Plaid Hat Games Announces Dead Of Winter Prequel 'Raxxon'

09/06/2017 05:38 pm EDT

Many are familiar with Plaid Hat Games successful Dead of Winter, but now fans can finally learn how the devastating virus started.

Dead of Winter is a cooperative survival horror board game that tasks the player with surviving the post apocalyptic world through teamwork, resource gathering, and strategic play. Now Plaid Hat is revealing just how things got this way in their new prequel game Raxxon.

The new board game takes place at the beginning of the outbreak that leads to mass Zombie hordes taking over the world. Each player acts as the leader of a different city and must work with other city leaders to stem the tide of the virus long enough to evacuate the city, but players also have to worry about Raxxon taking over underneath their noses, which can be done if the company assumes too much power.

In Raxxon, rounds are divided into days, with each player moving through three phases to complete their turn. Those three phases are Crowd Setup, Player Action, and End of Day. During the Crowd Setup, population cards are distributed facedown. During the Player Action phase players try and move the healthy cards towards their evacuation stack, and each action you take costs an increasing amount of points to perform. The End of Day phase sees your action tokens removed, followed by the injection of infected cards upon the board.

The game is designed for 2 to 4 players, but can also be played in solo mode.

The game is designed by J. Arthur Ellis, and includes 60 population cards, 40 Raxxon cards, 60 action tokens, 6 character sheets, and 1 Raxxon token, and has a bonus for Dead of Winter fans, aside from the lore building that is. The game will include two exclusive Dead of Winter characters (Meryl Wolfe and KD James) for use in Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game or Dead of Winter: The Long Night, and each will come with a character card and a crossroads card.

The game is slated to hit stores soon and retails for $39.95. You can find more images of the new title in the gallery, and the official rule book can be found here.