Archive for the 'Gears of War' Category

Gears of War is first-person shooter game on Xbox.  The board game by Fantasy Flight Games had been listed as in-development for several years so it was interesting to finally get it play it.  The video game focusses on a small squad of human soldiers (called COG) fighting against an alien race – a lot of the main action involves frantic gunfights, dashing from (or diving over) cover whilst under (and returning) heavy gunfire, and often throwing grenades into large holes in the ground where the enemies are emerging from.

The board game of Gears of War has all the players playing the COG soldiers co-operatively against the game (enemy) and there are various scenarios which determine the map, victory conditions, etc.  Also, some scenarios have multiple stages and the players must complete one stage before they next is revealed.  The map is made of various tile sections and each is divided into several areas which determine movement and weapon range.

Each player has a hand of Order cards (gaining 2 at the start of each turn) which each describe a special action but also act as the player’s health too.  Every turn, players play a card to perform the card’s action (like move 4 spaces and attack, revive a comrade, etc.), or to move 2 spaces, or to do 1 standard attack.  Each card also has 1 of 3 icons which mean it can be played when it is not the player’s turn to either attack an enemy, gain extra defence dice, or move with a comrade.  If a player runs out of cards, they are ‘bleeding out’ until a comrade revives them, which means they can crawl 1 space per turn, don’t get attacked, and gain no cards. Read the rest of this entry »