Dead of Winter Review

Dead of Winter is the latest game from Plaid Hat Games. Despite not being a huge fan of any of Plaid Hat's games (except for Summoner Wars, which I love), I always get very excited about each of their releases. They always have really interesting themes mixed with neat twists on game mechanisms. Does Dead of Winter buck the trend of disappointment? Would I even ask such an obvious rhetorical question is the answer was "no?" Read on to find out!

Dead of Winter is a semi-cooperative game that takes place after a zombie apocalypse has ravaged the world. Players take control of survivors in this world, struggling to live in this new world. The survivors need keep the hordes at bay and make sure the colony is safe and fed.

In a round, players will roll their action dice. On their turn, players will spend their dice in order to take actions with their survivors. These actions are things like searching locations in order to gain resources or items, fighting zombies, or building barricades. The zombies will keep coming and bad things will keep happening to the colony, until either the survivors complete their shared objective, or the colony's morale falls to 0. 

Sounds simple enough, except that Plaid Hat and Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Vega have added quite a few interesting little twists and turns to make Dead of Winter quite a unique experience. First is the fact that although the group as a whole has a common objective, each player has a personal objective. Each player's personal objective states what the player needs to accomplish in order to win. These objectives most often have a bulleted list that includes the group completing the common main objective, but also some other conditions that must be met that will likely make the group's completion of the main objective more difficult. Even if the main objective is competed, players can only win if they also completed their individual objectives as well. 

The great thing about this system is that there are also betrayer objectives. These objectives require that the game end not because the main objective has been completed, but because the colony's morale has fallen to 0. The game also includes the option to exile players from the game if they are suspected of being a betrayer. This adds a lot of tension to the game, and keeps the players from devolving the game into a mess of "well Idecide on a 'm not going to win, so no one is going to win," which, in my opinion, has been the biggest issue with semi-cooperative games in the past.

A huge source of tension in the game is the exposure die. It must be rolled every time a survivor either moves around town or fights a zombie. On about half of the sides is nothing - which is what you'll be hoping to see each time you roll that accursed die. On the other half are bad things, which cause either normal wounds, frostbite wounds, or even instant death. The fact that players can lose a survivor with a single roll of the die is a lot of fun. 

The last twist in the game is the deck of Crossroads cards. At the start of each player's turn, the player to the right of her draws a Crossroads card, and reads the it. Each Crossroads card has a condition on it, which the reader of the card does not reveal to the current player, unless the player fulfills it. These cards contain conditions like, "If the current player controls a survivor at the Police Station, read the following:" and the rest of the card has a bit of story, and then a decision. The player (and sometimes all the players) then need to decide on their course of action concerning the story, and deal with any consequences that decision presents.

Not a super exciting photo, but I didn't want to spoil anything about these awesome cards!!

This mechanism is brilliant. I know reviews can rely on hyperbole a little too often, but really the Crossroads cards are my favorite part of this game. It creates a weight to each player's turn, since she has to go about the things she wants to do, knowing that she might be interrupted at any moment by the player holding the Crossroads card. Not only that, but the Crossroads cards have really interesting story beats that can create some extraordinary moments for the players. I wish I could say more about how much fun we had with these cards, but I really don't want to give anything away.

In fact, one of the things I don't like about the game is that the Crossroads deck is limited. Don't get me wrong, Plaid Hat have provided 80 Crossroads cards, which is a lot - and a Crossroads card won't even be triggered each turn. And I'm usually the first to call out people who complain about this sort of stuff - how many times are you really going to play this game, no matter how good it is? Despite all that, (and perhaps because the cards are just so friggin' awesome) just the fact that the deck is limited (whether or not said limit will ever be reached by me) makes me want more cards.

I also mentioned how much fun that exposure die is. Well, it can also be painful (which is part of why I love it). Rolling a Bite (meaning instant death) on your first turn can really knock the wind out of you and the group - but having to deal with the consequences of that so early can definitely make things interesting for the right players.

Dead of Winter is a great game. There is a lot going on in the game, but not so much to make the game a slog. As the players internalize the rules, the narrative of the story really starts to shine through. The tensions of the individual objectives, the Crossroads cards, the exposure die, and the fact that its a pretty tough cooperative game to begin with all make for a seriously engaging experience.

