Dead season board game printable. Dead of Winter: among zombies and humans. Survive at any cost

About the game

A game about survival in a post-apocalyptic setting, where zombies serve only as a backdrop for the interaction of characters and players. Players take on the role of leaders of several factions of one small colony of survivors. For a common victory, it is necessary to fulfill a common goal for all. But for a single player, the victory of the group does not mean anything, since he also has his own goal, unknown to the rest of the players. So as a result, both all and only a part of the players can win or lose. A difficult decision will arise before any participant more than once: to pursue a common goal, or to jeopardize its fulfillment by trying to complete their secret task.

This game is a joint development of two designers: Isaac Vega (Bioshock Infinite) and Jon Gilmour (Pocket Dungeon). The result of their work is a semi-cooperative board game set in a brutal winter months after the onset of the zombie apocalypse.

Players lead groups of survivors who have settled in a barricaded haven called the Colony. Day after day they are fighting a deadly virus and endless raids of the dead. Lack of food, water, medicines, constant attacks of the dead, cold and snow - the heroes will face these problems throughout the game. True, all this will turn out to be nonsense compared to the internal troubles that will constantly arise between the groups, because in addition to the common goal, each of them will have their own, secret ...

Speaking of components, there are a lot of them and they are very stylish! An important element of the game is the text of the rules and cards. It is he who sets the atmosphere of the game and immerses the participants in a storm of events.

Equipment:

• 10 double-sided main objective cards
• 24 secret objective cards
• 10 Traitor Secret Goal Cards
• 10 Exiled Secret Objective Cards
• 30 survivor cards
• 5 player boards
• 1 first player token
• 25 starting item cards
• 20 police station item cards
• 20 grocery store item cards
• 20 school subject cards
• 20 Refuel Item Cards
• 20 Library item cards
• 20 hospital item cards
• 20 crisis cards
• 80 intersection cards
• 25 wound tokens
• 20 Helpless Survivor Tokens
• 20 food tokens
• 20 noise tokens
• 20 barricade tokens
• 6 hunger tokens
• 2 counter tokens
• 30 zombie figurines
• 30 zombie tokens
• 30 survivor figures
• 60 plastic figure stands
• 1 colony field
• 6 location boards
• 1 rulebook
• 30 action dice
• 1 exposure die
• Card size: 63 by 88 mm.

Board game "Dead season"

Recently, it has become fashionable in the world of board games to release original remakes - reworked versions of popular games. We have already talked about a couple of Arkham Horror and Ancient Horror. "Dead Season" is also considered a remake of the rather popular game "Zombicide". However, if in the case of "Horrors" such a comparison is more than appropriate, then "Dead Season" is still an independent game, although it is noticeable that the experience of "Zombicide" was taken into account by its creators - the disadvantages of the predecessor both in terms of the complexity of the rules and in terms of game mechanics are taken into account. The common theme - the world after the zombie apocalypse - just forces you to compare these games.

"Dead Season" was released in 2014 and in just a year managed to win huge crowds of fans around the world. Today it is one of the most popular desktop games in various game libraries, sales are also very high.

The plot of "Dead Season" is not original - it has been used thousands of times in movies, books and board games. Something has happened in the world. The main part of the population turned into zombies, and only a handful of survivors were able to retain their human form. They now need to hold out at all costs.

A slightly strange name is noteworthy, which does not really fit into the logic of the game itself. Of course, many people kill and die in the game, but why "season"? These are the features of the Russian translation, in the original the game is called Dead of winter, which clearly indicates that the theme is related to winter. This does not affect the game mechanics, but is reflected in tasks, for example, you need to often collect fuel to keep warm, or you can get frostbite, which will lead to death after three turns, and so on.

Game Components

"Dead season" from the first meeting surprises with a huge number of items in the box. There are 657 of them - cards, figurines, tokens, tablets. Diverse and rich, although, of course, it is impossible to quickly start the game with such an arsenal - the starting layout of all elements takes at least 15 minutes even for experienced players. In addition to quantity, the quality of all elements attracts attention. Colorful printing, good materials for both cards and figurines - this cannot but rejoice. It is not known how durable they will be with constant use, but the new game looks just gorgeous. Here, of course, we must pay tribute not only to the localization company, but also to the American developers of the game, Ilas Vega and John Gilmour, who provided excellent drawings.

