Dwar7s Winter: Rapid Review
Player Age: 12+
Player Count: 1 - 4 Players
Time to Play: 30 - 45 Minutes
Game Artist & Designer: LuÃs Brueh
Year Published: 2018
Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.
Rundown:
Dwar7s Winter is a tower defence cooperative game that has players trying to survive the whole Winter, this will be 7 weeks (rounds). Players are doing this by hand building, following the other players shanties, and deploying/moving their dwarves into battle.
Each week there are four phases; Enemy Invasion, Preparation, Actions and Resolution. The Enemy Invasion has the monsters moving and attacking, followed by spawning and revealing a new disaster. Note that there will always be monsters equal to the player count plus one). The Preperation has players determining which cards out of their entire deck, equal to their hand limit of (usually) seven, will be brought into the week. The Action phase is explained in further detail below and the Resolution phase is the changing of the week and first player, as well as refreshing the hero market.
This game has gone through multiple refinements after its release. It began as a semi-cooperative game but in the third edition rulebook, turned into a fully cooperative game. For this review, as all components stay the same I am basing my experience and thoughts on the latest editions of the rules. Additionally, I prefer fully cooperative games over semi-cooperative.
Actions:
In turn order the following five actions will be activated by each player; deploy, move, sing, recruit, and fight.
Deploy:
This action allows you to place three of your dwarves in any location. You cannot place two on the same location during the same turn, however it is ok to place a dwarf in a preoccupied location as long as its not the same turn.
Move:
Move up to two of your dwarves to any adjacent location. If preferred, you can instead move one dwarf twice.
Sing:
This is where the core of the hand building mechanic comes into play. The active player can sing by placing their musical note token onto one of the open instruments. This player can now play any and all cards in their hand matching this instrument in the order they chose. The other players may follow the rhythm and play any cards in their hand matching the same instrument.
Recruit:
This action allows you to improve your combo capabilities by buying any one hero card in the market, placing it in the discard pile, then replenishing the market. These abilities are normally an improvement from your starting deck, creating better resource efficiency or additional ways to place and move your dwarves.
Fight:
In a location shared with a monster or disaster you can discard the required present dwarves and resources to fight them. In doing this you delay the invasion and survive another round. This is integral to perform every turn if possible to prevent the game from winning. This can be very challenging to manage but luckily you can rely on the aid of your teammates. If the other player agrees you can use their dwarves stationed in that location, and even their resources to help turn the tide.
Problems to resolve:
If you last seven weeks then the players win, however, there are two vital complications that will lose the players the game; a monster entering the castle and four active disasters. This lose condition is checked in the resolution phase, giving the players the week to remove any of these game ending conditions. The problem that players face for both situations is that they cannot produce resources in the locations that the monster or disaster is in. So, if swarmed by enough of them, the resources needed for victory becomes harder to achieve.
Monsters:
At the start of every week each monster will move one space towards the castle and activate their ability. The range of these abilities are listed below. 
On the top left of the card it will show where it spawns (this will always be along the wall at the edge of the map), as well as how many dwarves and resources need to be discarded to defeat them. These monsters can be very challenging to defeat as they replenish after monster movement to the player count +1 every week. So if the monster isn't harming the team, you may want to wait to the last second to defeat them, otherwise they could be replaced with something worse.
Disasters:
A new disaster will be added at the start of each week. If at any time there are four of these left unattended the players will lose at the end of the week. Like the monsters, they require resources and dwarves to resolve the disaster. 
As disasters don't move they will instead spawn inside the walls. A easy tip for this to remember that disasters require more resources and monsters require more dwarves to defeat. Once the disaster is resolved the active player gains two coins, perfect for adding more cards to your deck.
Interaction:
Most turns you are spending all the resources and dwarves you gain/place in the pursuit of removing one monster or disaster so it is integral that players work together. This planning mainly comes in the form of singing. Especially in a two player game you want to try and synergise your colours with your ally, so when they have a big eventful turn from a particular colour you can have a similar pay off.
Determination:
- Very challenging game that requires full cooperation.
- Two players only have two instruments activating per turn so coordination is integral.
- Like a great cooperative game, it is rewarding when you pull off challenging turns.
- Very confusing rulebook that became more refined throughout revised editions, but for a new player trying to get the best experience the rulebook was a hurdle. Third edition rulebook is much more cleaner and easier to follow.
I am yet to play this game at higher player counts but at two players it is integral that both work together and create synergised decks. This brings me to the two mechanisms I find really interesting. First, I always enjoy hand building games, of which Dwar7s Winter has a lot of planning in the hand building. Each week you only choose cards based on your hand size, so the cards you end each week with may be great abilities but if you don't effectively plan to use that colour then it will have no use to you. Due to these coordinated attacks, players need to plan out their turns in advance.
The other part I really enjoy is the sing mechanism. Normally the follow mechanism is found in competitive games, but in Dwar7s Winter it is integral to team survival. Each time a player sings, the other players are allowed to deploy the cards associated to that instrument. In a two player game this makes it essential to understand your ally and their colour choices. If you enjoy challenging cooperative games that require you to work strongly as a team, and create rewarding synergies then this is a great game to add to your collection, just make sure you are learning from the latest rulebook.
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