Dead of Winter | Shelfside Review
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- čas přidán 21. 07. 2024
- In this Shelfside Review, we cover The Walking Dead Among Us: Winter Edition. Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game, is a semi cooperative board game published by Plaid Hat Games (and soon Fantasy Flight Games) that has players controlling a group of survivors trying to survive in their colony during a zombie apocalypse. This tabletop experience has plenty of unexpected story and flavor built into its mechanics thanks to the crossroads system, and incredibly detailed standees and components that give Dead of Winter plenty of polish.
With an exposure die that gives intense dice rolls at the table and tons of unique survivor characters each with their own stats and abilities, death always looms as a threat turn after turn. There's also a social deduction element where players will have sometimes watch out for who's the betrayer on their game night with their own unique secret objective card. This game was all the hype on boardgamegeek back in 2014, but where does it stand today in 2021? And what about the standalone expansion, The Long Night?
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Table of Contents:
Intro - (0:00)
Overview - (1:06)
How to Play - (1:36)
Pros - (3:46)
Cons - (14:38)
Recommender Score - (26:01)
Daniel's Personal Score - (31:28)
Ashton's Personal Score - (34:29)
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#boardgames #tabletop #review - Hry
What are your house rules to balance out the betrayer?
Here's a couple:
1) You can only eat as much food in the colony as you have survivors there (for a visual, you can check Daniel's personal score)
2) Adding more non-betrayer cards to the initial secret objective deck to lessen the chances of a betrayer
3) Using the Long Night patch to enable a group vote to prevent the first player token from getting passed to a potential traitor
4) Out of the spirit of the game, just don't do some of the insanely unbalanced stuff when you are traitor (you'll have to find a nice balance for this, I personally don't like attracting zombies and moving survivors to the colony in hopes of getting infection).
5) Something along the lines of increasing morale by 1 or 2
That's all I can remember as of yet, and #4 will require some finessing with your group tastes. Cheers, and let me know if there's questions! -Ashton
Woah woah woah, here's what I actually played by lmao:
1- You can only eat as much food as you have survivors in the colony, each food increases a die by 2 instead of one. This not only weakens betrayer but buffs eating food in general so non-betrayers are more incentivized to nom-nom suspiciously.
2- Instead of randomly getting survivors, everyone gets to pick a survivor, and then the 2nd one is given randomly. This is done so that people can better optimize for their secret objectives (betrayer included, though this tends to work in survivor's favor, also helps for roleplay) We usually arbitrarily increase the amount of survivor cards up from 4 since we have so many survivors.
3- Increasing starting morale by 1
These are the ones that I'm firm on and have played really well. I have a two more ideas that need to be tested more/haven't been tried yet:
1- When there's an extremely obvious betrayer (blatantly attacking, eating food, killing people, you know, the BIG betrayer turn), them killing their own survivors doesn't count for morale loss.
2- Everyone gets 2 secret objectives, betrayers only have to do their betrayer objective. Increase starting morale significantly (like 3-4). This is to encourage further weird behavior from non-betrayers so that there's more of a social deduction aspect.
Honestly, though, long night in my opinion helps significantly with the betrayer problem by buffing the survivors so much and introducing the first player passing vote. I found less of a need to experiment and have mostly stuck to the first three rules and haven't really gotten around to trying the other two a lot because of how much I enjoy the long night, and those times when I only had base game and was constantly brainstorming balancing ideas are long gone.
-Daniel
don't play with it :)
That bit at the beginning with Sparky the Stunt Dog running around blasting zombies with a shotgun reminded me of when that happened while I played it with my group.
We were all laughing and cheering as that goofy dog basically acted as Rambo (for those who haven't played, the dog can't get the virus as it only attacks humans which makes him great for getting rid of zombies).
Then... he got injured. He was given pain killers to ease the pain and became addicted. We weren't able to feed his addiction and take care of everyone else at the same time so he passed away from not getting his fix.