The first time I played Dead of Winter was with my lovely wife, who is a seasoned gamer, and my dad, cousin, and sister - all three of whom have played some of "my games" in the past but need some encouragement to sit down with one that isn't Wits and Wagers or Telestrations. Right after we lost the first game, we started talking about the stories of our survivors, and what we would do differently when we played again. We didn't have to wait long to find out, because we played again the very next day. And after losing a second time, we set it up to play again...twice. We were up playing Dead of Winter well past 2 AM, laughing and dying horrible deaths.

Dead of Winter is the very definition of an immersive experience. My cousin, usually a "too cool for school" type, started reading the Crossroads cards in character, and was pushing all of us to do the same. We all started making up stories for our survivors about their motivations and why they always seemed to fail so miserably. Based on those memorable experiences alone, I can't recommend this game highly enough. 8.5/10.

Mice and Mystics Review

One of the hottest games lately has been Mice and Mystics.

In Mice and Mystics, you are a group of mice (that used to be humans) attempting to save your kingdom from an evil overlord that is seducing your father, the King.  Also, the evil overlord controls lots of rats, which is horribly inconvenient.  The game is scenario driven, and in each scenario, the players are working together to accomplish a certain goal - whether that is escaping the castle, defeating the house cat, sending a message via a crow, or something else entirely.  To do this, the players alternate taking turns with their mice.  On each turn, you are allowed to move and take an action.  The different actions include attacking, searching, exploring, and recovering.  As free actions, you are also allowed to level up, equip your mouse, or share equipment with other mice on the same space.  Most of the actions are fairly straightforward.  When attacking, you roll dice and compare the number of hits against the number of blocks - and if there are more hits than blocks, then damage is assigned (and if cheese is rolled, then the side that rolled it gets to collect cheese tokens).  Searching lets you find new items, exploring lets you move to the next tile (or flip the current tile), and recovering allows you to attempt to remove status affects.  Among the mice's turns, the minions that are on the board will also get to take turns; their turns work similarly to the mice turns, but they will almost always attack.  If the mice are able to successfully accomplish their goal before time runs out, then they succeed!  If all of the mice are captured at the same time, or time runs out, then they were stopped without being able to accomplish their mission - thus dooming the kingdom!  (There are various things that "advance the timer," like having mice captured and having the minions collect too much cheese.)

At its core, Mice and Mystics is a very lightweight role playing game.  It includes leveling up, an ongoing campaign, characters that you should embrace, and an overarching story.  In fact, the game comes with both a rulebook and a quest book.  And, that quest book contains 11 different quests.  So, honestly, my first pro for Mice and Mystics is that it is a wonderful choice if you are looking for a way to have a laid back role playing experience that can easily include non-gamers and younger kids (probably as young as 8-12).  I think that the campaign is put together well, and I truly appreciate two specific elements.  First, I like that each scenario doesn't have the same victory condition, and second that there are decisions (side quests) that you have to make during the campaign that will affect what happens later.  And, I especially appreciate that, if you play like I do, then you must make these decisions from an uninformed perspective - which does a good job of representing the vantage point of your characters.  Should I go try to get the cook's attention?  Well, I don't know - do I actually need her attention?  What advantage is there in that?  Well, it seems like a good idea - let's do it!

Equip your characters and help them to level up!

The next pro for Mice and Mystics is the world and the story that you find yourself thrown into.  Suddenly, your father has taken ill, and this evil woman has far too much control over your kingdom.  So, what do you do?  You have the castle mystic turn you all into mice, obviously.  Now, as mice, everything is gargantuan!  In fact, even the rats are larger than you.  Both the setting and the enemies in the game do a good job of helping you invest in this theme.  I also like that, as you experience different things, you get to learn more about the story of what is happening around you.  In fact, there are story segments both before and after each adventure, along with an opening prologue and final epilogue for the quest book itself.  And, for the most part the story is interesting - though there are occasionally lines that make me cringe.  (My least favorite line in the book is, "and to make sure Collin didn't dawdle, Nez said, 'Now don't ya dawdle, boy!'"  I really wish they had someone read through that and realize that the word dawdle sounds awkward when used twice in the same sentence.  A thesaurus would have truly helped this line.)  There are also some minor logic problems, in my opinion, but if I go into detail, I'm concerned that I might spoil part of the story for you.  And, as I said before, the story is one of the best parts of the game!

