected her. Not even me. I was absolutely certain I was the only betrayer.

Oh well.

The more the merrier!

And as a side note... only my park ranger survived the last zombie additions, and he had entered my following during the very same turn. A beautiful story there. While the whole colony is trying to stave off a horde of zombies, a completely random dude entered through the back door and ate all the food.

More victims

I'm on my bi-annual visit to my parents. Since my sister is here also with her boyfriend, and later some other acquaintances too, I wouldn't miss a chance to bring board games with me. Dead of Winter was my weapon of choice this time.

First we played a three player introductory "We Need More Samples" game.

Start of the game was devastating. First two rounds we lost three survivors to Bitten! result on the exposure dice. Game seemed to punish us just for trying to raise our follower count above 2... and still, one player was left with only one survivor. The sheriff, I think.

Zombie killing also didn't work as planned. Over ten killed zombies and only two successful samples. Helpless survivors started piling up at the colony with most of them being because of one particular player. That seemed rather suspicious, and on the brink of starvation I called for a vote to exile that player. I wasn't 100% certain she was a betrayer, but casting that player out from the colony saved the rest of us from starvation. Majority kicked her out, and yes. We had had a betrayer amongst us. However, betrayer had also dropped something like three helpless survivors to the colony... and they wouldn't be cast out.

Due to amazing turn of events (good sample rolls), completing the main objective started to look like a possibility. Exiled player also had a few turns of play time, so this was the very first time ever when a player was exiled without the game ending right away.

So. We got the nine samples, but morale was at 1. There was one starvation counter.

This was probably the closest game up to date.

Main objective was completed, as well as my personal objectives. The other good survivor also had his goals completed.

Yet... we lost to a dying survivor at Colony phase stage 4. We'd have won on stage 5.


Game 2:

Next day a second game was played. This time we had four players. Chances for at least one betrayer were high... and yup, that was me. Trigger happy victory condition.

Talia, the fortune teller was my initial survivor of choice, combined with the police dispatcher. The fortune teller is a wonderful survivor for a betrayer, as you'll be able to manipulate the worst crises to happen at the worst possible moment, and still keep an honest face - the second crisis might have been even worse!

Oh, and the game mode was "Eight weeks of darkness."

Fairly early in the game somebody made a crisis fail by giving in a completely wrong card. And that wasn't me. Did we have another betrayer in the game? Perfect! If I figured who it was and exiled him or her I'd have free reign to do as I please, as surely nobody would suspect that there was two betrayers?

I was confident enough to even succeed at one crisis doubly well and raise morale just to negate any doubts against me.

But my plans didn't come into fruition. I just couldn't figure who the other betrayer was. I had one reason or another to suspect any of the three other players - though one of them was, of course, my main suspect.

A crossroad card raised the morale yet again, which was a bit worrisome, as we were doing surprisingly fine. Food was a gigantic trouble, but we somehow managed to get enough supplies every turn. We didn't get starvation counters in this game, yet last game one came up.

I had three survivors, the Fortune Teller, Thomas the Soldier and the police dispatcher. I had shotgun on the soldier and a tactical rifle on fortune teller. I had two pistols in my hand of cards, so all was well. But to build up some trust towards me, I gave the police dispatcher on of the pistols and securely shot off a zombie somewhere. It was a little bit of a risk, since people had died and crises had been failed. The police dispatcher had only twenty two influence, so she'd be one of the first to die in case of zombie overflow.

Well... there was no zombie overflow, thankfully. But there was a bite epidemic. Actually there were two bite epidemics at locations where there were at least three survivors, and my police dispatcher was present in both. First time she rolled a blank, thus surviving. Second time, however... not so lucky. And there went my fourth weapon back to the deck, also. Morale had been been racing towards zero for a while now, which had looked good while I had four weapons to use.

I was last in turn order when morale was at 1. That's a perfect spot for a betrayer to be. But I still needed a weapon. I sent Thomas to scavenge Gas Station, as there was only two cards left in the police station deck.

Causing a lot of noise, he managed to find a switch blade, and we'd be losing already in many of the colony phase stages. However... it had to happen before "adding zombies" phase, because my own survivors were in locations where they'd most probably die.

But I did have some random cards to throw to crisis contributions, and there was a crisis lowering failure effect coming up.

Yet I somehow failed to notice that all of my careful planning had been for nought - there were ten cards in the waste pile.

So. We did have two betrayers, but he didn't have his personal objectives completed. But much to my surprise this betrayer was the player I had least suspected. So well played, there.

Even with two betrayers the colony survived six weeks of darkness. But six is less than the required eight.


I was supposed to write all Dead of Winter games of my visit here in this blog post. But we kind of got carried away and played three additional games, so it's probably best to write those later.

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.

Too Many Stockpiles to Eat

These are last two games of Dead of Winter that were played in Vaasa.

They're first Dead of Winter games that had some other mission goal than "We must get more samples".

First we played "Stockpile" medium length mission.

