[Gaming] Board Game Praise

Ok, got my 10th game in today for Plaid Hat's Dead of Winter board game just in time for the deadline. Trying to be careful not to say too much about it, but here is what the company has on it.


Crossroads is a new series from Plaid Hat Games that tests a group of survivors' ability to work together and stay alive while facing crises and challenges from both outside and inside.
Dead of Winter is the first game in this series, designed by Isaac Vega and Jon Gilmour. It puts 2-5 players together in a small, weakened colony of survivors in a world where most of humanity are either dead or diseased, flesh-craving monsters. Each player leads a faction of survivors with dozens of different characters in the game.
Dead of Winter is a meta-cooperativepsychological survival game. This means players are working together toward one common victory condition--but for each individual player to achieve victory, they must also complete their personal secret objective. This secret objective could relate to a psychological tick that's fairly harmless to most others in the colony, a dangerous obsession that could put the main objective at risk, a desire for sabotage of the main mission, or worst of all: vengeance against the colony! Certain games could end with all players winning, some winning and some losing, or all players losing. Work toward the group's goal but don't get walked all over by a loudmouth who's only looking out for their own interests!
Click here to listen to the Plaid Hat Podcast episode 112 to hear the guys discuss the game at length.
Dead of Winter is an experience that can only be accomplished through the medium of tabletop games. It is a story-centric game about surviving through a harsh winter in an apocalyptic world. The survivors are all dealing with their own psychological imperatives but must still find a way to work together to fight off outside threats, resolve crises, find food and supplies, and keep the colony's morale up.
Dead of Winter has players making frequent, difficult, heavily- thematic, wildly-varying decisions, that often have them deciding between what is best for the colony and what is best for themselves.
Dead of Winter will be on pre-order soon. Customers who pre-order from PlaidHatGames.com will get $20 off the MSRP and will receive a free Kodiak Colby Survivor character along with Standee and Crossroads Card (pictured below).
Click here to sign up for our newsletter to be informed when Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game is available in the PlaidHatGames.com store. And keep coming to PlaidHatGames.com for more games and more info.
 
Hot damn, the NDA has been lifted and I can talk about Dead of Winter.

Ok, lets try to talk about this without giving away how I feel about the game...

Dead of Winter is a semi-cooperative game in which you and the other players control a team of characters in a colony who have a group objective (which must be achieved in order for the non-exiled players to win) as well as a secret objective which must be achieved in order for that player to win. Also, there is a small chance one of the players will be a traitor, actively working to make the game more difficult for the other players.

Through the game the players can go to locations outside of the colony to find weapons, food, medicine, gas, and tools to help keep the zombies at bay and fulfill a crisis which are flipped up each turn. Additionally, after each turn a player draws a a Crossroads card which will be played on the current player as soon as they fulfill the requirements on the card, ranging from having a specific character in their party to moving from to locations using the gas card.

Players ramp up suspicion by trying to satisfy the secret objectives, which can be as simple as holding food cards or gaining weapons. Resources run pretty tight through the game and a had full of cards can make other players very suspicious. If a player is exiled from the colony (forced out through a vote at any time, majority wins), they gain a new objective which needs to be fulfilled.

Oh, did I mention the exposure die? Whenever a player fights a zombie or moves to a new location, they must roll the exposure die. First roll has a 50% chance of nothing happening, but if you roll the other results you roll it again. You could take a wound, get frostbite, or even be zombiefied. If this happens, the next lowest influence character in that location is exposed and has to roll to see if they are killed.


My thoughts on the game- It was a blast! There is so much going on in this game and you always have to worry if someone drew that traitor card. There are tons of scenarios that I saw, and apparently there will be many more in the final product. Just thinking about the game makes me want to play it again, and that's saying something when you consider I got 10 plays in 6 game nights.
 
Hot damn, the NDA has been lifted and I can talk about Dead of Winter.

Ok, lets try to talk about this without giving away how I feel about the game...

Dead of Winter is a semi-cooperative game in which you and the other players control a team of characters in a colony who have a group objective (which must be achieved in order for the non-exiled players to win) as well as a secret objective which must be achieved in order for that player to win. Also, there is a small chance one of the players will be a traitor, actively working to make the game more difficult for the other players.

Through the game the players can go to locations outside of the colony to find weapons, food, medicine, gas, and tools to help keep the zombies at bay and fulfill a crisis which are flipped up each turn. Additionally, after each turn a player draws a a Crossroads card which will be played on the current player as soon as they fulfill the requirements on the card, ranging from having a specific character in their party to moving from to locations using the gas card.

Players ramp up suspicion by trying to satisfy the secret objectives, which can be as simple as holding food cards or gaining weapons. Resources run pretty tight through the game and a had full of cards can make other players very suspicious. If a player is exiled from the colony (forced out through a vote at any time, majority wins), they gain a new objective which needs to be fulfilled.

Oh, did I mention the exposure die? Whenever a player fights a zombie or moves to a new location, they must roll the exposure die. First roll has a 50% chance of nothing happening, but if you roll the other results you roll it again. You could take a wound, get frostbite, or even be zombiefied. If this happens, the next lowest influence character in that location is exposed and has to roll to see if they are killed.


My thoughts on the game- It was a blast! There is so much going on in this game and you always have to worry if someone drew that traitor card. There are tons of scenarios that I saw, and apparently there will be many more in the final product. Just thinking about the game makes me want to play it again, and that's saying something when you consider I got 10 plays in 6 game nights.
We'll you've sold me on this.
 
