How to Play Dead of Winter: Warring Colonies

Objective of the Game

In Dead of Winter: Warring Colonies, two rival colonies fight for survival in a frozen, zombie-infested world. Players must work together within their colony while competing against the opposing group. To win, your colony must complete both the main objective and your secret objective. The game ends when one colony achieves these goals or when morale collapses.

Setup

Pre-game Setup:

• Separate components by expansion (use colored stickers/dots to distinguish The Long Night and Warring Colonies items).
• Sleeve and mark survivor cards, item cards, and stands as noted in the manual.

• Place 1 barricade at each non-colony location.
• Add 9 zombies to each colony.
• Give each colony 3 bullet tokens.
• Set morale to 6 and the round tracker to 1.
• Shuffle crisis cards, starting with Gathering of Fiends.

Game Flow

Each round follows this order:

1. Crossroads: Players to the right of active players draw a Crossroads card.
2. Frostbite: Add 1 wound to each frostbitten survivor (3 wounds kill them).
3. Movement: Move survivors up to 1 location. If full, return a friendly survivor to your colony or an enemy to theirs (cost: 1 bullet, or 2 if armed).
4. Resolve bites from movement.
5. Actions: Spend dice to perform actions (see next section).
6. Resolve bites received during actions.
7. Crossroads resolution: If a card affects both colonies, the non-prison colony resolves first.

Actions and How to Play

Actions requiring dice:

• Fight a zombie: Roll equal/higher than the zombie’s attack number.
• Search: Roll equal/higher than the location’s search number. Pay 1 noise to choose from 2 cards.
• Build a barricade: Use any die.
• Clean waste: Remove 3 cards from waste with any die.
• Use character abilities with die costs (e.g., "(1+)" on card).

• Add food to the colony (enough for half survivors, rounded up).
• Add a card to the crisis.
• Use non-event/non-equip cards from hand.
• Equip items or move them between survivors.
• Use food tokens to boost a die by 1.
• Remove wounds with medicine or abilities.

End Game and Scoring

The game ends when:

• One colony completes both their main objective and secret objective.
• An enemy colony’s morale hits 0.
• For Objective 2, control the most non-colony locations when the round tracker reaches 0 (or tie = no winner).

Tips to Win

• Prioritize fuel early to avoid losing survivors (Objective 1).
• Use barricades to block enemy movement and protect key locations.
• Leverage character abilities like Blue’s free search or Melissa’s explosive traps for efficiency.