Dwar7s Winter

Today's review is of the 2018 release, Dwar7s Winter.  For 1-4 players, it takes 45 minutes.

Overview
Your job is simple: protect the kingdom by defeating monsters and disasters (each having a card that shows what it takes to beat them- number of dwarves and type/quantity of resources like stone, wood, or food).  If you can survive for seven winters, the player with the most points wins!

game in progress; image from here

Each player has seven dwarf miniatures and starts the game with a deck of seven cards.  One player is chosen as the first player, and the first winter begins.
Each winter, the following happens:
- the monsters on the board advance one space towards the center (castle) space.
- new monsters are placed on the kingdom outskirts (if necessary).
- a disaster card is flipped, and token placed on the space shown on the card.
- each player chooses seven cards for their deck for that round.
Then, it's time for players to take their actions!
- starting with the first player, each player has five actions.  The allowable actions are:
-- place a dwarf from your reserve onto the board
-- move a dwarf from one space to an adjacent one
-- play music (choose one of four colors; each player plays cards from their hand matching that color, giving resources or enabling additional movement)
-- buy a card to be used in future rounds
-- [free action] beat a disaster by getting the number of dwarves required on that space, and discarding them + the stated resources
-- [free action] beat a monster by doing the same

Play proceeds clockwise.  Once all have gone, do an 'end state' check:
- are there four disasters on the board?
- are there any monsters in the castle?

If no, move to the next winter and pass the first player token clockwise.  If yes, you all lose!!
If you survive seven winters, count the victory points for each player (monster cards, disaster cards, and purchased character cards have victory points).  The highest wins!

Review
This is a really neat cooperative/competitive tower defense game with deck-building elements.  The miniatures are high quality, the board and components are great, and the game is fun and pretty easy to pick up.  Challenging, too- we've played three times and survived to the end only once. What I appreciate most might be the psychology- if you're in a position to beat a monster, but don't have enough points to win, do you let everyone lose or beat the monster for the sake of another to win?  It's an interesting choice.

Rating: A