Yeah, the laughter stopped as we had a little memorial service for our canine friend who just couldn't get over his addiction. I guess he just couldn't deal with what was going on and got lost in escaping from the pain of his reality. I guess we had just pushed him too hard and it became too much. :'(
Yeah... that does NOT happen in Monopoly.
It has become one of my go to stories when trying to get others to play the game. It gets some interesting reactions and people really want to play to see what happens.
Gotta be honest, these longer form reviews are really what I’m here for. I’m really glad to see you guys cover heavier than not games and it be done well.
yo really appreciate this! We got a bunch of longer form reviews headed out in the future- they just take a while to make during Covid so we can't push them out every week. Let us know if you have any games you want covered! -Ashton
You know what's cool? That you can no longer read off all the Patreon supporters in one breath. It's only a matter of time before you'll have to quit reading them and instead scroll them at the end of the video :D
SPOILER!! the traitor is ted cruz!
Deadass he's actually the Zodiac Killer at this point.
-Daniel
Turns out he is the also the vampire in Fury of Dracula game... however, you can always deduce his location by shutting down the power in every city except Cancun... but that requires a copy of the game Power Grid.
The opening sequence had me laughing out loud!!! Sparky is awesome!
So... there's an app for the Crossroad Cards. It's cheap, adds sound effects, and the cards are read by a professional voice actor. I want to say that it occasionally has other voice actors and sound effects as well but can't remember as I haven't played this game in a while.
We've played it so much that everyone has practically memorized all of the Crossroad cards thus reducing the suspense. We might pull it back out sometime soon.
We mention that app in the cons! Unfortunately it's not in the app store anymore probably because of this game moving over to ffg.
-Daniel
Thank you for your honest opinion. Great intro as always!
cheers! Glad you enjoyed it -Ashton
Love this game. Played it toward the beginning of my deep dive into board games, and my friends and I always looked forward to playing!
definitely has a lot of fun moments with the zombie theme and all! Awesome to hear about people's first forays in the hobby :) -Ashton
I will say, the games most obvious difficulty setting is ‘How Often can we Search at the Library?’ The books are so freaking helpful in both editions, giving you those little boosts to help push things in your favor. I’ve played every scenario with different friends over the years, and basically every one of them is made easier by getting the cookbook, or the blueprints.
It’s unofficial house rules to Always Take the Librarian.
"could be some people, could be nobody, could be everybody, you never know" was by far my favorite part.
This was my first modern board game and I love it to this day
Good Video, Bro. Greetings from Germany. ✌🏼
Keep it up
cheers man! More content headed out your way :) -Ashton
Great, honest review. Love your dueling POVs. Personally, I just got Dawn of the Zeds which may become my zombie game of choice... Would love to know what you think of it!
Dawn of the Zeds looks awesome! Just had to look it up and I remember that I was really close to buying it before! Man, I love zombies, maybe I'll add that to my collection one day :) Cheers! -Ashton
Thanks for a very fine review ✌🏻
I just found The Long Night in the meaning of combining them. But after seen this I wonder wether I should sell both of them now 😂
hey no problem man! I would recommend trying the long night at least once before getting rid of it! Some of the craziness it introduces is SERIOUSLY entertaining to the right crowd. Best of luck! -Ashton
Want to hear your opinion on Quartermaster General WW2. Love your videos as always.
yoooo awesome to hear this! Quartermaster General video is almost done with the filming stages :) -Ashton
Thanks for the video. Is the co-op variant good?
we've actually never tried it so can't say too much here. You're gonna take out some survivors, items, and crossroads to do it, so cost-wise, you probably don't want to get DoW just for the coop. That being said, you'll still get the wacky theme, and there won't be a betrayer problem (or any exiling drama actually). -Ashton
Best.
Intro.
Rrrr-ever!
Cool Video! You did a review of our favorite game we own ;) of course i would have loved to see it rated better here, but i can agree on many of your complaints. Anyhow, most of the games we played were very intense! So much fun! And every aspect that could run wrong wont run wrong all the time!
