Live Magazine October/November 2016 Live Magazine October Edition | Page 24

BOARD/CARD GAMES DEAD OF WINTER: long night REVIEW Dead of Winter is a tabletop game that takes place in a Zombie Apocalypse. In this world, everyone involved must band together to survive, unless you’re the betrayer... in which case, bring them down, bring them all down. Dead of Winter: Long Night is the stand alone Dead of Winter expansion set that adds new characters, new locations, new crossroad choices and more adventures for anyone exiled. As mentioned, it is also a standalone expansion, giving excellent value for money for people wanting to play a Dead of Winter game for the first time. Speaking of for the first time. Learn How to Play The photo on the left is my desk after what I thought would be a quick lunch break to learn how to play. While the gameplay mechanic is easy enough to get your head around it after a couple of rounds, it’s putting in the time to learn how to play the game that is the true beginning of the adventure. This isn’t a light tabletop game, Dead of Winter is deep, requiring at least one dedicated player to sit down with the instructions and have a good read before following that up with a couple of How-To you tube videos. Luckily, Plaid Hat Games thought ahead and included some helpful links to their recommended How-To video. But how to teach everybody to play all at once? Always a trickly question, you’ve just put aside the time to learn the game yourself, will it take the same amount to teach the other players? What if you can’t do a great job like the How-To video? There is a simple answer: Pizza & finger food. When embarking on the first play through with friends, schedule the game for an early dinner/ brunch/ or lunch timing. Here in lies the solution, people arrive hungry and you all sit down for food WHILE all watching the How-To video together. The food in your belly assists in the learning of the new game & the deliciousness of pizza combined with good friends makes the 27minute How-To video pass in seconds. Okay. It’s time to play! The turn flow in Dead of Winter is one of its great qualities: there’s a crisis, everyone discusses on how to overcome it, plan out your survivor’s missions to secure the resources needed, weighing up both resource collection and Zombie horde management. The turn flow Quick Overview Dead of Winter: The Long Night is a standalone expansion for Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game that introduces the Raxxon location where horrible experiments will spill out into the town unless players can contain them. The game has players at a new colony location trying to survive with new survivors against brand new challenges. Can you handle being raided by members of other colonies? Will you explore more and unravel the mysteries of the Raxxon pharmaceutical location to find powerful items but release stronger enemies? Or will you upgrade your colony to help it better withstand the undead horde? These are all choices you will get to make in this new set, and if you want, you can mix in the survivors and cards from the original set to increase the variety even more.