Also noteworthy is the lack of a full map. Combinable squares - this is perhaps the best find of the creators of "Zombicide". The authors of "Dead Season" decided to abandon the map altogether, in this game there is only a conditional playing field and conditional locations. When we send a character, for example, to school, he does not need to go outside and actually count the moves, as in "Zombicide", we simply move the character figure to the "School" card. This simplification negatively affects the atmosphere, but it allows you to simplify the rules.

Game mechanics

The game begins with the choice of a scenario, which sets the main nuances, primarily the victory conditions. After that, each player chooses his characters. There are already 30 of them in total, and the selection mechanism is semi-closed - you need to pull out four cards from the common deck and keep two for yourself. The variety of characters pleases - the same characters do not get bored after several games. Initially, each player has two characters, one becomes the leader of the group, the second - an assistant. Of course, each character has different skills and abilities that can and should be used in the party. Considering that characters are obtained in a virtually random way, it is impossible to talk about using one favorite tactic in all rounds, each new game has to adapt to its heroes and play according to their capabilities.

By the way, the number of characters a player has is not a constant value. Among the various bonus cards, there are those that allow you to take additional heroes. In addition, existing characters die in battle or from the cold. If all characters have died, the player has the right to recruit new ones.

The selected scenario sets a team goal, but in addition to it, the players have their own, which is drawn in the dark on a special map. The one who fulfills exactly his goal wins, another thing is that in most cards a personal goal is feasible only taking into account the victory of the whole team, so you also need to work for the team. However, there are a number of cards on which the player is given the goal of disrupting the team's victory. The rules stipulate that there can be no more than one such card in the deck. Given that the objective cards are drawn in the dark and from a fairly large set, the players do not know for sure if there will be a traitor in their company and who he is. But there is always a reason to suspect neighbors. Moreover, a reasonable traitor will not “burn out” right away, but will try to remain incognito in order to strike at a decisive moment.

The presence of personal goals allows us to call "Dead Season" a semi-corporate game. In it, you need to work for the team, and remember about personal goals. Between these two tasks, players balance the entire game, because if you donate the last one for a common victory, then there may not be enough bonuses to fulfill your personal goal.

If the players decide that there is a traitor among them, they can put the issue to a vote and kick him off the team. He does not stop playing, on the contrary, he becomes a hermit, receives a new task card and begins to fight both against zombies and against the remaining players. The election mechanism is very similar to the popular psychological game "Mafia". Players do not know for sure who the traitor is, and vote at the insistence of one of them, without having accurate evidence. Naturally, they can make a mistake, then the real traitor will remain in the team, and the good player will go into exile.

The presence of passive survivors must be recognized as an excellent find by the authors of the game. In addition to characters who can fight zombies and look for food, there are still a certain number of other people at the base who do not bring any benefit to the team, but, on the contrary, require food and protection. In a real situation of a zombie apocalypse, they would be the wounded, children and the elderly. Initially, the number of "passive" depends on the number of players, but then only increases when the corresponding event cards are drawn. Passive survivors drag the team to the bottom, but they cannot be abandoned - the death of any of them lowers morale, and its reset leads to an instant loss of the team.

The main essence of the game is the performance of tasks to search for resources. Each turn, the players are tasked with finding a certain amount of certain resources and adding them to the team cauldron. Who will contribute - it does not matter, only the total amount is important. Which again raises the question of the relationship between personal and command. Gathering and executing a plan is also a delicate thing. Players put resource cards in the dark, and then mix them up, so this is expanse for a traitor: he can slip any other card, thereby failing the team’s task, but at the same time remaining incognito.

The abilities of the character, as in many games, in Dead Season are determined, firstly, by the initial parameters, and secondly, by the dice. If you cast the desired value - you can attack or look for resources, if you don't - no. The important difference is that the dice are rolled not before the action, but at the beginning of the turn. Taking into account the result obtained, the player can distribute the moves between his characters. That is, if you rolled two “fours” and “two”, then you can perform actions with characters whose minimum threshold is not lower than these values. And this is also an interesting element of the strategy. The cube in such a situation is actually an action, any player should have one more than the characters at any time in the game.

