Coach Gary Stead said his New Zealand team have held "honest conversations" ahead of a do-or-die clash against the West Indies at the Twenty20 World Cup.

A stunning loss to Afghanistan in their opening game means the beaten 2021 finalists must win their remaining three pool matches to advance.

That starts with co-hosts the West Indies at the Brian Lara Stadium in Trinidad on Wednesday local time.

"This is essentially like a knockout game. We have got to give it everything we can," Stead told New Zealand media on a video call.

"We have to win three games. We have to win them well."

New Zealand were well beaten by Afghanistan, by 84 runs, for their first defeat to the Afghans in T20 cricket.

Stead said he may tinker with his line-up, but will resist making vast changes.

"I think one of the dangers is if you chop and change too much, then it looks like you are panicking a wee bit," he said.

"We had some pretty honest conversations around the performance.

"It's a new game. The danger is you take what happened in the last game and bring it into this one.

"Our challenge is to pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off and make sure the next performance is something that we should be proud of."

The West Indies survived a scare of their own in their opening game, when they laboured to a five-wicket win over Papua New Guinea.

They thrashed Uganda in their second Group C game.

Stead said New Zealand must subdue the West Indies' hard-hitting batsmen.

"They're a team that can be unpredictable," he said.

"They have a lot of power through their batting order, they are boundary-hitters.

"Our plans around how we nullify that will go a long way to how the game might play out."