Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game

Components

Setup

1. 1Place the colony board in the center and arrange the 6 location cards (Police Station, Grocery Store, School, Gas Station, Library, Hospital) around it.
2. 2Each player takes a reference sheet. Choose or randomly pick a Main Objective card, place it on the colony board, and set up zombies as it instructs.
3. 3Shuffle the non-betrayal secret objective cards and set aside 2 per player. Mix in just 1 betrayal secret objective card, then deal 1 to each player. No one reveals their card.
4. 4Shuffle the Crisis deck, the Crossroads deck, and the exiled secret objective deck separately.
5. 5Shuffle the starting item cards and deal 5 to each player. Sort the rest by location and place each deck on its matching location card.
6. 6Deal 4 survivor cards to each player, who then keeps 2 and returns the rest to the deck, which is reshuffled.
7. 7Make 1 of those 2 survivors your group leader on the reference sheet; the other becomes your following survivor. Add both standees to the colony's Occupants area.
8. 8Keep the remaining standees and tokens within everyone's reach.
9. 9The player whose group leader has the highest influence value becomes the First Player.

A round — Player Turns Phase and Colony Phase

1. 1① Player Turns Phase — (a) reveal the top Crisis card, previewing the threat the Colony Phase will resolve → (b) everyone rolls Action dice (1 for yourself plus 1 per survivor you control) → (c) starting with the First Player, each player takes a turn.
2. 2At the start of your turn, the player to your right draws a Crossroads card and keeps it secret, reading it aloud if its trigger is met at any point during your turn.
3. 3On your turn you may take as many actions as you like, as long as dice remain. Play then passes to the player on your left.
4. 4② Colony Phase — once everyone has had a turn, resolve 7 steps in order: (a) Pay Food (b) Check Waste (c) Resolve Crisis (d) Add Zombies (e) Check Main Objective (f) Move Round Tracker (g) Pass First Player Token.

Actions — which ones need a die

Action dice are rerolled every round and their results are spent during that round only. Not every action costs a die — notably, moving a survivor requires no die at all.

The Exposure die and spreading bites

Right after a survivor moves to a new location or kills a zombie, the controlling player rolls the Exposure die, which shows 1 of 4 results.

Crisis cards — a shared colony-wide threat

A Crisis card is revealed at the start of the Player Turns Phase, and anyone may contribute item cards face down and in secret during that round. Everything is revealed and tallied together during the Colony Phase.

1. 1Reveal contributed cards one at a time. A card matching the type shown on the Crisis card is worth +1 point; a mismatch is −1 point.
2. 2If the total is at least the number of non-exiled players, the crisis is prevented and nothing happens.
3. 3If the total exceeds the player count by 2 or more, the colony also gains +1 morale.
4. 4If the crisis is not prevented, its printed negative effect (usually a morale or resource loss) applies in full.

Crossroads cards

At the start of each player's turn, the player to their right draws a Crossroads card and holds it secretly. If the printed trigger actually occurs during that turn, the card's holder reads its full text aloud.

• Triggers vary from card to card — taking a specific action, a specific result occurring, and more.
• Most cards offer two options; the player taking the turn chooses one, which applies immediately before the card is removed from the game.
• If the trigger never occurs during that turn, the card is not revealed and returns to the bottom of the Crossroads deck.
• Some cards touch on mature themes — sex, language, suicide, alcohol, and so on — and are marked with a symbol. These may be removed before setup.

Main and secret objectives

A Main Objective card has a name, setup instructions, goal (victory condition), and an estimated duration (Short 45–90 min, Medium 90–120 min, Long 120–210 min). The whole colony tracks this goal together, and the game ends the moment it is completed.

A Secret Objective card shows only a name and a goal, seen by its owner alone. However the game ends, only players who have satisfied their own secret objective at that moment win. A single game can have multiple winners, or none at all.

• Many regular secret objectives include a clause that the main objective must be completed, but this varies card by card — it is not a universal rule.
• A player holding a betrayal secret objective appears to help the colony while secretly pursuing their own hidden goal. Betrayal cards are deliberately rare in the mix, so you can never be fully certain whether a betrayer is even present.
• The specific stories and numbers on Main and betrayal Secret Objective cards are left out of this guide so you can discover them at the table.

Ending the game

The moment the game ends, only players who have satisfied their own secret objective win. Anyone who has not loses, judged individually regardless of the colony's overall outcome.

• Running short on food adds Starvation tokens, each costing the colony morale.
• Morale drops by 1 for every 10 cards (rounded down) in the waste pile.
• If zombies overrun an entrance, the colony's lowest-influence survivor dies and morale drops by 1.

Strategy tips

• Moving costs no die. Save your dice for actions that truly need them, like Attack and Search.
• Searching repeatedly at the same location by adding noise tokens draws more cards, but each location holds at most 4 noise tokens.
• A Bitten result spreads to the lowest-influence survivor at that location, so avoid leaving your lowest-influence survivor alone somewhere dangerous.
• Morale drops every time the waste pile reaches another 10 cards, so saving items for Crisis contributions instead of discarding them freely is one way to manage that.
• More players mean more total Action dice each round, but also more food consumption (1 per 2 survivors, rounded up) — plan for both.

Variants

The expansions The Long Night and Warring Colonies add new survivors, locations, and objectives, but this guide covers only the base game.

Rules people get wrong

History and editions

Cross-checked against English Wikipedia and Namuwiki. Details such as promo cards (Kodiak Colby, Felicia Day, 2015) or the Crossroads Cards app come from wiki sources, not direct confirmation in the official rulebook.