Where are the zombies, you ask? They, as it should be in games of this genre, are everywhere, but in the first moves they do not pester. Zombies appear both on the street near the player base and in each location, but for the time being they accumulate. When the number becomes critical, the zombies break through and start attacking people. There are no two lives, as in "Zombicide", for the characters of "Dead Season" - they die from the very first attack of zombies. The death of each survivor lowers morale, so that the team can lose by simply losing too many fighters. This forces you to monitor the number of zombies in places of accumulation and periodically arrange a sweep. If, of course, it turns out to arrange it.

The mechanism of the battle is simplified as much as possible, but what is there - there is no mechanism at all. If a player has dice with a value that exceeds the threshold for attack, then he is considered to be killing zombies. It would seem that what is easier, beat the zombies and beat, but this requires an action, and they are not always enough even to search for resources. A more complex calculation system is used when two survivors are fighting (hermits and traitors, this feature is in the game for you), but this does not happen often.

A 12-sided die and a stack of crossroads cards are responsible for the randomness in the game. The cube is a tricky thing. The authors of the game made a sound judgment that something must always happen in the world of zombies, and the simplest operations can end badly, so the rules say that players must roll a 12-sided die when moving to a new location or after attacking a zombie (if not stated otherwise). Most of the faces of the die lead nowhere, but a few faces are tricky. You can get either wounded or frostbite, which is the same wound, but only cumulative each turn.

If the character has received more than three wounds, then he dies. Wounds and frostbite can be treated with first aid kits, if they are, of course, and if they do not need to be brought to the altar of a common task. The worst thing is that one face of the die leads to the instant death of the character. That is, I decided to go to the library (one of the locations in the game) and died along the way. Sounds crazy in a normal world, but in a zombie apocalypse, it's par for the course. Of course, throwing one edge on a dodecahedron - the chances are not that high, but it happens a couple of times in a game and usually seriously spoils the strategy.

Crossroads maps are regular events that can either happen or not. It works like this. During the turn of one of the players, his neighbor on the right draws an intersection card and follows the events. If the conditions specified in the card are met, then the neighbor reads the contents of the card, and if not, then it "silently" goes to the discard pile. Basically, of course, there is something bad, but sometimes there are useful things.

conclusions

It is impossible not to pay attention to an indisputable fact - the zombie game "Dead Season" fixes all the weaknesses of the other zombie game "Zombicide". It’s impossible to consider this a mere coincidence, but it’s hardly possible to talk about some kind of continuity, rather it is a logical development of the genre and an adequate response to new player requests. The game time has been reduced (although the layout is still long), the rules have become noticeably simpler and clearer, and even with the advent of the so-called alpha players, who pull the blanket over themselves and lead the entire team, which Zombicide was subjected to, they managed to cope with the help of individual tasks. It's great that at every moment of the round the player is faced with a choice. This allows you to implement tactical strategies and develop thinking. It should be noted that the game turned out to be well balanced, as logical as possible and very versatile - you can play hundreds of games without repetition. At the same time, the balance is shifted towards the defeat of the players - as in Arkham Horror, it is much more difficult to win in Dead Season than to lose, and this is a deliberate move by the authors.

Among the minuses of the game, one can note the decrease in the atmosphere of the zombie apocalypse compared to Zombicide. When you walk on a very natural map, and zombie figures are chasing you, this can be realistically imagined. The abstraction of the "Dead Season" does not affect the strategic alignment, but it no longer gives those feelings. Perhaps someone will not call this a disadvantage, but for other players this moment is important. We didn't find any other significant cons. Is it possible to complain about the limitation of five players (often such games are used in large companies), as well as the price of 5,000 rubles. The latter, however, is easily explained by the huge number of elements (and, as a result, high cost), as well as the high quality of their execution.

The game appeared in 2014. Game publisher Plaid Hat Games

This company, created by Colby Dauch, surprisingly does not publish weak games at all. All her games are very good. The game Dead Season: Crossroads, which appeared last year, drew a bright meteor in the world ranking and firmly holds in the TOP-50 on the BGG portal among all games in the world, and among the games released in 2014, it took first place. At the Golden Geek Awards 2014, Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game won first place in two categories: Best Innovative Game and Best Theme Game.

Game Ingredients:

Each participant in the game takes care of a group of survivors who are faced with all the harsh consequences of a zombie post-apocalypse somewhere in the American suburbs. At the beginning of the game, the participants only have two survivors in the group, but over time this number will increase or possibly decrease.

