Kickstarter Highlights: Dwar7s Winter

There is something about cute looking but vicious little dwarfs that drags me in and I simply cannot explain. I saw it happening to me when I was watching the Hobbit film series, one movie after the other one, I also saw it during the previous game published by Vesuvius media and now I it is all over again with the new installment in their game series in Dwar7s Winter. The cherry on top the winter, I really don’t know why but after finishing the latest Game of Thrones season, winter has a different meaning for everyone. So bottom line for some funny and seriously unexplained reason this game touches all the sweet spots for me theme-wise and I am sure I am not the only one thinking this…

Enough with the serious introduction, since the game sets the funny cartoony  mood for us, lets follow suit. In Dwar7s Winter you assume the role of a group of dwarfs that among many other hard working dwarfs helped to bring the kingdom to its current status. It was only an empty valley just while ago and through your efforts now a whole castle behind walls stands proud in the middle of everything. After all this is what dwarfs do best, right? mine and built impeccable strongholds. Now as per our story, winter is here, and yes I just said that, because winter brings the hardests of the elements at our doors, unfortunate disasters but even worse than that harsh elements and chillingly scary monsters…

Dwar7s Winter is the spiritual successor of the first installment in the series Dwar7s Fall. While it maintains the same theme and cure artwork it is a completely different standalone game that also plays and feels different that the first. On the plus side if you own (if not go and pick it up) Dwar7s Fall, you would now be able to use the highly detailed miniatures coming from Dwar7s Winter. How cool is that right? But let’s come back to the winter… Dwar7s Winter is a hand-building and resource management game where players all start vanilla with the same 7 basic cards and during the course of the game they modify their deck by adding various other heroes that do cooler (and now for once I am not referring to the temperature) things that give more to the players, including precious victory points for the end of game, that is if you manage to survive. Furthermore the game comes packed with strong tower defense elements from a gameplay perspective that flow smoothly over the course of the play. At the end of the game each player will want to have the most victory points in order to win, but do the mistake to focus only on this and no one will survive, cause winter is hard work for all and those monsters just keep jumping over our walls.

Let’s see how the game plays and trust me not only it is fast to learn but you want even realize when you will be setting your second play to avenge those vicious frosty monsters. Dwar7s Winter is a hand-building, worker placement game where players are asked to survive 7 weeks of harsh winter. You need to co-operate to face monster attacks and other disasters that befall your town. During each of the game’s turns, which would be one day of a week, there would be 4 distinct phases:

Phase 1: Winter is here! At the beginning of the first phase various monsters will try to take over your castle. Players will first move any existing monsters 1one step closer to the castle and then their special monstrous abilities will be applied. After their blows new new monsters will be spawn by revealing enough cards so that there is always at this specific stage one more monster figure than the number of players in the game. o based on the number of players.  Monster Limit is 2 for 1 player, 3 monsters for 2 players, 4 monsters for 3 players and finally 5 monsters for 4 players. After the monsters spawn it is the natural disasters that hit the dwarfs town. Players will reveal a new disaster and resolve it.

Phase 2: Build your hand.  Every player starts the game with the same cards in their hand. During the course of the game players can hire more heroes and upgrade their deck. At the beginning of each turn every player will choose exactly 7 cards from their personal deck in order to play in game. It sounds straight forward and it really is, but people should carefully plan at this stage, especially as their possibilities open up over the course of the game with more powerful and improved hero cards their magic 7 will have to do the work, and the work as you have already seen involves, monsters, dealing with disasters and gaining the edge over the competition.

Phase 3: Follow the music. During this phase every player in turn order will have 5 action points to spend wisely as they see fit. Action points can be spent to to perform any combination of the various actions varying from playing music, placing or moving dwarfs, hiring heroes, resolving disasters and of course attacking monsters. One very interesting mechanism of the game is playing music, as you play hero cards from your hand you will notice that they all bear a musical instrument. You can only play music once during your given turn but by doing that you are allowed to play afterwards for free all the same musical instrument cards and perform their respective hero abilities. After you the rest of the players will be able out of turn (but still clockwise) to play all the cards that they want that follow the same music. How cool is that? (Again I am not talking about the temperature…)

Phase 4: Check winning or losing conditions!  If at this phase the number of unresolved disasters in play are 2 more than the number of players participating or if  a monster has breached the castle then all the players lose the game (what were you thinking)! In case players by some heroic and miraculous way manage to reach the end of the seventh day of the week then they survive the harsh winter and its chilly monsters and the first signs of spring finally appear. Players sum up the victory points collected by defeated monsters, overcomed disasters, acquired heroes and level of manufacturing. The player with the most victory points will have their statue built in the center of the plaza of the castle and of course win the game but who cares for that it is all about showing off to your friends.

Dwar7s Winter comes with extremely simple rules, really fast gameplay, and small but meaningful choices that manage to pack together with the really promising production a package that should not be missed by anyone’s radar. The cherry on top these amazingly looking miniature that you can’t take your eyes off them…

Dwar7s Winter comes with tons of amazing stuff right out of the main box and is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter for the possibility to bring this fast paced, nice looking game on our tables.

Click on the image above to visit the Kickstarter page that is currently running… or simply click on the image below to visit the official website of the game and learn more…