I am going to have another go at the Gears of War board game which I haven’t looked at in a couple of years (I think since before the D&D Castle Ravenloft series).

Gears of War is another cooperative game, where you play as a team against the game. In this case, you are a team of COG soldiers fighting seemingly endless waves of alien Locusts.

It is a tactical, miniatures-based game, with an emphasis on staying in cover as much as possible to avoid getting shot. It has the feel of the video game in this respect.

It also has a neat mechanic where your actions are chosen from a hand of six ‘order’ cards, and this hand of cards is also your hit points. If your hand is empty and you are shot, you fall unconscious.

You draw two new order cards each turn, and your deck never runs out (you shuffle discards back in when it is gone), but you are constantly trading off taking extra actions against keeping enough health to survive a hit.

This is similar to the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, but in Pathfinder it is your deck that is your hit points. Either way, you have a nice gimmick of having to balance activity and survival.

The tactical part of the game isn’t too fiddly, as the board is made up of fairly large ‘areas’ which you place the figures in. You aren’t messing around with exact positioning in tiny squares.

I painted all the figures when I first got the game. They were some of the first I ever painted, and I will post some pictures.