Each game has its own mission - with its own winning conditions and specifics of preparation for the game. Also, every round you have to overcome some new crisis: if you do not want a catastrophe to occur, you must fulfill certain conditions. On your turn, you use the dice to perform actions, trying to bring yourself closer to victory or to prevent some kind of misfortune from happening. You always have one Action Die, and each Survivor in your group gives you one more Action Die (i.e. you start the game with three dice).

The survivors settled in a frozen, but fenced-off territory from the zombies, outside of which there are the usual attractions of the American outback: a hospital, a gas station, a school, and so on. Once they were the centers of social life, but now they are just empty buildings. However, you can still find useful resources in them. Naturally, certain types of resources are easier to find in some places than in others. If you need food, you are more likely to find it in a grocery store than in a police station. And if you need a weapon, you should not go to the library.

In all these places you will meet zombies. For many, the dominance of this theme in games and in popular culture is starting to get a little annoying, but under the tattered clothes of Dead Season zombies hides dead meat of a completely different freshness than in countless other games about ghouls.

Yes, Dead Season is a zombie game, but zombies are the least you have to worry about. The game has two key elements, one scarier than the other. The first is the all-pervading cold, and the second is your own comrades.

Let's deal with the cold first. They permeate everything in the "Dead Season". You have no food because the ground is as hard as stone. It is difficult for you to make sorties out of the territory, because it is snowing and its veil hides monsters from you, just waiting for you. And you are fucking cold. Cold breeds fear. And fear breeds despair and anger.

For each pair of survivors in the territory, 1 food token is required by the end of the round. The illustration on the token, as if by itself, draws a picture in the imagination of two people, huddled together, eating cold beans from the same can. At the beginning of the game, there is not enough food, which means that someone will have to go and get it. In other words, go outside the relatively safe area and take a walk to the store, school or hospital.

Every time you leave the area, you have to roll an ominous 12-sided damage die that shows how your walk went: you got to the place safe and sound, you hurt yourself, you got frostbite (which means that every round you will receive an automatic wound until you get some medicine or die), or you were destined for a much worse fate - you were bitten.

The bitten character dies. If the bitten character has reached a location where there are other survivors, the leader of their group will have to make a terrible choice: either immediately kill one of the characters in the location and stop the spread of infection, or try to save his life by rolling the same ill-fated die. An empty line - and the character remains alive, and this whole nightmare ends. Any other face - the character dies, the infection spreads, and you are again asked to make a terrible choice, this time for the next character. A bitten person can do business in a crowded place.

It's tough. And it's painful. But this doesn't happen often. The bite is only on one side. But that only makes it more painful.

Not only does the death of a character reduce the number of actions you can perform in a round, but it also has more serious consequences. Most missions are considered failed if the colony's morale drops to zero. Each death lowers your morale by 1, pushing you further and further towards despair. At the same time, you need to worry not only about the characters controlled by the players. During the game, your colony will most likely receive "helpless survivors", represented by tokens with a child's silhouette. They are completely useless, but they also consume food, and their death lowers morale. One particularly nasty game event forces party leaders to vote on whether they should go to locations in search of a lost child (which may end badly for them) or sacrifice a morale point and leave the child to himself. Sometimes the mind tells you that the choice is obvious, but some game situations penetrate the very heart, and everything becomes not so simple.

Not only the death of people, but also the already mentioned hunger will push you to despair. An unsatisfied need for food makes people unhappy. However, there is something even worse. Nearly every card you play is discarded in the trash. If you let the garbage heap grow to the sky, morale will not be slow to fall. Scavenging requires an action, and this action must be performed by one of the characters from time to time. But who would agree to spend precious time raking waste? However, someone has to do it. A lot of unpleasant and nasty things appear in this game, but through all these unpresentable things, Dead Season seems to be playing with us - with our human nature.

Proof of the depth of the game is that both players who are used to keeping a sober mind and those who tend to get used to the images of the characters they play will find something in this survival puzzle.

The shaky morale of the colony and the looming threat of starvation are complemented by an escalating sense of universal paranoia, because while you are trying your best to fulfill the conditions of the mission, your plans may be thwarted by a traitor.

