I thought seeing as I haven’t put up any posts about board games in a while I would give my first impressions of Gears of War the Board Game.  This first impression is only after one solo play but I just had to share my excitement about this game.

We all know that the third installment of the well-loved series Gears of War is on its way to the Xbox.  Being as I can’t get on my Xbox due to my other-half stealing it to play Harry “Bloody” Potter I thought I would invest in the board game instead.  I’ve been waiting a while for this game, it was actually announced around the same time that Gears of War 2 came out but then went into a development cycle that was almost as long as Duke Nuk’em Forever.  It looked like it had been killed off, dumped in a hole and would never see the light of day, but it kept on appearing on the coming soon page of the FFG’s website.

Then just as the third Xbox games about to hit the shelves we heard the news the board games would be at GenCon and would be released soon to FLGS. Yay! Pre-ordered and the waiting began.  Then this week I had the phone call…its was in.

So lets pop this baby open and see what we have in the box…

Components

What can I say about the bits that come in the box?… Oh yeah they are frigging brilliant quality and look great.  I’ve taken a few pictures of the miniatures and will put a gallery at the bottom to show what I mean.

The detail on these miniatures are enough to get any painter drooling. All the heroes are recognisable from the minis and the bad guys are just like they have been taken directly from the screen and dumped, lovingly, in the box.

The tokens are thick card and look like they will stand up to the battering of the many plays this game will get.  The play boards have also not warped like the ones in Mansions of Madness which is great.  Edit: Scratch that last statement the suns just came out and these things have started to bend. Damn it!  There is nothing more annoying than playing a game and the boards rock backward and forwards like an excitable two-year old on a seesaw.

The cards have some excellent artwork and is made of the same stock material used on all FFG games = brilliant.

Play

Now as I have stated above I have only played this game once solo but I just wanted to say that this game is great to play.  The rules are well written and laid out in a easy to understand format and I was ready to play after one read through.

The bad guys are all controlled by the game so it’s actually a co-operative game and the players win or lose as a group.  The cover mechanic works extremely well and makes the game play experience feel very much like the Xbox game.  All the guns are here and there is even a mechanic for the bad guys to drop weapons.

This game is very much along the same lines as Doom the board game but has enough differences to make it a new game not a rehash.  Instead of set layouts for the quests and missions the layouts are randomly generated every time it is played, which will really add to the re-playability of the missions.  The AI deck controlling the bad guys gives the feeling that they are really working against you and kicked my ass last night with extreme vengeance.

Conclusion

This is a brilliant game and well worth purchasing.   Edit : If not a bit bent, Damn it! Also on a bit of a side note, I have started to see that a lot of games coming from Fantasy Flight are using their ‘printed on demand’ expansions model and this game has the same feel as Mansions of Madness in this respect.  I would expect that there are a few of these expansions in the works.

Look out for this game at your Friendly Local Games Shop today

Written by Mike Devonald

Mike has been gaming for about 5 years on and off and has a board game collection with the mass of a small planetoid. Mike started Drunken Goblin to share his love of gaming and hopes you enjoyed your stay.

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