Gears of War boardgame + Steam Summer Sale!

I'm gonna start with talking about how my day went on Sunday then about the games I recently bought from the sale and go on to the boardgame okay.

So last Sunday, after a 6 days force rest due to infection on my blister, which, btw is fine now, well in a way of putting it cause I end up cutting off the skin and manage to remove that layering dead skin cells that I had before, felt so good mang,  I don't have a bump on my foot anymore, but everytime stepping on a tiled floor felt like stepping on cold water, I finally went out for run.  Dan, who totally forgot that I was on force rest ask me what time we're starting our 21km run on Sunday.  HOI! Neways, suggested we do an easy 10km instead.  I woke up as early as 3:30am, had a good night sleep perhaps from sleeping at 9:30pm (actually slept so early cause I did an hour on the stationary bike, got so tired), stomach aching from period pain and diarrhea, good lord, got ready and off I go after 5am.




Drove out from the house, through that construction and muddy+gravel road.  Little that I know they changed the road again that I end up reversing and got my back car tire on the mud and was stuck for few minutes.  Yes, silly me.  I was moving forward and reversing trying to get my car to move forward but did not happen, I then called Dan up and told him I might be late or I maybe could not make it due to this unforeseen circumstances.  He suggested that I try to move my tire from left to right to try and get out from the mud, I swear if I were in a housing area, actually my area would not be count as housing area but there sure are contractor houses that were made out of plywood in which they probably could hear me but could not be bothered to at 5am-ish, after a few trial and error, I manage to get my car tire out from the mud with sprinkles of mud on my car, talking about not getting the car wash for a reason huh?  Relief!

Reach our usual meeting point.  Talking about cold weather.  Damn cold!  Waited for Dan and off we go.

Relaxed pace indeed.  Foot felt alright, though the whole body felt a bit heavy, usually happen from having the "monthly visit".  But completed 9km.  After that I had to take a dump again lol.

Went to McDonalds to have Big Breakfast hee.  I think I was slightly distracted from the discomfort that I forgot to grab the fork and knife eheh.

Went home after that.  Took a shortcut home than my usual route, bad idea, there's this car in front of me, so slow like snail.  Banked in some money to my debit card and it's time to splurge on steam games!  Woohoo!

Oh yeah, during my boring ol' 6 days of force rest from running, I've been going back to playing Diablo III.  Yes, my Witch Doctor is still level 38 :(  le sad, still in Nightmare Mode, haihs, makes me think that my character is so weak at times.  But I totally like my minions, Y U NO gimme skeletons with special abilities as minions?  Like the Necromancers last time hee~

Anyways, finally bought Machinarium which was on 50% off, Botanicula was on 33% I think but who cares, I want that cause it's from the same developer, gotta be the cutest graphic for puzzle game EVER!  75% off Payday: The Heist, those Killing Floor character packs and finally bought Vessel on 75% off today hee~  Yeah like I got so much time to unlock all those achievements?  Not when I'm on my running training schedule.  Totally no time for gaming.

Boardgame meet up at 1pm at Just Wargame, Damai.  I had lunch at home and off I go, I was gonna buy Yoyo and some snacks but NO! I refuse to eat junk food.

Now, this is the moment you all (boardgame junkies) have been waiting for.  Gears of War boardgame.  This was on Dan's wishlist btw, he's been saying how he wanted to get this game but did not XP but I think this is a nice collection after playing it of course.  Lets start with knowing about the game.

Before that, I apologize for my massive photo upload on this game yesterday.

From BoardGameGeek (Source: Gears of War boardgame):

Game description from the publisher:

For a time, the humans of Sera knew peace...then Emergence Day came. The Locust horde arrived without warning, and countless horrors spilled forth from their underground burrows. The Coalition of Organized Governments (COG) struggled to fend off the subterranean threat, but their defenses were quickly crushed. With billions dead, humans turned their weapons of mass destruction on their own cities to deny the enemy control. Now the long struggle against overwhelming odds approaches one final, desperate stand.

Gears of War: The Board Game, designed by Corey Konieczka, is based on the wildly popular third-person shooter by Epic Games. One to four players take on the roles of COG soldiers cooperating to destroy the Locust horde, and must work together to complete missions against an ingeniously challenging and varied game system. In Gears of War: The Board Game, you’ll relive classic moments from Gears of War and Gears of War 2 – Roadie Run into cover, spray your enemy with blind fire, or rip him in half with your Lancer's chainsaw!

In Gears of War: The Board Game you must fulfill one of seven randomly constructed missions and support your fellow COGs as your team engages an unflinching enemy in furious, white-knuckle firefights! Only through teamwork and communication will you gain a tactical advantage, completing your mission and striking a blow for humanity.

You'll need every soldier you can get if you hope to send the Locust horde back to their holes. Leave no man behind!

Players: 1 -4.  Today's session = 3.  We couldn't find a 4th player.  We started around 2pm.

Select your human, I mean character.  In this case, COG.  We started slow cause it's our first time playing this game.

Dan as Augustus Cole, I played Marcus Fenix and Rendy played Damon Baird.  Each player starts with a rifle, a pistol and grenade but has different number of ammo and special abilities.  I use Marcus for a reason, I'm greedy.

Player's reference card.  At a turn, player gets to help other player by spending (or in other words, discard) the order card as reaction, like Guard another player before the enemies attack.

