Dead of Winter

By Charles Etheridge-Nunn

Dead of Winter is a zombie game, kind of. There's thankfully a lot more to it, enough to distinguish it from Zombies!!!, Last Night on Earth, Zombie Fluxx, Zombie Dice, Zombie Munchkin, Zombicide and so on. 

The biggest problem with Dead of Winter is that it was open to preorder months and months ago, it was due to be released shortly after. After hearing Shut Up & Sit Down talk about the game I felt it captured exactly what I wanted to see in a piece of zombie fiction and in the horrors of a semi-cooperative game.

That's the great thing about Dead of Winter, it's cooperative until it isn't. You're all good people working for the good of the community, but you all have your own motivations which you have to pursue for your own survival. In the game you'll be having to weigh up whether you should survive at the cost of everyone else, or if you can help others to live just to get anyone through to the end of winter.

So the good news is that after considerable delays, it's finally here!

So let's have a look inside the box and see what this game is all about.

Quick Game Look - Cardfight Vanguard

As the people of Hooting into the Abyss know, I like robot based games as much as some people like Skaven, the richness of Malifaux or sleeving cards. It was thus probably inevitable I would try this one at some point. What caught my eye was the card in the picture above - it's illustrated by the fairly renowned animator and designer Masami Obari, who I'm quite a fan of. Buying a game based on one illustrator being involved seems a really bad idea, but buoyed by terrible influence from some other friends I nevertheless did so.

CabinCon

CabinCon

We are now only a couple of weeks away from the Hooting event of the year, CabinCon, the origins of the name are shrouded in mystery but it is a name that evokes joy in the heart of all the hooters.

The concept is simple, one cabin, 17 hooters and a plethora of games, any games, all of the games! We will be spanning board games, tabletop games, card games and RPG’s all in the space of 6 glorious days.

So whats going on I hear you ask? Come on, surely someone asked that? Well, here are the main games and some of the participants anyway.

Avengers Vs X-Men Battle Report, Month Three

After a little delay, it's time for the third Avengers vs X-Men event. The X-Men have travelled the world looking for Hope Summers and the Phoenix Force has finally arrived on Earth.

Iron Man's "Phoenix-Buster" armour didn't stop the Phoenix, instead it just broke the creature into smaller forces which imbued five X-Men with world-changing powers. This month we re-enact that battle with a selection of X-Men and Avengers.

The tournament changed up for this month, as we all get to use the Phoenix Force resource dial which was given to us in month one and the Phoenix shards which we've acquired in each tournament so far. We have six hundred points of Avengers or X-Men to pick teams from; the Avengers gain some bonuses but the X-Men imbue their team with new powers from the shards. It's... confusing. The dial was strange to get used to at first but between the YouTube tutorial and talking it over with the other competitors it seemed like something which just might work. The Phoenix Force has a dial with powers and modifiers on, which everyone assigned a Phoenix shard gets. They all also have a power based on a character who was originally one of the "Phoenix Five". If you knock someone out then the powers on the dial change up. If one of your Phoenixes is KO'd then the rest get more powerful to make up for it. So yeah, not too bad, just a little weird at first.

TEAM BUILDING

I was torn with a couple of ideas for teams, having recently acquired a few new X-Men pieces and wanting to try them out. As the one fan of Cyclops (yes, I know) I still wanted to have a Summers family day out. Instead though, I decided to go with the X-Men Time Team:

Bishop, time cop and lunatic who can soak up power and spit it back out, with the Colossus shard to toughen him up when he's out in the field.

Cable, Cyclops' alternate future son, he ran around time trying to hide his daughter from Bishop. I put the Namor shard on Cable so he had the X-Men team ability which he was originally missing.

Hope Summers, Cable's adopted daughter who he hid with in the future. I put the Emma Frost shard on her so that she would get telekinetic powers.

Jean Grey, an original X-Man brought to the present by Beast. She didn't have a Phoenix shard. I've seen what happens when Jean gets all Phoenixy and it's probably best not to repeat that.

Phoenix, the alternate future daughter of Cyclops and Jean Grey, because my god there's a lot of weird family drama with those guys. I put the Cyclops shard on her which would give Phoenix better ranged powers.

Avengers Vs X-Men Battle Report: Month Two

Previously the Avengers and the X-Men squared off on the beach of Utopia, the mutant homeland. The X-Men won the day, but Hope Summers ran away from both teams rather than have either one choose her destiny. Both teams were able to track her signal to five different locations, so this time the tournament has the Avengers and X-Men split themselves into five small teams each, fighting in each location as they search for Hope.

TEAM BUILDING

Five teams have to be built for slightly shorter battles. There are some limitations; Beast and Wolverine aren’t allowed on the X-Men’s side as they are filthy splitters. Hope isn’t allowed on either side as she’s on the run. The five teams have to share a team keyword, such as X-Factor or New Mutants. Each team was to belong to a different group and each character couldn’t be duplicated as everyone’s around the world searching at the same time.

