Dead Of Winter Changes Hands To Fantasy Flight Games
March 2, 2020 by brennon
Plaid Hat Games has gone independent once more and that means that some board games are changing hands. One of the most notable shifts has been that Dead Of Winter, the Crossroads game which pits survivors against the undead and each other, is going to be published by Fantasy Flight Games.
Dead Of Winter was one of the big hits for Plaid Hat Games when it took the notion of zombie survival games and tweaked it a little. Instead of just having to worry about the undead you also had to deal with traitors in your midst and the deadly Crossroads Deck which was throwing numerous curve balls at you throughout the game.
It's a great game and it's good to see support continue in a fashion as Fantasy Flight Games take control of the game and its expansions. We might, therefore, see a new edition of the game make it to the tabletop or a deluxe copy perhaps which contains the base game and its expansions.
Another game that falls under Fantasy Flight's stewardship is Raxxon which is equally about the post-apocalypse and trying to bring survivors to safety. Beyond that, we have a quote from the press statement which goes into more detail about other games...
"Asmodee retains the rights to publish the following game titles: Dead of Winter, Raxxon, Mice and Mystics, Stuffed Fables, Aftermath, and Battlelands. Asmodee has also retained the rights to the Adventure Book Games brand. Going forward, Dead of Winter and Raxxon will be published and supported by Fantasy Flight Games.
Mice and Mystics, Stuffed Fables, Aftermath, and Battlelands will be published and supported by Z-Man games. Both Fantasy Flight Games and Z-Man Games are publishers belonging to the Asmodee Group."
So, the Crossroads mechanics is still retained by Plaid Hat Games which bodes well for the additional properties they had/have in the works.
Are you a fan of Dead Of Winter and what do you make of the Plaid Hat Games new?
"Are you a fan of Dead Of Winter and what do you make of the Plaid Hat Games new?"
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Not sure how I feel about this. FFG holding onto the license means more content but where can they go with it? The expansions built it up as far as I think it can go.
2nd Ed is more likely but FFG do morbidly poor rulebooks. I have a heap of their games and they’re always the ones I have to go to YouTube and watch ‘Let’s Plays’ to get my head around them. One of the highlights of DoW was how playable it was and easy to learn.
there was talk of other cross roads games, using a similar mechanic to dead of winter but in various different ways, doubt they will do that though, just milk the existing ip
Asmodee’s model is to publish a company’s best-selling game and discontinue other lines. That’s what they did with Days of Wonder and Mayfair Games. So Plaid Hat’s existence as an independent company means they’ll still be around to develop new games, rather than stop or reduce their output (like FFG, as Asmodee North America, seems to be doing). Asmodee may also be able to better distribute and sell games than PH (eg. into big box stores) but limit games they sell to those they think will sell.
It’s a shame another company has gone by the wayside. but it’s good that there most popular game’s will continue.
I don’t Plaid Hat is gone, it just separated from Asomodee. I think Plaid Hat is retaining Mice and Mystics and those storybook games.
No Mice & Mystics goes to Z-Man, another studio under Asmodee.
I don’t think they will trading long with all their money making games have gone to other manufacturing company’s.
I don’t like this… Mice & Mystic, Aftermath and Stuffed Fables are such beautiful games… and Asmodee looks more and more like a soulless money grabbing machine… :S
Both Aftermath and Stuffed Fables were finalized and published while PH was a studio of Asmodee and they will now be in the hands of Z-Man. I don’t think there is a down side to this news.
They were part of Asmodee but now (if I’m not mistaken) the creative heads behind said games are not with Asmodee or Z-Man. That is what worries me.
Jerry Hawthorne Is the designer of Mice and Mystics, Aftermath, and Stuffed Fables. He is an independent game designer who can work for anyone who wants to hire him. Most of the time he comes up with a concept on his own (all three of the above games) and shops them around on his own. He and Colby work well together so he has often give Plaid Hat a first look at things. If he wants to continue work on any of those games he can and just offer the current studio his thoughts but the contracts for those games… Read more »
plaid hat games potential for other ‘cross roads’ games had me excited, unfortunately it looks like the cross roads line they were going to do will probably not see the ligth of day
They did do one other Crossroads game: Gen7, a science fiction version. Unfortunately it was prohibitively priced at $100 retail (and didn’t look like it offered any more value than the much lower priced Dead of Winter) which may have contributed to its lack of success.
Yeah, it looked like an awesome game. However it was way to damn expensive for what it contained. Really oddly priced game, as it just had zero justification for that price.