An afternoon as a Gears Of War COG

It’s been fascinating to watch – and be a part of – the recent tabletop gaming renaissance. I was finally bitten hard in late 2010 when I undertook the mighty Arkham Horror, which dragged me straight to the bottom of the lake and I haven’t even tried to get to the surface yet. In fact, I even managed to make a new friend and drag him down with me in the summer of last year and we’ve been gaming partners since. Another one joins the ranks, like some sort of zombie outbreak. Kinda. If you squint your eyes you’ll see what I mean.

When you’ve got a regular gaming mate outside of your own family then you get to experience the great pleasure of trying out new games without buying them yourself. It’s not so much the spending of money that I’m talking about here. You know when someone else makes dinner for you and it tastes much better than it would if you’d cooked it? That. That’s what I’m talking about.

That was a much better analogy than the zombies, eh?

Anyway. I was treated to a game of Fantasy Flight’s Gears of War courtesy of my mate this afternoon. It’d been on my radar since I first saw it a few months ago and I was excited to try it out. It’s a 1-4 player co-op game where you play as the the Coalition of Ordered Governments delta squad (the good guys) up against the Locust Horde (baddies). Human players control one of the COGs and the game controls the Locusts.

The basics of the game itself are easy to learn. However, being that this is a Fantasy Flight game, the rule book leaves a few questions unanswered regarding certain game mechanics and decisions. If I had to choose one bad aspect of the board game industry then I’d choose the quality of rule books. If it wasn’t for amicable house ruling and sites like Board Game Geek, interpreting badly written rules would be the bane of the scene. However, this is a topic for another article and/or discussion.

You play Gears of War like this: you have six order cards in your hand when you start the game. At the start of each turn you can draw another two cards but you can never burst your limit of six although if you happen to be playing as Marcus Fenix then that limit is seven. On each of these cards is an order: move X number of spaces and shoot, attack X times and move one space, exhaust this card and pick up some extra ammo, discard this card and let another player choose an action from their hand, and so on. When it’s your turn, you play a card from your hand, resolve what happens and move on.

But that’s not quite all of the story. The cards in your hand don’t have to be used for what’s written on them. If you’ve got a hand of duff cards? That’s fine. Just throw one away and attack. Or move. Or pick up a weapon that’s been dropped. Or revive a fallen comrade. You’re never stuck waiting for a card to come into your hand that’ll allow you to do a basic action such as attack or move. Some order cards have some really nice tactical manoeuvres printed on them but if you’ve got a full hand of Pick-up-ammo-for-a-weapon-of-your-choice type card, you’re still able to shoot something. You’re a soldier after all. “Peow-peow” is your bread and butter.

Oh, and one more thing? See those cards in your hand? They’re also your hit points. If you start spending and discarding them all willy-nilly then you’re going to end up dead. Not only that, but some of the actions available to the Locust will force you to discard cards. So not only will this drain precious life points from you, but it’ll also narrow your tactical options. A real bummer if you’ve got a nice hand.

The Locust Horde are activated after each COG plays via some pretty clever AI action cards. The baddies want you dead and these cards concur whole-heartedly. Once you’ve moved and activated your COG, the second part of your turn is to activate the Horde. The mechanics of combat are dice based and the system is fairly simple: roll some gun stats against some defence stats and the difference in the numbers is how much damage the target takes. If you roll an “Omen” symbol on the custom dice then you activate your weapon’s special attack. If the Locust roll the omen, then you could be in very big trouble, my friend. Combat is quick and fast. The results are resolved as quickly as a COG lancer can squeeze off five rounds. The pace feels like a board game fire fight should.

The whole premise of Gears of War is as shallow as a puddle. Go from point A to point B. Kick Locust arse and seal their emergence holes. There’s a number of scenarios and many have multi-tiered objectives but at it’s core, Gears is a dungeon crawler set in space. Kill. Maim. Loot. Reload. Win.

The picture at the top of this article captures our last moment from today’s session. I’m bleeding out on the floor after trying to bring as many Locust down with me in a final act of gung-ho. I’ve managed to kill two of them and damage another but my run was cut short, courtesy of the business end of a Locust Boom Shot. My buddy’s got two hit points left and has no chance of getting over to revive me before those Boomers get another attack in. It’s do-or-die.

He spends his last ammo token to go into Overkill which allows him to double the amount of dice he’s going to roll to attack. The dice fall in his favour and we’re down to one Locust and thanks to an omen landing face-up in the roll, the activated special allows him to attack the second Boomer for free. It’s hurt and only needs one more hit to take it out…. and win us the game. It’s taken a while to warm this game up, mainly down to us learning the rules, but now the pot’s boiling. This is the final act of valour.

This is why I play board games. To be forced to my feet in anticipation of that final deciding roll. To look across the table at the people I’m playing with and to know that they’re feeling exactly what I am at that moment. To watch those dice tumble and report the result of our chosen tactics. To forget to breathe for a second until the outcome registers.

Gears of War took us to that place today and it was pretty good fun.