The X-Men team would be the easiest to make as most mutants have been an X-Man at some point. Then there’s the recently-released Wolverine & The X-Men set which brought a lot of X-Force and New Mutants characters. A few people share the X-Factor keyword, so the remaining team was a difficult choice. Sadly there aren’t many Generation X characters, so I picked Excalibur, as I could just about make the team.

My teams were as follows:

Excalibur: Longshot to provide probability control and thrown knives. Shadowcat to ferry people around and support them. Warlock to turn into a dune buggy, ram people and be an all-round weird Swiss Army Knife of a character.

New Mutants: Magik from the Phoenix Five who appear later in the series, as a flying death beast. Magma who is like a borderline-psychotic lava Firestar. Shatterstar who is basically a man with crazy massive swords and that’s a good substitute for character.

X-Factor: This was possibly the hardest team to build. 300 points was a ton back in the day, but two massive overhauls later and 300 points is barely anything. I had Layla Miller to resurrect people and use the near-essential Outwit & Probability Control powers. I wanted to use Polaris as her Telekinesis power allowed fast placement of people around the map. Originally I wanted to use Strong Guy as a tank to move into place, but that was heavily veto’d by the X-Men’s captain so I picked three Multiple Men as their replacement. One is the original, the others his ‘dupes’.

X-Force: I wanted to use my limited edition Cable from the last game as he hunts Avengers and damn it, he was my prize. He could phase through things and do two attacks in one go. Spiral is a whirling dervish of blades who can teleport. Then I needed enough points to fill the rest and I decided Wolfsbane would make for something sharp to throw at the enemy, especially if I could make her carry a Phoenix Shard.

X-Men: Cyclops was a must, as the Avengers Vs X-Men version is one of the best I’ve seen. Emma Frost is a great support piece, and with 75 points left after that, I took Professor X. This makes a team filled with Mind Control, Probability Control, Leadership and not a great deal of mobility.

Next, on to the tournament!

Photographing miniatures.

So one of my hobbies outside of miniatures is photography, with that in mind I've put together a few comments and thoughts on how to get the best photos you can of your miniatures. If you've spent hours/days painting them and what to show them off then clearly a quick shaky snap on your phone just isn't going to cut it.

With all photography, there are a lot of factors that go into a great shot. I’m going to go over a few of the basics and so feel free to experiment and play around until you achieve the image you want.

Avengers Vs X-Men Battle Report: Month One

The first couple of issues of the AvX comic event dealt with Wolverine bringing the Avengers to the X-Men’s island home of Utopia; a nation off the coast of San Francisco which housed over half of the X-Men. Captain America came with a demand for Hope Summers, the potential host of the Phoenix Force. When Cyclops refused to give the girl over, a SHIELD helicarrier became visible overhead, with a TON of Avengers. With the majority of both teams facing off against each other, everyone knew that things were going to start big.

And that’s where this event will begin. The Brighton Heroclix Community are split into two factions, Avengers and X-Men. Both sides will play off against each other using teams of 600 points, taken from a selection of 2,000 points each player will bring to the table. If a character is knocked out in a round, they can’t be used again. When people fall, they fall HARD. Everyone will see it all four rounds though, so if you can’t make a team of 600 points you can buy back dead units costing points equal to how many points of enemies you’ve knocked out so far.

Each fight is timed, and whoever can knock the most amount of points out of the other team wins. The amount of points you knock out add up at the end to settle any ties, so a total wipe is obviously the best.

Both teams have a selection they have to stick with, the characters (not necessarily the miniatures) from the Avengers Vs X-Men Starter Sets. The Avengers have to have a version of; Captain America, Iron Man, Scarlet Witch, Spider-Man, Thor & Wolverine. The X-Men have to have a version of; Colossus, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Magik, Magneto & Namor.

TEAM BUILDING

Here is where I begin to suck. I picked X-Men because I’ve been a fan of them since I was five and, ahem, liberated a UK reprint of X-Men #23 from a doctor’s waiting room.

I borrowed a 10th Anniversary Emma Frost and Storm from one player and Bishop, Psylocke & Professor X from another.

My total forces were:

Bishop, Colossus, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Gambit, Husk, Kid Omega, Longshot, Magik, Magneto, Namor, Professor X, Psylocke, Shadowcat, Storm and Sunspot.

My plans were minimal at best. Telekinetics like Kid Omega, Magik and Magneto could move people into battle, as could Shadowcat (who is also able to hide and outwit folk). Colossus, Husk, Namor and Sunspot are bricks who deal okay damage and absorb a lot. Emma, Psylocke and Professor X do mind control, while Bishop, Cyclops, Longshot and Storm are brilliant ranged attackers.