The Dead of Winter: The Long Night teaser trailer is here!! Check it out as well as James' preview below.

Welcome to our weekly previews for Dead of Winter: The Long Night, the stand-alone, fully compatible expansion to Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game. Click here to pre-order Dead of Winter: The Long Night from the PlaidHatGames.com store - get 20% off and the Rich Sommer exclusive character and crossroads card for free! Click here to explore MyRaxxon.com.

Raxxon Pharmaceuticals is the company responsible for the zombie outbreak, and is central to the story of Dead of Winter. In The Long Night, players are able to explore the laboratory as a new location, discover its secrets, and gain powerful new items while dealing with increased risks. The Raxxon module is one of three that come with the expansion; it can be added on its own or combined with the Bandit and Improvement modules. There is a special scenario that gradually introduces Raxxon’s mechanics, but I’ll provide a sneak peek today. There’s even a special character from Raxxon!

Every round, one of the deadly Raxxon experiments is trying to break free from Raxxon. It’s up to the survivors to assess the danger and attempt to punch in the containment code. Here’s the card to warn about the Frostwalkers, but they’re just one of many types, complete with their own standees.

If players who have survivors at Raxxon don’t collectively spend action dice with numbers that match the containment code, the experiments will break free. From there, you’ll have to face what lies on the other side of the card to deal with them. James Myers and Brian Lee from the original game might help you get the dice you need to punch in the code, but now there’s also Nadia Rivers.

Even searching at Raxxon is dangerous- survivors must roll the exposure die each time that they search there. Someone get Blue some sport pads, she’s going in!

The items at Raxxon are generally more powerful than elsewhere. Rotating people in and out to help contain the zombies while also saving dice to search creates dynamic tension that could sometimes be lacking in the original game when people would camp out at the same location hoarding items. There’s some great experimental weaponry and items at Raxxon, but the most intriguing new items are the pills.

Will you take the Red Pill?

There’s a deck of positive and negative effects for each of the six pills in different colors. Here’s the upside of the Red Pill.

What could possibly go wrong?

Week 1: Why Standalone?

Come back next Wednesday for our next The Long Night preview, on the Bandit module. Click here to pre-order Dead of Winter: The Long Night from the PlaidHatGames.com store - get 20% off and the Rich Sommer exclusive character and crossroads card for free!