On player's turn, the player get to heal (replenish!!!), play an order card then Locust Activation.  AI card hee.

The dices.  Attack with black dice and defend with red.  The omen symbol is the special abilities which is on the weapon card.  But some monsters can heal when you roll an omen.

Waited for Rendy to come, me and Dan was setting up the game, okay more like he did most of the work by reading through the instructions hee~ I was busy taking photo of course.  Yes, unboxing! Fresh new boardgame.  Wait, I forgot to smell it.  Rendy came just in time for the game to start.

Other components of the game. Where you place the enemies cards (these are determined from the mission you're playing), the mission deck in the middle as indicated, the order cards, AI cards and weapons cards.  The location cards is for another mission since we started with the easy mission first.

Mission setup.  Level 1 locations, the map tiles have numbers on it, so place accordingly.

The enemies we encountered during this mission are the Wretch (I keep calling it Wrench I do not know why), the Drones and Boomer (Bo Boomer!).  The Drones and Boomer have weapon drop!  The numbers and indication on the card are the defence, attack, wound and special abilities for the enemies.  Some are immune to certain weapon.

Looked pretty much like this when setting up.

The card on  the top right is the weapons, middle is AI cards and the bottom one is the order card, also indicates your character's health.  All the characters starts with 6 order cards, except if you play Marcus Fenix, he gets 7 cards cause he's special :)  Notice the ruler at the bottom of all those cards and miniatures?  That's the ruler, to check if you have line of sight (LOS).

Me waiting for Dan to figure out the game.

The first map tile.  Notice the arrows, those where character or monster can take cover.  The hole with a red dot is where monster spawn, to close this, you must use a grenade and roll with a omen sign.  Not easy.  The symbol with the question mark "?" is a loot area, sometimes drop weapon/ammo etc.  You must activate to pick up unless ur cards state otherwise.

The game setup pretty much like this.

Dan blur halfway lol.

Okay, setup is done, lets begin!  You guys trick me to go into cover!  LOL okay I kidding hehe.

Gawddamn Boomer! Y U IN front!

Our mission = make our way to the exit!  But to do that, we must kill the horde blocking our way.  I think we were at the same location for awhile.

Figuring out some of the stuff.

Sample of the order cards.

When you're greedy, hungry and tired, you look like this.  Deciding my action.  Oh yes, player gets to use 1 order card at each round.

Sometimes I take my time when I have so many good cards or when I don't lol.  Decision decision.

My 1 on 1 with the Boomer.  Oh yeah, weapon limit in hand is 4 for all player except Damon, he gets 1 additional.  DIE!  The boomer loot is MINE!!! MINE!!!! BOOMSHOT!

At that point I was wondering okay lets move forward.  I don't think so, look, more coming!

Wretch heading straight to us.  Lets test the boomshot.  Overkill :)

Lets push through!

I do not know why and how come everytime a person collects ammo, the AI card that comes after that makes you drop 1 ammo =_=""" happens all the time.  WTH!

Us against the Drone.  We must get to the DOOR!

Rush our way there.

As Augustus open the exit door, ambushed by horde XD;;;

I'll back u up!  Opps, sorry, u were at the wrong place at the wrong time, deal damage.  But thank you for opening the door hee~

Who wanna pick that up?

Yay mission complete.

Fun fun!  Had our break at 5pm for dinner cause I was hungry.

Went to Kopi Ping.  Had Watan Ho Fish with Barley drink.

The next mission.  

Say hello to the Beserker!

I still can't brain that this beserker is a she.

At the start of the game.

Locked door!  How to open?  No key.  Here's how.  You'll have to lure the Beserker to the door and it'll crush the door lol.

I think we wasted our time attacking the Beserker at the start of the game few times that we did not or forgot to read the instructions lol.  Too paranoid.  All we do now is, run to the nearest EXIT!  And also lure the Beserker.

Grenade the hole.

How to lure the Beserker?  Any attack you made/grenade a place, it'll move towards the attacker.  But the movement is either 1 or 2 only.  In other words, it's attracted to noise.  But it'll attack everything or anything on it's path.  Including fellow monsters.  No friends one, damn forever alone. 

Crushed the 1st door, yesth!  Lets go to the next level.

Had to do this twice cause there's 2 locked doors.  Has got to be the most INTENSE moment throughout.

Moving forward, or in this case, running away!

LURE!!!

The other door heading to Level 3.  Take cover!

Beserker can only be killed with the Hammer of Dawn which you can only attain from the Level 3 which I'll show you when we reach to that photo.  You can use your normal weapon when the Beserker is wounded.  

No ammo is required for the Hammer of Dawn but the COG that is equipped with it must skip their action to get it charged.

Augustus and Marcus distract the Beserker while Damon gets the Hammer charge.

We would like to continue our mission at a later date.  Save mode.  Take photo LOL!

Saved game hehe.

And the Beserker is dead.

Good thing no one died :)  GOOD GAME!  

To be continued...

Photo of me in it credits to Rendy.

Went and check out for expansions.  And I found out that they have Mission Pack 1 for the time being, you can check it out from BoardGameGeek, here.

Oh, and I found out Corey Konieczka also designs Mansion of Madness! Kewlness! :)

I hope I covered most part of this boardgame.  Happy reading hee.  

Damn this pc so damn slow my chrome keeps wanting to crash.