Unlike many other traitor games, the reason you want to stick a knife in the backs of your comrades has a much more thoughtful basis than a simple battle between good and evil. The game text explains in detail and clearly why you are going against everyone. The motive may be trauma, love, vengeance, or a primitive desire to survive at the expense of others.

And each player, not even the traitors, has their own personal victory conditions. And while the achievement of a common goal is included in one of them, the second will certainly require deviating from the common accepted line from time to time, for example, going to the police station, when the hospital would be the most preferable place. And this strange behavior can cast a shadow of distrust even on an innocent player.

If you act too suspicious, your carefree life in the colony may end up with a vote for your exile. If the rest of the players vote positively, you will leave the territory permanently. You will not stop the game, but your life will become much harder, you will have to move from location to location, constantly looking around. You'll also receive a new personal objective that reflects your new Outcast status and adds a new twist to the game.

The highlight of the emotional and narrative elements of the game are the magnificent crossroads maps. Each turn, the active player's neighbor draws one of these cards from the deck. It states the condition under which it is activated (for example, the player is moved to the library), it also describes a little history, and then gives the choice that the active player must make. These little incidents from the grim apocalypse plunge you even deeper into the cold world of the game, either showing glimmers of hope, then dooming to further misfortunes, then sending you on a new dangerous path.

These cards are easy to do without, discard them and you'll still have a solid game, but their presence and the events they bring make Dead Season even more atmospheric, blending mechanics and drama into one compelling whole.

You could say that Dead Season is a game about deprivation. You never have enough food, fuel and trust in your comrades. And zombies are nothing more than a well-placed excuse to show that when people face the threat of their own extinction, the most terrible things are generated not by the undead, wanting to brains, but by the bottomless depth of despair into which a person sinks deeper and deeper.

And you loved her.

The success of this project and your wishes inspired us to publish a sequel - the board game Dead Season. Long Night”, which became our seventh project.
The world release of this game took place just a couple of weeks ago, and today it can be ordered in Russian.

"Dead Season. Long night"- This is an independent addition to the board game "Dead Season. Crossroads, which can be played both separately and combined with the previous game. Like Crossroads, this is a cooperative game for 2 to 5 people, where the participants play as a team, but at the same time they pursue their own goals.

Learn more about the innovations and gameplay of The Long Night in the tutorial video by Rodney Smith, which he posted on his video channel (translation: Alexander Petrunin, voice-over: Evgeny Dovger).

A game "Dead Season. Long night" published by Plaid Hat Games, a publishing house specializing in complex atmospheric games. There are few games in the publisher's arsenal, but almost every one of them has been awarded a number of awards. Isaac Vega and Jonathan Gilmour, authors of the Dead Season series, are the publisher's lead developers. The notorious Jerry Hawthorne, the author of the desktop bestsellers Of Mice and Mysteries (already localized by Growd Games) and Of Tails and Feathers (preparing for localization), also had a hand in the creation of The Long Night.

The Long Night comes with a hefty array of really well-executed components. The manufacturer is the Ludofact printing house, one of the largest and most famous.

colony field
(a group of survivors moved to the prison).

Location Cardboards
(including the main locations that you can replace the paper tablets from "Crossroads").

Figures of survivors, bandits, zombies and mutant zombies
(unique zombies with special properties).

Survivor cards.

Crossroads maps.

Crisis cards.

Item cards.

Maps of the main and secret goals.

Upgrade cards

Maps of experiments and side effects.

All kinds of tokens, dice and much more.

The weight of the game is more than 2 kg. The circulation of this game is part of the worldwide circulation. This guarantees the highest quality of all components.

You can get this price not only in Moscow, but also in those cities where we have partners who have agreed to become a pickup point for our projects. For which we do not get tired of saying thanks to them both from us and from the inhabitants of these cities. You can find detailed information about our partners. Find your city on the map!

Here is the list of cities:

If there is no pickup point in your city, you can get the game by mail. Price 3600 rubles includes the cost of postage Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and the Republic of Belarus. Delivery of the game is expected in November of this year!

The innovations introduced in The Long Night (despair, angry survivors, explosive traps, etc.) and three full-fledged game modules allow you to significantly diversify the gameplay of Crossroads, and new survivors, goals, crises and crossroads can ensure that each of your parties will not be similar to the previous one. Simply add any desired add-on components to the ones you already have and try to get through the entire off-season in one long night.