Yet, though I thought that the campaign was well done, there were some definite cons that I had for Mice and Mystics.  The most immediate con that I had for Mice and Mystics was that I felt like I was constantly running into rule ambiguities.  Now, I will confess - I learned this game from a tutorial video.  However, this video was on Plaid Hat Games' site, and was referenced on the front of the rules ("If you want us to teach you how to play, you can visit...") so I was hoping that watching it would be all I needed in order to start playing the game.  Unfortunately, after watching it, I still didn't feel like I understood the game very well, and even after reading the rulebook and referencing it during the game, we often found ourselves guessing at how certain things worked.  One example is with the "Fishhook and Thread" object.  This object is found in the water on the first scenario.  When moving out of water, the rulebook specifies that you must roll a die, and if you roll a "star", then you successfully move out of the water.  The Fishhook and Thread allows you to connect two spaces on the tile and move between the spaces "as if they were normal adjacent spaces."  Now, does "normal" mean non-water, or does it mean that you are able to move between them as if the spaces in between didn't exist?  Do you roll a die, or not?  This is just one example of a multitude of times that I found myself scratching my head trying to decide what exactly the game intended for me to do.  I'm hoping that in the future the FAQ for the game starts addressing more of these issues, but when I referenced it, it still felt like it was in its infancy stage.

Epic battles on miniature scales

The next con that I had was that I felt like the actions were too prescribed.  Now, if you recall, there were several different things that a mouse could do on his turn.  That sounds exciting, right?  Unfortunately, in order to actually explore (move to the next tile), your current tile had to be cleared of minions.  Why the mice decide they need to fight every household pest is beyond me (ok, ok, they are "heroic" mice - sure), but I really didn't understand why they weren't willing to ever run away.  Regardless, the net effect of this rule is that most turns amount to charging at opponents and attacking.  You will occasionally search, and you will occasionally explore (well, at least if you hope to advance the game), but when you should do each thing is pretty obvious, and so there's not a lot of strategy behind when to fight and when to do other things.

My final con for Mice and Mystics was that I felt the dice played too much of a factor in determining the outcome of the game.  Now, random elements in games are good - they help each play experience to be different.  This is a great thing!  However, in Mice and Mystics, you roll the dice so often that it feels like the entire game depends on how those rolls land.  Did the minions attack you and get some of your cheese?  Did they also roll a lot of cheese when they were attacking and defending?  Then there's a good chance that you aren't going to have a chance to complete your quest, since time will run out well before you are able to actually advance in the game - after all, you hear a roach scurrying around the corner, and you can't resist engaging in an epic battle of one inch warriors! 

Overall, I give Mice and Mystics a 7.0/10.  I think that the campaign nature of the game is well done, but I found the actual gameplay grew stale for me too quickly, so I will probably move away from the game without bothering to complete the campaign.  However, the story was interesting enough for me to cheat and read it, without taking the time to play the chapters.

If Mice and Mystics sounds interesting, you might also check out Runebound, Talisman, and Flash Point: Fire Rescue.

Summoner Wars: Master Set Review

So, as many of you know by reading my original Summoner Wars Review, I really love Summoner Wars. Because of this, as soon as I heard about the Summoner Wars: Master Set, I was very eager to pick up a copy. (NOTE: The link is to Plaid Hat Games' Store, which is the only place I currently know of where you can get a copy of the Master Set.)

Normally in reviews of expansions, I write about the major changes that are introduced in the set. However, since the Master Set doesn't really change anything about the rules of Summoner Wars (at least, not that I noticed), I will instead focus on the races and contents of the box.  I am assuming that you have already read the original Summoner Wars review that I linked to, and I will not be rehashing the pros and cons of the Master Set (since they are the same) as I normally do in my reviews.

The Master Set includes 6 races (who will be addressed later), the premium gameboard, and is setup to be able to easily hold all of your armies. What's more, it has all of this for only $50. Previously to get into Summoner Wars, you had to buy a two-player starter set for $25, which came with a fairly pitiful fold-out game board (and to buy the premium board you had to pay another $15). Plus, to get more armies, you had to buy faction packs for $10 each. Therefore, to get 6 armies and the premium game board, you were looking at paying $80. And now, it's only $50. Right there, I could already stop writing this review (and assume you read the original review already), and you should all be convinced to go buy the game. Instead, for your reading enjoyment, I will write about the races.

