My brother gave me Gears of War (GoW) the board game for xmas and very kindly kept hold of it for 4 months so that he could paint all the minis inside. And they look fantastic! I generally dislike painting and avoid it at all costs, but I have to say it makes the game that much more engrossing when the bulk of objects players are looking at are well painted.
But how is Gears of War as a board game?
Well, it's a few years old now, I think it came out in 2011? That could be way off and a quick interweb search will find out the truth. The fact of it is though that after playing the first 2 missions, me and my gaming group love this game. We fell right into it, the rules are very straight forward and it's hard to miss any rules out as the game follows a very easy to follow sequence of phases - heal phase (draw 2 cards), order phase (play a card), locust activation phase (draw a locust AI card and do what it says).
What makes the game even better in my eyes is that it is purely co-operative. No-one in our group loves being a lone bad guy player, we like to either be at each other's throats or working together to beat a game.
How co-operative is it?
The co-operative element in GoW is very important and hard to avoid. However knowledgeable and accomplished a player maybe at the game, they will not succeed without helping and being helped by the other players.
A player uses cards to perform actions. When a player takes damage they lose cards. When a player wants to perform a 'special' action they need to discard a card. At the beginning of a player's turn they only draw 2 cards. This should highlight the fact that a player really only gains 1 card per turn and as soon as they take 1 damage or need to pick up some extra ammo, they're breaking even. However, all is not lost; some of the order cards players have will allow other players to draw cards or player's to perform actions out of sequence - these cards are vital to progressing.
These mechanics, mixed with the fact the bad guys (the locust) can do a lot of damage quite easily, means the players need to get moving, be daring and decisive to win. If you think hunkering down behind cover is probably better than charging in guns blazing, you may want to think again. But equally, charging in guns blazing without proper covering fire or the right weapon for the right job is just as stupid.
Any problems with the game?
I feel I really must start to be more critical of games. This blog has generally been a place for me to spew random thoughts and ideas out, but I end up ranting about my favourite games and glorifying them without equal and fair attention to the cons. And I believe some people do read this blog...
So, I can imagine if you have one very good player this game doesn't stop them from just telling the other players what they need to do. A bit like Pandemic, for all it's well deserved praise, this game could be boring for new players to play if the experienced heads don't let them make their own mistakes. I've been very lucky in that I've had very little extra exposure to this game than my gaming group, so each time we play we're essentially as knowledgeable about it as each other.
Also, re-playability cooooould be a problem. I hesitate here a little as this is a tactical combat game. What that means to me is that it's less about the goal as it is about the game mechanics. For example, I don't play battlefield or dark souls because I want to complete it, but because I love playing it. So far I can easily see myself playing missions again just because it's fun to play it. BUT, if you are a more classical board gamer, you may get bored going through the same missions again once you've completed them, as you're essentially just running through the same list of objectives. I think there are 7 or 8 missions in the box, each with randomly drawn map tiles, which do significantly alter how the flow of the game will go.
Lastly, some of the missions have locust creatures which aren't represented by models in the game, thus requiring you to use alts. For a top quality Fantasy Flight game, that's pretty crazy? And with no expansions looking like coming out, this fault will probably never be rectified - except for acquiring them from Heroclix, which are pretty poor quality models, but might be the only answer.
Conclusion?
If you like challenging, tactical combat, I don't know of any board games that do it better than this. The AI cards are very well designed and work almost seamlessly; the AI never seems to do anything stupid or that doesn't make sense.
It is a relentless struggle and steeped in Gears of War theme.
The models are stunningly beautiful for a ~£50 board game and if you, or someone willing, can spare the time to paint them they look even better.
Going back to re-playability, this game would love a big box expansion with more minis in, fresh board pieces and new missions. It's been out a good few years, with newer games getting multiple expansions during the time it's been out. There is only one little card expansion for GoW, with 2 new missions.
For the next few months I think this is going to be a regular on my gaming table and I'm looking forward to seeing how the horde mode works.
I'm really keen to get back into some xbox GoWing too....
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