COG Helmetsīefore starting a mission, you may choose whether each COG is wearing a Helmet or not. However, defenders roll 2 extra defense dice against this attack due to its inaccuracy. If any COG is carrying two Snub Pistols, they may choose to attack with both using just one attack and either roll 2 attack dice (costs no Ammo) or 6 attack dice (costs 2 Ammo). When a Grenadier Locust is killed and drops a weapon, it is a Gnasher Shotgun rather than a Hammerburst. Maximum Ranges for each Locust type are as follows: Wretch: 0

This means that AI Card text that specifies a range for whether Locusts shoot or not should be ignored any Locust mentioned will now attempt to shoot regardless of range (thus balancing out the new range penalties they are now subject to). Locust Weapon RangesĪll Locusts now have maximum ranges, and suffer -1 attack die for each area further than their maximum when attacking.

When sealing an Emergence Hole in this manner, no damage is inflicted to the occupants of the area or any adjacent areas. If a COG is in the same area as an Emergence Hole and there are no enemies in that same area, they may roll double their normal attack dice and discard 1 Bolo Grenade to attempt to seal the Emergence Hole (as usual, one Omen is required to succeed). they do not exceed their maximum weapon card limit by accepting it). Weapon Swappingĭuring their turn, as an extra action (by spending 1 Order Card), any COG can give one Weapon, Grenade token or Ammo token to another COG in the same area, so long as they can hold it (i.e. This token can be picked up as an extra action (at a cost of 1 Order Card) the same way dropped weapons can be. On an Omen, place 1 Ammo token in the area. If an enemy drops nothing when killed, roll 1 attack die. This difficulty is the same as Normal Mode, except that you should ignore any “draw another AI card” instruction on Locust AI cards. Obviously, you are free to use any combination of these rules in your own games, ignoring any you don’t like. Thus, I came up with a few house rules that I like to play with, and thought I’d share them here. like Emergence Holes being so hard to seal even when standing on top of them, or all Locust having unlimited weapon range. GoW does have a few issues though, IMO the game can be very hard to win in certain circumstances, and some small things don’t make a lot of logical sense. However, it’s still a fantastic game, especially for solo play as the “Locust” (bad guys) are entirely AI controlled.

Sadly, there was only a couple of small card-only expansions published for it (and those were very hard to find even at print) and nothing covering the later games in the series. Gears of War is a hugely successful video game franchise, but it was also a great 2011 “dungeon crawler” boardgame by Fantasy Flight Games.

Gears of war ticker