Mountain Vargath: This race (looking somewhat like minotaurs) is the most straightforward, easy race to play with. Play lots of units, charge, pound on your opponent. Most of their units have abilities that are pretty easy to capitalize on; abilities that do things like give you an extra die when you're attacking on your opponent's side of the board. Like I said, get close and pummel your adversaries. I really enjoy using this race, and it is also very convenient to give to a new player.

Deep Dwarves: This race could also be known as the Magicians. Most everything that they do causes you to use magic. Fortunately, their Summoner has a special ability that allows them to take the top card from the Discard Pile and put it on your Magic pile (but then you can only use one unit to attack that round). They have a bit of a learning curve in seeing how they can fit together, but once a player learns to use them, they can be incredibly effective. One of their units (Scholar), specifically, has a Strength of 0. However, for 1 Magic, you can cause every unit that attacks an enemy that happens to be adjacent to a Scholar to attack with an extra die. Therefore, they are able to attack with 1 if you use their ability (since, by definition, as a melee unit they are adjacent to whoever they would be attacking) - or, more usefully, your other units are able to attack with 2, 3, or 4 dice. This is a quick way to slaughter an opposing Summoner.

Benders: Also known as "Sheer Awesomeness in a Bottle" (my term). First of all, you must make sure that nobody ever gets very close to your units - none of them are melee, and they all have hitpoints in accordance with that (such as Champions with 3 or 4 hitpoints). However, they are all able to attack at range effectively, and their abilities are phenomenal. Things like Stun, "Common enemy Units that begin a turn adjacent to this Deceiver cannot move or attack during that turn." One Champion can also force a Common units to attack twice in a turn. And another Champion can capture any opposing unit that he dealt the final blow to (even Champions!). These guys can be a lot of fun to play.

Sand Goblins: This is an interesting mix of what you would expect traditional "Sand People" and Goblins to do. For example, they have Camouflage, which states "This Javelineer cannot be attacked by non-adjacent Units." That is fairly standard for a "Sand Person." However, they definitely have a Goblin flavor; one of their Champions, accurately named "Biter" has an ability called "Crazed" which doesn't allow him to move if he is adjacent to an enemy. Another traditional Goblin character is the "Scavenger", which takes destroyed cards and puts them under himself as protection instead of sending them to your magic pile. These aren't my favorite race to play, but, they can't all be favorites, or it loses it's meaning, now doesn't it? They are still a very solid race.

Shadow Elves: Who said that elves were wimps? Oh right - most fantasy books that I have ever read say that. Fortunately, these Elves come with their friend the "Hydrake", which destroys everything. Everything. He has 3 attack dice, but he can attack each enemy unit that he is adjacent to. Oh, and he also has 8 health. As for the rest of the Elves, they have some interesting abilities but the general strategy is to hang back and shoot at your opponents - and choose the most opportune time to charge in and strike. They are well designed to truly have both a traditional "Shadow" and "Elf" feel to them.

Swamp Orcs: Last but not least are the Swamp People. They have a special card called a "Vine Wall". This annoying thing (my opponent normally plays with this race instead of me - hence things that they are able to do are very annoying) starts sprawling it's way across the battlefield. This serves two purposes. First, Swamp Orcs can be spawned just about anywhere (after all, there are Vine Walls everywhere, and you only have to spawn next to a Wall). Second, it drastically hinders the movement of all other players (who have to roll to move their units across Vine Walls), while improving the abilities of the Swamp Orcs (they often get bonuses for being adjacent to a Vine Wall or for moving over a Vine Wall). This is a very interesting new way of strategizing in Summoner Wars, and because of this I am very pleased that they were included in the set.

Overall, I give the Summoner Wars: Master Set a 9.0/10. If you love Summoner Wars (and if you don't, why did you really read all the way down to here?) then you should definitely look to buy this set. It is definitely worth the money, and it is also a very good way of storing all of your old Summoner Wars sets (though the box is a bit bulky).