Some things i would like to add/comment on your comments. First: Sparky the dog. Yes. Of course. Put him out if you dont like him. Most of the DoW community likes him for beeing a running gag. And thats what he is... a running gag ;) (and a bit overpowered)
Regarding goals: we soon found out, that playing on hardcore makes the game (no lies here. Lol) harder. And this has a big influence also on the gameplay when a Betrayer is on board. Dont forget, he needs to finish also his goals, before the main objective is lost. This changes everything! Its often NAILbiting to the end if you wait if all win in the last round or see if the last player was the traitor, nuking all up. As you might know, you can exile also a non betrayer one time. We often argue about exiling the last player to prevent his nukes...just in case he is a traitor. but if we need him for the last turn? NAILbiting! Tip: change to hardcore as soon as you can. One of the harder goals: survive 10 rounds. The game can start to swing like an open circuit if you dont work against problems early on. Its fantastic.
I agree that some of the secret objectives seem very badly balanced. I THINK many of those become easier/harder with the length of the main objective. Not all of those fit to all lenghts. But, honestly- most of the time (on hardcore) we try to survive the main obejctive and the personal goals are just addons for suspicion (both need to be won to win!). Also some objectives (i.e. empty 2 locations or so) change their difficulty with the playercount...
I would have loved to have many more (could be same or adjusted) secret objectives depending on playercount and main objective.
P.s. nice house rule with the food tokens!
At the beginning i hated the big red infection die... i found it so random... today i know: AVOID it. Use gas, search weapons, build barricades instead of fighting.... ;) its a game with luck if you chose(or have to...) to roll it. Face the consequences.
P.s. the game is so good on the theme... the crisis (results) often show you WHY you need for example so much gasoline that round... (if you fail, a horde of zombies comes - yep u burnt them ;) ).
Crossroad cards: they "last longer" if you dont read them if they dont trigger!
expansion: we dont like it at all. While adding some cool stuff and ideas, the exp. fails to bring these cool topics to life well. They add so much stupid dicerolling there. Raid the bandit camp? Fine, roll 1-3 = good. 4-6 = bad. With no way to influence that. This is just bad. Dont have the right dicecombination for Raxxon? Bad for you...
The survivors there are stronger and more focused on fighting. Which makes them somehow "better"... Mixing TLN and Vanilla together just brakes the balance. I do not recommend TLN AT ALL (but rated vanilla as a 10 on BGG.)
Since you mentioned an expansion, you forgot the other one. "Warring colonies" ;)
Back to vanilla. I like so many aspects so much... one NEEDS to bring the rubbish out. Nobody wants to. All need to accomplish their goals. Who will do it? Naw not me again. NO! There is so much happening besides the board ;) you have 2 survivors that work well IN the colony. But you MUST go out with one of those because you habe tonfullfill the secret objective (while hurting the colony because the cook wont cook in the colony).
And Last but not least.
Mike Cho.
Yes.
He ALWAYS dies first.
Yo! Thanks for this awesome comment, Ashton here.
Sparky the dog!!!! Woof Woof! He is a bit strong for sure, I think that helps him live for the majority of the games, and then he can search for doggo treats for a long time!
As someone who has only played one hardcore game of DoW, I'll have to try that one day! As for your comment on the secret objectives, yeah, Dead of Winter is just really bad at balancing itself, since there's just so much randomness that comes up, and the game doesn't change its mechanics much for different player counts.
Daniel's house rule on the food tokens is great! We use it all the time, helps tremendously.
For crossroads, the issue we ran into is that some crossroads trigger a lot more frequently than others, so hearing a long story twice in the span of 3 games was not as cool anymore. I remember deciding not to read all of the crossroads text to streamline the game flow as well, but the rulebook DOES say to read everything, so that left me in a pickle as for giving people proper knowledge for the cool votes.
