The Long Night: Main Objectives

Click here to pre-order Dead of Winter: The Long Night from the PlaidHatGames.com store - get 20% off and the Rich Sommer exclusive character and crossroads card for free! Click here to explore MyRaxxon.com.

Did you know we've got whole bunch of other items up for pre-order too? SeaFall: A Legacy Game and 8 new summoners for Summoners Wars are available for pre-order! Plus, All US orders get FREE shipping on orders of $100 or more. So double up on some pre-orders and save!

Today’s the last week of previews.  Let’s kick it off with the promo you’ll get with a pre-order.

Rich Sommer starred in Mad Men, and he’s a long time PHG fan. He liked Summoner Wars before it was cool. He recorded a voice track for Mice & Mystics. His card is also really fun; the special ability brings a potential great reward with some risk behind it, just like Raxxon.

Rich's ability also highlights one of the central themes in Dead of Winter. It’s not just a zombie game or a hidden traitor game. It’s about crossroads - a series of either/or choices with some risk or uncertainty behind them. Does Rich try to jump his motorcycle off of a ramp while hitting zombies with an oversized wrench? Will you get that 4+ if he does? Should I stay at my current location?  Should I use fuel or roll for exposure? If I got a bite, does the next person take one for the team or roll it again? Should I search or build a barricade? Do I make noise? Will the noise attract a zombie? Should I use the item or hold onto it for later? Should I use the new Junk and Fuel for their new effect or their old one? Has Ashley been holding onto those cards because she’s a traitor, or did she really not draw any food at the grocery store? Which modules should we use?  [Raxxon?  Raxxoff?]  Should you take that White Pill you just found? Which tools should we get out of the shed?

The explosive ones, of course!

Another new choice will come at the end of every round. Will you pass the first player token or not? It will come up for a vote! This way, a player can no longer take the infamous betrayer double-turn to tank the colony’s morale without interference.

With the new modules, many decisions will be different than before. Not only will players be encouraged to move more often because of the how the new locations work, but the new survivors will often give players more choices as well. One of my gripes with Dead of Winter over time was that there often felt like a clear “best” way to play certain characters and spend their dice, and many of these auto-pilot survivors were among the most powerful ones! Loretta Clay (The Cook), Thomas Hart and Bev Russell (great colony defenders), and the cycle of 2 for 1 searchers at specific locations made you feel like taking the efficient play every time. Brandon Kane was a great asset to the colony, but it might not be fun to be “mop guy” for the whole game. Mixing in the new ones will help dilute this effect, but I’m sure people will still use their old favorites.

The new main objectives help shake things up too.  This one was a favorite of the testers:

Tribute resulted in a lot of “diet coke victories” as social pressure convinced people to finish before the main objective before their personal ones were finished.

The new introductory scenarios for the Raxxon and Bandit modules were very popular as well. 

So come on, get in on the new expansion now so you can tell all of your friends that you liked The Long Night before it was cool.

Week 1: Why Standalone?
Week 2: Raxxon and Video Trailer
Week 3: The Bandit Module
Week 4: The Improvements Module
Week 5: Despair and the Unruly
Week 6: New Crises
Week 7: The Graveyard

Click here to pre-order Dead of Winter: The Long Night from the PlaidHatGames.com store - get 20% off and the Rich Sommer exclusive character and crossroads card for free!

Written by James Sitz James Sitz is the lead playtester of Dead of Winter: The Long Night.