Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game

Setup: choose a main objective and follow its morale, round and board instructions. Mix two non-betrayal secret objectives per player with one betrayal objective, deal one each, and put the rest away unseen. Betrayal is possible, not guaranteed. Deal five starting items and four survivors per player; keep two survivors, select a leader and place them at the colony. Highest leader influence takes first player. Never reveal your secret objective.

Round: reveal a crisis, roll action dice, take complete player turns clockwise, then resolve the colony phase. Each player rolls one die plus one per controlled survivor. Dice belong to the whole group, so one survivor can spend several dice. A newly gained survivor does not generate an extra die until the next roll-action-dice step.

Dice actions: attack and search require a die meeting the acting survivor’s respective value. Barricade, clean waste and attract use any result. A zombie attack kills one at the same location, then requires exposure. Attacking another player’s survivor uses the attack die and then a roll no higher than the target’s attack value to inflict a wound and steal a random hand card; it does not require exposure. You cannot attack your own survivors or helpless survivors. Cleaning waste requires one of your survivors at the colony and removes its top three waste cards.

Search: choose a survivor outside the colony and spend a die meeting the search value. Look at the top item card. You may keep it or make noise in an empty noise slot to look at another. Continue while slots remain, then keep exactly one card and return the rest to the bottom of that deck. A location has four noise spaces for the round. Another search costs another eligible die.

Without dice: legal options include playing items, contributing to the crisis, moving, requesting items, handing off equipment and initiating an exile vote. Each survivor normally moves once on your turn, needs an empty destination space and rolls exposure afterwards. Each colony food token spent raises one unused action die by one. Requested cards must be revealed and immediately played; they cannot be kept or contributed to the crisis.

Crisis: each matching contributed card adds one point; each nonmatching card subtracts one. A card producing multiple food still counts as one contribution, and does not also produce its normal effect. Shuffle contributions before revealing them, meet the printed requirement and remove the contributed cards from the game. The standard requirement uses non-exiled players; exceeding the player requirement by at least two earns one morale, subject to the crisis text.

Exposure: movement and zombie kills normally require a roll. Blank does nothing; wound adds one wound; frostbite counts as a wound and causes one additional normal wound at the start of its controller’s later turns for each affected survivor, regardless of how many frostbite tokens it has. Three wounds kill. A bite kills immediately and spreads to the lowest-influence survivor at that location. That survivor may die to stop it or roll again: only blank survives and stops the spread; any other result kills and spreads it again.

Colony: pay food, check waste, resolve the crisis, add zombies, check the main objective, reduce rounds, then pass first player to the right. Feed colony occupants, including helpless survivors, at one food per two rounded up; survivors outside need no colony food. If food is insufficient, remove none, add a starvation token and lose morale equal to all starvation tokens now present. Each complete ten waste cards costs one morale, without automatically clearing them.

Zombies: add one per two colony occupants rounded up, and one per survivor at outside locations. Roll for each removed noise token; a result of three or less adds a zombie there. At the colony distribute incoming zombies across entrances 1–6 in order. At a full entrance a barricade cancels the incoming zombie and is removed. With no empty space or barricade, kill the lowest-influence survivor there; use a helpless survivor if only helpless survivors remain. Death normally costs one morale; exiled survivors are an exception.

Crossroads and exile: the player to your right secretly reads a crossroads card at your turn’s start. Reveal it only when its trigger occurs, resolve the choice immediately and remove it; untriggered cards go to the deck bottom. Once on your turn you may initiate a vote to exile someone else. Vote simultaneously, with first player breaking ties. The exiled player draws an objective modifier, moves colony survivors outside and continues under exile restrictions, including no crisis contributions or voting. If two exiled players both lacked betrayal objectives, morale immediately becomes zero.

End and victory: completing the main objective at its check ends play immediately. Morale zero or rounds zero also ends immediately, without an additional objective check. Evaluate each private objective and any exile modifier separately: some players may win while others lose, or everyone may lose. A player losing their last survivor removes all hand cards and gains a new leader instead of being eliminated. Card text overrides general rules; medicine cannot interrupt an already lethal third wound or bite.