As for the long night: I just threw my expectations of more balanced gameplay out the window with the wacky stuff that it throws in. If you've ever had the pill cards succeed... wow that completely changes the game... I'll just put it at that. Stupid, silly fun is what they promise by making everything generally stronger, including the zombies. We have yet to try the warring colonies! But it really becomes like a different game so that is a whole 'nother journey in of itself :)
Don't get dealt mike cho! He always dies!!!! Your enthusiasm is actually making me want to play the game again, actually! And that's really something. And I guess I shouldn't try my luck as hard with the exposure die! Cheers again! -Ashton
I agree with you 100% this game is brilliant. A score of 4/10 is just plain ignorant. The amount of fun you have with this game is endless. These guys, for some reason have far too many cons compared to pro’s. This is a hit .This review is wrong in its scorings.The design and storytelling is VERY GOOD and there’s lots of it . This review was far too harsh . This game is an 8/10 . They’re WRONG, WRONG,WRONG.
Awesome vid guys
thanks man! Glad you liked it, more vids coming your way! -Ashton
Request for review:
The Rising Sun.
I've seen that you have it!
aaagghhh yeah! We keep getting requests for it! I have an awesome idea for intro that I don't think we can until covid ends though, so it's right next to PoK to do after the virus situation chills out! -Ashton
Nice review.. Have you played blood rage and everdell? I'm curious your thoughts on these 2 games
Yo! We do have a copy of everdell, not sure if we'll make a full length review on it one day though. We have yet to try blood rage, Daniel is still angry about that time a friend told him not to buy it during an amazon sale :) -Ashton
I actually love Everdell like crazy despite only ever playing it once right before covid and cant wait to play it more in the future
-Daniel
@@Shelfside haha ya missing sales for board games can be frustrating. Blood rage is one of the highest rated games of all time (dice tower top 100 games analysis, bgg rating, and from board gaming CZcamsrs) so I'm really curious about it. I've also heard great things about everdell
@@NATOnova I've been trying to get it on digital at the very least! The fact that it is an Eric Lang game but a little more streamlined is very appealing! Time to buy it soon I guess :) -Ashton
Daniel will like Blood Rage for sure. You can try it on TTS though
I really like this game, and I have to say, you guys are absolutely right! It has some issues. If someone don’t like the stories the game creates, I totally get not being into the overall experience.
cheers for the comment! Some of the crazy strong traitor stuff can definitely get houseruled, and then the game functions a lot smoother. Man, every time I look at the awesome survivor diversity and art design in this game I want to like it but... aagrrrgggh!!! -Ashton
What is the exacrt list of variants you use?
I just pinned the comment where I listed them, but I'll copypasta here too:
1- You can only eat as much food as you have survivors in the colony, each food increases a die by 2 instead of one. This not only weakens betrayer but buffs eating food in general so non-betrayers are more incentivized to nom-nom suspiciously.
2- Instead of randomly getting survivors, everyone gets to pick a survivor, and then the 2nd one is given randomly. This is done so that people can better optimize for their secret objectives (betrayer included, though this tends to work in survivor's favor, also helps for roleplay) We usually arbitrarily increase the amount of survivor cards up from 4 since we have so many survivors.
3- Increasing starting morale by 1
These are the ones that I'm firm on and have played really well. I have a two more ideas that need to be tested more/haven't been tried yet:
1- When there's an extremely obvious betrayer (blatantly attacking, eating food, killing people, you know, the BIG betrayer turn), them killing their own survivors doesn't count for morale loss.
2- Everyone gets 2 secret objectives, betrayers only have to do their betrayer objective. Increase starting morale significantly (like 3-4). This is to encourage further weird behavior from non-betrayers so that there's more of a social deduction aspect.
Honestly, though, long night in my opinion helps significantly with the betrayer problem by buffing the survivors so much and introducing the first player passing vote. I found less of a need to experiment and have mostly stuck to the first three rules and haven't really gotten around to trying the other two a lot because of how much I enjoy the long night, and those times when I only had base game and was constantly brainstorming balancing ideas are long gone.
-Daniel
holy molly 30 minutes review
Well done guys !
Cheers! More to come :) -Ashton
good video.
in texas are living this shit right now!
Bro my heart goes out to Texans right now seeing the situation on social media has me absolutely livid to the mismanagement. Got a homie there who's chilling just reading books by candlelight but damn hearing stories of people looting places for food and leaving behind piles of cash is heartbreaking.
