I'm going to be doing a quick overview of our last game night, it won't be reviews of the games but just what happened in them. We only played two games, Dead Men Tell No Tales and Dead Of Winter.You can see the Board Game Geek plays here, Dead Men Tell No Tales & Dead Of Winter.
We started with Dead Men Tell No Tales. None of us had played before and I was teaching it after watching a few review videos and reading through the rules myself. We got set up and decided to do the easiest goal which for 4 players was getting 5 loot out.
As the game started we seemed to be doing very well, I'd heard this was a hard co-op game to beat but we didn't seem to have much trouble. We were keeping the number of deckhands under control and keeping fires down so avoiding explosions and taking lots of fatigue moving between rooms. We did draw the 1st and 2nd explosion cards out of the deck early but didn't have any dice at 5 so it wasn't that bad.
A few poor dice rolls against crew members was our only real problem but even then nothing was causing us too much trouble. We were able to keep things in check and boost our combat ability up quite well.
Our 1st loot token came out about a quarter of the way through the game, we were still doing well with deckhands and fires and it was petty clear route from the token to the exit so I made a run, killed the Guard and started back with the loot. As I made it off the board with the loot a second Guard was placed only a few tiles aways from the entrance to the ship. At this point we had closed in one side of the board, there were was nothing that way worth collecting, no free doors to place new tiles down and so no reason for us to go there other than to control the fire and deckhands, we had one player that was in that area doing his best to kill deck hands and stop the powder kegs from exploding.
Two players worked together to kill the Guard and start getting the 2nd Loot token off the ship, one fighting him then using the bucket to lower the fire in the next room while the other picked up the loot and made their way to the exit. We now had 2 loot out and only two explosions, both from powder kegs. It was about now the 3rd explosion card was drawn from the deck, again with no 5's on the board it didn't have much of an effect but did mean we were shuffling them all back into the deck.
It was at this point things started to go bad, we had drawn a lot of trap door tokens so each time we had to place more deckhands on the board we were putting a lot down at once, Two badly placed rooms with powder kegs caused a chain reaction. Both rooms had a "3" red dice and one had a keg that exploded on a 4 the other on a 5 with doors leading between the two. We drew a card increasing all red 3's so they both went to 4 setting of the 1st powder keg and the explosion from that set of the 2nd which increased both rooms to 5's and removed a few deck hands from the game. The explosion track was only two away from ending the game and we were having to spend a few actions every turn trying to thin out the number of deckhands so we had some to place before the next card was drawn.
We kept going keeping things under control and soon only had 4 tokens left to pull from the bag. We knew we had 6 loot tokens in there and only two had been drawn so far so the last 4 must all be loot. It was not looking good, with every trap door already on the board our deckhand problem was getting out of hand. On my turn and loot was placed and I made my way towards it, stopping one room away and using my last action to increase my fighting strength ready to fight the Guard next turn. I had the special ability to draw two cards, pick one and put the other on top of the deck so I did. I had the choice between increase Red 3's + add deckhands and increase Red 4's + add deckhands. I choose the increase 4's and we added the deckhands, placing all but one of our remaining stock on the board. Then we realised we could not win, we knew the next card was going to make us place the same number of deck hands again which meant the next turn one player would have to kill as many deckhands as there are trap doors in the game just to stop us losing and there was no way she could do that, we would be Overrun. We called it quits and stopped just in time for our pizza to arrive (there is always a silver lining).
Next to the table was Dead of Winter. We have all played this before and we have provide over and over in the past we probably shouldn't be left running a colony in the event of a zombie apocalypse, I've won the game before, just no where close to the number of times we have lost.
We used the standard rules for Traitors, one Betrayal card and then two Loyal cards for each player shuffled and dealt out. I was loyal and my objective was to have two books in my hand at the end of the game, should be easy. I started with the Pilot and the Cook, I normally prefer to have one specialised zombie killer and one to search or help the colony but that was the best of what I was dealt. We didn't start out with many characters that were very good zombie killers in the group. We were playing Eight Wheels of Darkness so our primary goal was just to survive 8 rounds and we started with 4 helpless survivors in the colony.
Straight away a Crossroads Card caused us to lose a helpless survivor and a morale. Most players moved out of the colony to start searching. I left my Cook back to keep providing food in hopes that we could use cards for the Crisis instead of feeding people. One player had some real bad luck with his first few rolls meaning he had nothing he could do but put up barricades and clean the trash from the colony. We had the Mystic in play so we were able to get some information on what was coming and early on seemed to be doing well covering the crisis cards as they came out, knowing what we could use, what to search for and what we needed to save.
We had a bit of good luck with another crossroads card when we found the horse early on and needed our food cards for the crisis, we voted to eat the horse and combined with the Cook that gave us a few turns were we didn't need to worry about getting more food. I had sent my Pilot to the Library and my 1st two searches there had found the books I needed. The Pirate was in play so as long as he didn't steal one of them all I needed to do was keep the colony going for the rest of the game to win.
The player with the bad early roll moved out the colony for the first time and rolled a bite on the exposure dice, another morale down. I had managed to get another character, the Mayor, and put us back to our starting level of helpless survivors. A quick search gave our player with only one character another survivor but on his next turn he moved him to the same location as his other character and again rolled a bite, he was lucky that he didn't lose both his characters but morale was dropping fast.
We hadn't failed a crisis yet and were keeping the colony feed and clean but the numbers of zombies at the locations and colony were becoming a problem. We were having to give up searching and using characters that were not best equipped to fight zombies to try and kill them off just to avoid being overrun. I lost my Pilot trying to keep a location clear and we almost lost another to frostbite until we managed to get some medicine for him just in time.
One of our players managed to get the Lawyer into play and then on the next turn the Crossroad card meant she blew her own brains out, before she had even been used. Things were looking bad, our morale was low and we still about 3 or 4 turns to get through. I was sure by now no-one was a traitor, no crisis cards had been failed, people were giving up actions that could help them get items they needed for their objectives in order to help the colony out and people were stopping locations being overrun. We were close and victory wasn't out of our reach just yet. We had dropped to just one on the morale track but managed to get one back and with 3 turns left just needed survive a little longer.
As turn 3 started we lost another morale when another character died, back down to one on the track. It wasn't looking good and we couldn't get enough together to overachieve on the crisis card to get it back this turn. It was then the worst happened, a Crossroad card gave us a choice, we could add zombies to some of the locations or lose a morale. If we lost the morale we lost the game so the choice should have been simple but adding those zombies would overrun a location that had a survivor in it, killing them and costing us a morale anyway. That was it, we lost.
It was a bad game and we weren't able to control the number of zombies early on which meant our resources and equipment suffered. We decided to call it a night and packed up. No-one was a traitor and 2 of us had completed our secondary objectives but we hadn't been able to keep our morale up for those last few turns.
I really liked both games and I did enjoy them even though we lost, both felt like we could have won (even if it was a struggle) right up until the end. I guess if we want a winner every game we should play some competitive games.
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