I would like to thank Plaid Hat Games for providing me with a demo copy of the Summoner Wars: Master Set.

Summoner Wars Review

After hearing lots of hype about Summoner Wars (which has two base sets: Elves v. Orcs and Dwarves v. Goblins), I finally had the opportunity to play the game (special thanks to Danny in Tulsa for teaching me this game).

In Summoner Wars, each player takes on the role of a race that is led by a Summoner (hence the name), and the object of the game is to kill your opponent's Summoner. On any given turn, you will draw cards, summon new cards, play events, move, attack (killing your opponents gains you extra magic), and (optionally) discard cards to turn them into magic. This continues back and forth until one player kills his opponent's Summoner. And then the person who has a Summoner left gets to do a happy dance... or whatever version of celebration he deems appropriate for winning a card game.

The first thing that I really enjoy about Summoner Wars is how the magic works. Whereas in almost every game I have ever played, you normally gain whatever currency you needed to play characters every round, in Summoner Wars you do not gain magic just because a new round has started. Instead, you are able to gain magic in one of two ways: first, you can kill your opponents, thus putting their dead unit into your magic pile (which I think is awesome); second, you can discard cards from your hand at the end of your turn to put them into your magic pile. Therefore, each round you must decide if the cards in your hand are important enough to keep, or whether they would serve you better as magic (you will never get them back - you only go through the deck once). In case you missed it earlier in the paragraph, you gain magic for killing your opponents. And that is awesome.

The next thing that I like about Summoner Wars (and every other game that does this well) is that each race has its own unique, well formed identity. Something that often annoys me about a game is when each player uses a different "race" (or "character" or whatever) and the only difference is that the pictures are different. I realize that it takes a lot more effort to balance a game where different factions work in completely unique ways, but Summoner Wars has done this. I haven't had the opportunity to play all of the races as much as I would like, but from what I have seen they all play out quite differently with varying strengths, weaknesses, and strategies. I really compliment the designer for doing a great job in bringing life to the playable races.

The third thing that I like about Summoner Wars is the speed and pace of the game. The game seems to take between 20-40 minutes, but there aren't really slow times in the game. Whereas many games (such as Magic, Race for the Galaxy, etc) have times where the game is fast paced and other times in players are building up to get ready for the action, Summoner Wars is constant action. You start the game with several units on the board, and you will have very few (if any) turns in which you don't fight each other. Units will die - often. But that's why you have more of them.

One thing to mention that is neither a pro nor a con about Summoner Wars is the expandability of the game. Either base set provides a player with all that they need to play the game. However, like with Heroscape, Warhammer: Invasion, and many other games recently, it appears that the marketing strategy for Summoner Wars is that they will provide you with everything you need to play the game in the hopes that you will continue buying more of their products and expanding your gaming experience. Honestly, I am of the mindset where I really like to buy the whole game in a box and then I have everything I need for that game. That I will ever need for that game. Realistically, most game companies seem to have gone away from this model due to the cost and risk of developing a new brand, and so I much prefer this marketing to the CCG random pack opening.

Another thing to note (this one I haven't decided if I like it or not) is the small deck size - approximately 30-35 cards.  This keeps the game going very quickly since you are unable to gain new units once you run out of cards.  However, it seems like the game may be a bit too short and may have been better with more turns.  At the same time, having more cards means you would probably just spend more time going back and forth killing trivial minions instead of focusing on your opponent's Summoner.  I don't really know my thoughts on this - like I said, I don't know how I feel about this part of the game, but I did think it was worth noting.  I'm sure a lot of playtesting went into this, and I would guess that they considered making the deck bigger, and they must have decided for whatever reason that the smaller deck worked better... so I'll go with it.

Overall, I give Summoner Wars a 9.0/10. I was quite pleased with my time with the game, and I truly look forward to playing the game quite a bit more and seeing what options are available among all the different races, expansions, etc.  I would highly recommend this game to most any gamer.

If you want to check out some more opinions on Summoner Wars, I'd recommend reading this Summoner Wars Review from Play Board Games, or another Summoner Wars Review by Games With Two. Or, if you want to check out more of my reviews, you should consider The Summoner Wars Master Set (obviously), but you might also try The Resistance, Yomi, and BattleCON.