I fixed some of the typing errors and added a little to a post on BGG forums. Got a thumbs up by one of the designers! I'm pretty over the moon right now :D
 
I thought on the last podcast one of the two designers was going to be there, but I don't remember which one. They just released a new podcast today but haven't had a chance to listen to it yet.
 
A little off topic, but anyone familiar with Rory's Story Cubes? Wondering how well it would play for an 11-year-old.
 
Just got the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. Been reading the rules a little and can't wait to find the time to really dig in and play it. Plus, Cool Stuff Inc sent along a Gen-Con promo for the game, which is super cool!
 
Just got the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. Been reading the rules a little and can't wait to find the time to really dig in and play it. Plus, Cool Stuff Inc sent along a Gen-Con promo for the game, which is super cool!
You'll have to let us (me) know how it is. It seems really interesting, and I've heard good things about it.
 
So for my birthday my friends got me Munchkin: Cthulhu and Munchkin: Bites, as well as the Pathfinder: Adventure Card Game Rise of the Runelords base set. With luck I might get to play the Pathfinder: Adventure Card Game with people as early as this Sunday.

btw, if you like Munchkin and Pathfinder, Munchkin: Pathfinder is pretty fun. Lots of goblins.
 
I've played a couple adventures and so far I like it, though it's tough to say as I've been playing it solo. I think it would be better with more people.
 
Picked up Lords of Waterdeep for the ipad/iphone. Love it.
I really wish I could get this on the Kindle. Dammit!

I picked up some games yesterday. Love Letter, Bang! The Dice Game, and Rampage. I can't wait to play Rampage as it looks like a great dexterity game.
 
Had anyone played Quarriors? I am drawn to it because I love dice, but I'm wondering how it plays.
 
Had anyone played Quarriors? I am drawn to it because I love dice, but I'm wondering how it plays.
Quarriors is ok for a while, as long as you don't mind the game being very luck dependent. You might be better off waiting a few months for the Marvel dice game being made. While it's going to have random add on packs where the dice have varying rarity, don't let that scare you off as they'll be 2 dice and a card for $1. Should be released in March.
 
Played Mansions of Madness with some friends last night. Had a pretty dreadful time playing it overall. Our games subtitle should have been 45 minutes per useful action. I spent the better part of an hour in the stunned state because the monster I was dealing with had a special attack that stunned you even on a successful strength test. Awful. The combat being decided by card draws might be the clumsiest and shittiest method for resolving combat in any boardgame I've ever played. The third time my character dropped his gun because I kept getting the dexterity test ranged attack card I just left it there forever and began fist fighting stuff. A truly inelegant way of dealing with it. It wouldn't be an issue if it weren't so combat heavy.

I was really disappointed. I'd heard it was difficult, what I didn't hear was it wasn't actually fun.

Sent from my KFSOWI using Tapatalk
 
Aww, that's disappointing.

I played Ultimate Werewolf on Saturday. The first game the moderator fouled up all to high hell, so the werewolves didn't stand a chance (he let the witch see who the werewolves were, and the witch systematically killed the werewolves off... FAIL!). The best part was as the second try started out a young kid in the group turns to his uncle sitting next to him and says "Can we lynch the moderator?" and only a couple of us heard it, throwing us into fits of laughter.

Also got a few games of Netrunner, Bang! The Dice Game (so much fun!), and King of Tokyo.

Anyone on BGG? Here's my own user page on the site http://boardgamegeek.com/user/Krisken I've just started keeping track of the games I've played and have included all the games I own.
 
Played A Study In Emerald today (the Martin Wallace game based on Neil Gaiman's short story). WOW. Just a fantastic game all around. Tons going on, and while the rules took an hour to explain to a group of four people, the game itself took an hour and a half to play.

Still have lots of questions, and I think we played it right all the way through with little errors here and there. Just a phenomenal game all around with tons of depth.
 
King of Tokyo is a great game. Richard Garflield has shown multiple times he's more than just the creator of Magic the Gathering.

Been playing quite a bit of X-Wing lately, along with Marvel Legendary (deck building cooperative game) and Ascension (deck building game). It goes without saying that I really like deck builders.
 
So, I picked up a copy of Munchkin recently and played it with my friends. Most of whom had never played it before (with me having only played it once). As should be no surprise to anyone, we had a great time.

We have also recently tried out the Fluxx Board Game. Which, is a bit of an odd duck, but still fun if you are a fan of card-based Fluxx.
 
So, I picked up a copy of Munchkin recently and played it with my friends. Most of whom had never played it before (with me having only played it once). As should be no surprise to anyone, we had a great time.
A group of friends who claimed to know how to play munchkin tried to get me to play it with them once and I hated it. Later, I looked up the actual rules and watched the tabletop episode featuring it and it looked like a blast.

I don't remember exactly how but they butchered the rules so badly that first time it made the game boring.
 
Played You Are The Maniac while in Atlanta. It's a competitive card game where you take on the role of a movie slasher and try to kill more points worth of victims than your opponents. It's pretty fun, but you really need to read the errata... I thought I had lost because I didn't realize that Football Players make ALL football player card worth one more and that it's not just a simply +1 for each you have. But once you understand the errata, everything is good.
 
Top