-Daniel
I am wondering what will you say about Nemesis. It is even more random and chaotic :) but the betrayal mechanic is so great
argh really want to play it! The price tag is so scary though! -Ashton
@@Shelfside try it on tabletop simulator
I found Nemesis to be quite odd. You rarely have the time or even get the opportunity to check if somebody was lying about the ship's course or engines. That means it's usually best to just use to escape pods (which automatically go to earth) without trying to fix the ship. The objectives are also INSANELY unbalanced, ranging from "that objective basically finishes itself" to "how the heck am I supposed to do that?". On top of that, you often realise very quickly which objective card somebody has because there really aren't that many.
@@TheOldMan-75 lockdown version fixes this. Now there is no safe place, because the corporation code can be to even kill everybody in CSS pods (aka Escape pods). This is what everyone is trying to deduct.
@@OleksandrMilkovskyi The first game was way too expensive and inherently flawed for me to give them another chance. Either something went SERIOUSLY wrong in playtesting and nobody noticed the issues or they just didn't care.
The Long Night was one of the first "heavier" board games, that I played.
It is still one of my favorite games. I prefer the base game btw, because it is less crazy.
I've got the warning colonies expansion, by never playing it because of the covid. Looking forward to try it later.
Thanks for the review! Very nice breakdown of pros and cons! In our group we have never experienced the broken betrayer through.
P. S. You should definitely some day review BSG!
Would love to hear how your warring colonies gameplay goes like! I really don't think we'll end up reviewing BSG though, since we have SO many games on our plate! Maybe one day :) -Ashton
This game sounds exactly as I expected. I love the theme, the wacky items and silly tone, but I hate the betrayer stuff. I don't mind competitive/semi coop when done right. But Dawn of the Zeds has been scratching that zombie itch, and the new version has a cooperative and even a competitive mode vs a zombie mastermind. I love Dawn of the Zeds, and I hope I will be able to play Dead of Winter at some point regardless. Maybe with the coop mode instead, but we will see.
Thank you for this amazing review as always! The expansion/stand alone looks really fun and silly though, sounds great and really fun for wacky games.
You're the second one to bring up Dawn of the Zeds here! I'm gonna have to see if I can make way for that somehow, I looked it up the other day and it really looks like my cup of tea. If we play DoW again (even though I personally don't want to x) ), I'll have to request the coop mode to just what in the world happens.
Cheers for the kind words! The Long night is 1000% more wacky (if you play and ingest a pill, crazy stuff will happen). -Ashton
So what would be a better game than dead of winter? Any other recommendations?
Betrayal at house in the hill is good for wacky! If you like the social deduction aspect, perhaps unfathomable? -Ashton
Dead of winter should just be a D&D type game.
Yeah, the game simply doesn't work. It's not a social deduction game because the best strategy for the betrayer is usually to do nothing suspicious and just tank the whole game in a double turn. So much fun!
ahahaha agreed! Not sure what happened with the balancing here -Ashton
My son played as Sparky and lost it when he found a flashlight.
woof woof! make sure sparky knows how to put in the batteries! -Ashton
Woah you guys knew Dead of Winter will move to FFG so you made the revieww 😱😱
oh, I thought it was already at FFG haha. When we were doing research, I was reading the FFG product page X) -Ashton
@@Shelfside It was originally by Plaid Hat Games. I believe they still make the other version "Dead of Winter: The Long Night".
That one is great though I would not recommend "The Warring Colonies". The set up is considerably longer, the rules become much more complicated (now you're reading through 3 full rule books), you need a LOT of people who ALL understand, etc, etc, etc. Good luck if you still want to give it a shot.
30:43 you're welcome
This video felt like a review by super casuals for only super casuals.
@36:03 I think you mean "it's *not* even close to as cool as BSG..."
holy cow I didn't even catch that after hours of editing... thanks for that one! -Ashton
just play dead of winter like D&D no traitor and pick a few character to play with.
great review just play dead of winter withouth a traitor and it suddenly becomes a coperative board game like pandemic
wackkkkk theme lol