I had "Justice" secret objective, where all the betrayers (if any) need to be exiled for me to win the game. Since there was such a horrible amount of zombies at the colony, I picked Mike Cho (I think) the ninja, and Sparky the stunt dog for my following.

Another players had the doctor and the nurse, and another one had the pilot and the mayor.

A couple of first turns seemed to go fairly well. Doctor was bitten while travelling, but some casualties are to be expected. Nurse started looting the hospital, and Sparky ran here and there and everywhere, being the only member of the colony that actually brought stuff to stockpile!

But then there was Mike Cho. He had been killing one to two zombies per turn, which is fine for a ninja. Then I made the mistake of ordering Mike to clean up waste in colony. Ninjas don't do that. Mike got angry and totally flipped out. "Please, Mike... clean up some waste from the colony" translated into "waste the colony" in the mind of a ninja. He found a living baby at a dumpster, and killed it. Then he killed the mayor, and afterwards he was still so angry that he killed himself.

At least that's how I saw it. In truth there was some drama because of the baby in the dumpster, and baby cried five zombies to colony when it could accommodate only three.

Though some survivors were found from non-colony locations, the survivors had their hands full just trying to survive. Somehow we managed to run out of zombie standees, and in fact all zombie spots were full at one point. Well, two had a barricade. In our defence we did manage to get all required items to stockpile, and a couple of barricades. But we needed more barricades, and at least eight or nine food tokens for the colony when the turn counter fell to zero.

We had one betrayer, though, but it was difficult to accomplish. It was the cult thingy, where betrayer following needed to have at least two more survivors than any other survivor group. But once the mayor (the cult leader) had died during the ninja incident, the head of the cult had been cut down and mantle was never transfered to anybody else.



Game 2:

Since it's boring to stop playing after such a terrible defeat, we played one more game with "Too many mouths" mission goal. With three players it has a whopping six helpless survivors at the colony right from the beginning. Goal was just to survive for five rounds.

My secret objective was "loner", and my starting survivors were Bev (the mother who kills zombies with ease once there's a helpless survivor at the colony), and the police dispatcher that was good at searching through police station. Other survivors of note were the doctor and Andrew Evans, the farmer guy.

Thanks to the farmer (who was adept at scavenging the grocery store) our colony was well fed, but we failed at solving many of the crises. Honourable mention goes to the "defend the innocents" mother, who made a gruesome example of one of the helpless survivors when they attempted to raid the food supply.

The mother became quite a "dps tank" when she also found a shotgun. That was four dead zombies per round with two dice and no exposure roll. Zombies really didn't pose much of a threat until we failed at a crisis that spawned ten of them at the colony. By then we had also found two sniper rifles from police department... getting rid of the dead was so easy that it felt like a tiresome chore to perform, not a desperate struggle...

Despite such a good start it wasn't an easy game. We ran out of fuel two times in a row in crises that required it. First we lost two morale, then we lost one morale and weren't able to perform move actions. If those were not enough, during same round two characters moved around, and both were bitten. And that's 1/12 chance. Oh well. For me it was beneficial since one of them was my police dispatcher, but for the colony this was a harsh blow overall.

Only once team effort was enough to provide a morale boosting extra success at handling a crisis, and this happened while morale was at 1.

Last turn began quite comfortably, all things considered. The colony had enough morale to fail at the next crisis. Only some nasty crossroads encounter might ruin everything any more, and those never came.

Last game all the players, even the betrayer, lost. This time all the players won. I only had the mother with the shotgun and night vision goggles as my following, so "Loner" was a success. We had exactly four barricades at the colony, which was what one of the players needed. Andrew Evans, who had been farming at the grocery store for the whole game, had also been completing the secret objective of having more cards at hand than any other player.

Winter Opening

I visited some friends in Vaasa, and I brought a couple of board games with me. They were Dead of Winter and Small World.

We had three players for Dead of Winter. Mission for the first game was the usual "We need more samples". I had Gray Beard the Pirate and Meyers, the Psychologist, as my starting team. My personal victory condition was to equip at least four gun cards for my survivors, and drop morale to 0. Yes, I was the betrayer.

Gray Beard was terrible at searching, and psychologist was rather a bad fighter. He was a lot better at searching for stuff, so I sent psychologist to police station to gear up, and the pirate was left at the colony. He was ordered to clean the junk there, and that took a heavy toll on his dignity. First failed crisis was "Shaking things up", which made everyone to give one of their survivors for the player on right (or left?). Gray Beard the Pirate would not tolerate such insulting activities, and he deserted my betrayer party.

I got the sheriff guy with the baseball bat in his place.

The psychologist found a sniper rifle and night vision goggles at the police station, and sheriff got a cigarette lighter. That was already half of the guns I needed, so I started to consider the best possible and least suspicious was to lower morale. I tried to not contribute many cards for crisises, but suddenly another player made lowering of morale easy for me. Some kind of firefighter entered police station when there was already my psychologist and three zombies, plus a noise token. Fire fighter died to spawning zombies, and psychologist died to a zombie attracted to the place by the noise token.