The components of the Long Night are used in full only when playing with all three modules at once, however, this mode makes the game extremely difficult and is not recommended for beginners. In addition, some components are present in The Long Night in smaller numbers than in Crossroads (for example, 20 survivors in the new game compared to 30 in the previous one). To compensate for the lack of components for these two reasons, you can add components from Crossroads. Thus, you will significantly increase the variability and replay value of the parties and be sure that every time you will have a completely new adventure.

If you are ordering "Long Night" while already owning "Dead Season: Crossroads", add the word "maps" in the comment.

We already wrote that we do not recommend playing this game to persons under 16 years of age. However, as Tom Wesel said, if you let kids watch The Walking Dead, you can get them to play this game too. In addition, just like in Crossroads, all the most “severe” maps are marked with a special icon, so if necessary, you can always quickly find and remove them.

We have provided the possibility of ordering two games in a set at a very favorable price: 5590 rub. pickup. With delivery by mail - 6090 rub.

Attention! In this kit you will receive second edition of the game "Dead Season: Crossroads". Corrected edition with changes in the rules and on the maps.

If you have a desire to buy several games, then you can deposit an amount that is a multiple of the selected reward.

Attention wholesale buyers!

We will offer a good price for this and our other games. Send your inquiries here to and we will send you our price list.

We know that you are all waiting for additional goals, but the copyright holder fundamentally forbids us from doing such things. We promise to find a solution to this problem in our next project, but for now...

You have a colony of survivors, a common game goal, as well as a goal that only you need to achieve. The game takes place in a harsh post-apocalyptic winter. There are a lot of zombies and other survivors everywhere. The main card with the goal will indicate what needs to be done to finish the game.

Exploring new locations, looking for the right items, simultaneously dealing with hordes of zombies and, if the situation requires it, with other survivors, you gradually get to your goal!

Dead Season gives the player a very important sense of involvement in the game and its world. However, crisis maps, for example, are generally devoid of a literary text and it is not clear what suddenly led to this crisis - you have to invent it yourself.

Translation into Russian for such a volume of text is done very well. If you find fault with something in this game, you can highlight the excessively high influence of the die and not too high variety of objective cards. But even with these shortcomings, this board game remains so good that it looks suspiciously like the best game of 2015.

Dead Season quite a serious and voluminous board game. We really like that the game is thought out almost to the smallest detail: morale, crossroads and personal goals maps, many options for actions and even more things to do. Players have to constantly make a choice here, and it is not easy: accept the team of a new survivor if he brings with him a lot of hungry mouths ?; take a chance and go for the right weapon in a zombie-infested location?; sacrifice your character to save others or leave him a chance for salvation, and let others deal with the consequences?

The components are made to a very high standard and all in very beautiful colors. A large field and a bunch of character chips perfectly conveys the whole atmosphere of the event taking place on the table and, as it were, puts you in the thick of things!

Board Game Rules Dead Season

Preparation

Each of you will become the leader of a small group of survivors. They differ in three parameters, as well as a special unique property. Each group at the beginning of the game has a simple set of five cards. Of course, the most important thing is food and medicine.

At the start of the game, you are already lucky - you have a roof over your head - a poorly arranged colony in which you live. All players have a common goal, the achievement of which is necessary for victory. But everyone also has a personal secret goal, which is not always combined with the general one, and sometimes even contradicts it.

Start

At the beginning of each Dead Season round, a Crisis card is revealed that sets a certain global event that players will have to respond to in that round. Crisis requires you to collect a certain number of cards with the required symbol before the end of the round. These cards are placed face down, because anyone can betray. How exactly, you will find out later.

Each player then receives as many dice as there are survivors in their group, plus one on top. He rolls them all and places them in the unused dice area without changing the value on them.

Participants make their full moves in turn, starting with the first, which is determined by a special token. On his turn, a player performs several actions with his survivors. Some of them require a die and some do not.

Pay attention to the character card, the top number on the right is level of influence . Below are two main options: the battle And search. The number to the right of the parameter shows what is the minimum value on the die that must be spent in order to perform this action.

A character can attack either a zombie in his location or another survivor. In the first case, the very fact of the attack is enough to kill the dead man. However, the player must roll the damage die to see how the combat will turn out for the attacker.

With zombies

He may get injured, frostbite, which acts like an ever-growing wound, or even be bitten. In this case, the survivor dies, and infection spreads in his location. The other survivor with the least influence will be infected first. In this case, you have a choice, you can kill the poor fellow, stopping the spread of infection, or you can rely on chance and roll the die. If you're lucky and an empty face drops, he'll stay alive and the infection will stop, but otherwise the character will die and the infection will immediately spread to the next one.

with the survivors

Survivors should stick together, but sometimes situations arise in which it is necessary to attack each other. In this case, the die used for the attack must be rolled and get a number less than or equal to the attack parameter of the target. If you succeed, you will inflict one wound on the target and take one random item from that player's hand. Three wounds will be enough for the survivor to cease to be such.

Search

The second important action is search. Participants need a lot of things to survive. You can search only in locations outside the colony. What can be found is indicated in the corner of the location card and the more likely it is, the further to the left this icon in the list. After spending a die to search, the player draws the top card from the item pile for that location. If it suits him, he takes the card and the action ends. If you need something else, you can search more carefully and it will not be possible to do it silently. For each added noise token, the player will draw an additional card, but he will still be able to carry away only one in one action.

Survivor Abilities

Some board game survivor abilities Dead Season. crossroads are also action. But of course, there are also actions that do not require spending a specific value on a die, but still require spending a die with any value. So you can get rid of useless units. For example, build a barricade in your location, lure two zombies to your location from any other, or clean up trash by removing the top three cards from the dump from the game. Cards there will accumulate very quickly, and if there are too many of them, morale will begin to fall.

There are actions that do not require a die at all

• Play cards from your hand.

• Spend one food token from the storage to add one to one of your dice values.

• Play one card face down to prevent a crisis.

• You can ask for an item from the hand of another player or give the item to another survivor in your location.

• An action can be spent moving from one location to another, but you shouldn't think that it will be a cakewalk. Each move requires you to roll a damage die, because along the way you can get hurt, freeze, or even get bitten. Of course, it is much safer to drive a car, but such movement will require a reset of the fuel map.

• The last action that does not require a die is to declare a vote to exile one of the survivor groups from the colony. If the player is expelled, their survivors will leave the colony and will not be able to return. And he will receive an additional objective card for the exiled.

Intersection maps

Of course, while the player is performing game actions, the rest of the world is not paused. Intersection maps are used to indicate events that occur at this time. One such card is given to the player's neighbor at the start of his turn, and it will be played if the current player fulfills the conditions for activating this card, indicated above. Moreover, he does not know what this condition is.

Colony phase

When all players have completed their turns, the colony phase begins. First, you need to spend one token of food from the warehouse for every two survivors in the colony. What does it have to do with not only surviving players, but also helpless survivors. These freeloaders bring little benefit, so you need to think carefully before letting anyone into your territory.

If there is not enough food, add one hunger token to the warehouse, and then reduce the morale by one for each such token. Next, you can check the trash and for every 10 cards in the junkyard, also reduce morale by one. If morale drops to zero, your people will give up and you will lose, so keep an eye on it.

Crisis phase and game over

Crisis is tested next. All cards laid out by the players to prevent it are shuffled and then revealed.

Each card whose type corresponds to the desired icon gives one point to overcome, but each card with a different symbol not only does not give, but also subtracts a point from the total. If the required amount is not collected, a terrible crisis will happen, which does not bring anything good. However, this can only be to the advantage of traitors, so they can deliberately provoke a crisis by laying the wrong cards.

Following the colony comes one new zombie for every pair of survivors inside. If there is no room for new zombies, they demolish the barricades. And if there are no barricades and everything is full, zombies break in and kill the survivor with the lowest influence. In locations outside the colony, one zombie is added for each survivor there.

For each noise token, a die is rolled, which can bring in even more dead.

Then the overall goal is checked, if it is achieved - you managed to survive, but did you manage to win? Open your secret cards and check. whether the conditions are met. After all, only those survivors who fulfill their goals will win in the Dead Season board game. If the main goal has not yet been completed, a new round begins. And if the token moves to zero, the game ends immediately.

Board game photo

Video review of the board game Dead Season, part 1

Video review of the board game Dead Season, part 2

Video review of the board game Dead Season, part 3