Uh oh. Yeah, the morale took a dangerous dive, but now my survivors had the cigarette lighter as the only equipped gun...

Sheriff found a chemist at the gas station, who went to search for the body of psychologist at the police station. Turns and turns of frentic searching and polite asking of a gun from another player finally got me enough guns for my victory condition. However, there was something like eight samples already, so game might end very soon. Morale was at two when ninth sample was acquired, so before survivors checked for main objective, I needed to make the morale drop.

It seemed unlikely, though we did have a crisis we most likely wouldn't be able to handle.

But then suddenly a hope appears. My survivors rescue a truck driver, who moves to police station right away. He had lower influence than the chemist, so in case of additional zombies he would die first. There were three zombies at the police station, and now two survivors. Unless other players might somehow kill a zombie from police station, morale would drop for exactly two.

And that's what happened.

Crisis lowered morale, and suddenly a wild truck driver appears, who's only purpose was to go and die miserably.

I was the only betrayer. Game ending was very trigger happy.

Two out of three (Dead of Winter)

A few days ago I bought a new board game. The only reason for buying it was to fill my gift card voucher for local gaming shop. Well, of course I was interested in a semi-cooperative survival game, too. But the main reason was the voucher...

I feel so ashamed.

Anyway. The voucher is filled up now, no more spontaneous random board games for me.

The game in question is Dead of Winter: a crossroads game.

It's a zombie apocalypse game, which is somewhat of a over-used genre. I guess the genre itself will soon rise as a zombie to have vengeance upon other game background setting, spreading its disease and multiplying in the process. Perhaps it has already happened?

But this write-up serves as the purchase post as well as details about two first games played.

First was a two-player game to get in touch with the rules. In two-player variant game isn't semi-cooperative at all, you got no personal goal to achieve. And considering the game mechanics it'd be quite foolish to include the secret objectives. First player would always be able vote the other player into exile.

Rulebook recommends the "We need more samples" scenario as the introductory victory condition, so that's what we played. One of the players had the ninja survivor in the initial group, which eased the game immensely. Other survivor group had the cook with them, so two seemingly most difficult aspects of the game were already taken care of: killing zombies and providing food for the colony.

Despite having good survivors for the job, we did manage to get some people killed. Note to self: it's not a very good idea to bring four survivors to a single location and cause some noise there. That's just asking for trouble. No, not asking... that's demanding for trouble in harsh tone, stressing every word.

Frostbite also surprised us with its lethality, as the gangrene that kicks in doesn't stop until the survivor is dead, or the frostbite is cured somehow.

Well, we did win that game, though, and we even had a couple of morale points and rounds to spare.

Game 2:

Next day it was time for three survivor groups to duke it out, this time with secret objectives.

Main objective was again "We need more samples", but because of three groups we needed nine samples now.

There were doctor and the nurse in one group, sheriff and waitress in another and janitor plus construction worker in the last one.

It wasn't a very good start when the colony failed in the very first crisis they faced, which was Zombie Surge. Colony got six survivors and every non-colony location got one. Second round's crisis was even more zombies, and had it failed colony would have gotten eight zombies and non-colony location one additional zombie. That one was thankfully prevented.

My own personal objective was to complete main objective and have four any items cards in hand. Not too hard to complete, I thought. Sheriff also felt like a good candidate to grind some zombie samples. I guess he mauled the zombies too badly to be used as any kind of a sample, though, because he scarcily succeeded in extracting samples from even half of his kills.

Starting from round three everything started to go all kinds of wrong, when illness crisis card was failed, and after that we got a starvation counter. Construction worker and janitor both eventually died to exposure, and doctor was bitten by a zombie. She was alone in a non-colony location, though, so nobody else contracted the disease.

Doctor/nurse group started attracting a lot of other survivors to the camp. And worst of all - a lot of helpless survivors. We were already starving! Either we'd need to win really fast, or the colony would need to go full cannibal holocaust, which would surely drop morale to zero and below.

Victory was not that far away, though. When morale was at 2 we already had eight samples. Only one more roll of 4+ from killing a zombie, and we'd do it. But no. Doing some quick maths only some random effect from Crossroads cards could give us a chance at victory, since we had continuous morale drop going on from starvation token.

So all was lost. Disease run rampant, hunger tormented the colony and zombies were coming in from doors and windows. Colony died, and all survivors lost.

Or did they?

Now departed doctor and the nurse group had been cleverly playing their betrayal victory. Not even once had they given wrong cards to fail at crisis, and they hadn't attacked anybody. In fact they had only rescued a lot of people... helpless survivors, even. That were eating the morale away. That did raise some suspicions, but on the other hand situation was so very desperate that it didn't feel that disadvantageous for the colony to fish in additional survivors, who might have an ability that would let the game continue for that one critical turn...

So, the colony lost. But a tyrannical despot of a small traitorous group of survivors barricaded themselves into the hospital (or library?) and won the game.