Gears of War the board game via skype

Well last night I played a game of GOW via Skype with some mate that live 4 hours away in Bundaberg.  We used 2 boards and John sets up the board and I copy his layout.  He then controls the cards etc (it is easier for him to do this as his tablet has front and back cameras so it makes it easier for me to see what cards I have ‘drawn’ without the others seeing them).  Basically John will draw my cards and then he holds it up to the camera and I just look through my deck for the appropriate card/s.

Anyway we had 4 players: John was Baird, James was Marcus, Adam was Dom and I was Cole ‘'the Cole Train’.  I have labelled my minis with the first letter of the figures name (hopefully I have them correct as my only criticism of the game as that the COG minis can be hard to tell apart, mainly Cole and Dom).

We played for about 4 hours and played the mission – The belly of the beast.  We needed to explore 3 levels and if we completed it we would then set off a bomb that would scan the tunnel system.  Anyway as it turned out after 4 hours and midnight approaching we had only managed to explore into the second level.  We were discussing wether we would ‘save’ the game but due to the ‘xbox crashing’, we didn’t save (we needed my table for family dinners etc and John’s table would be needed for next week for when we play a Rally Round the King game when I am back in Bundy for the weekend.)

The highlights of the game were that once again I ran out of ammo and was never able to replenish any as Baird tended to ‘hog’ all the ammo, the group being stuck in the first 2 board sections for a ridiculously long time as Locusts spawned continuously from a continuing appearance of emergence holes and the death corridor of level 2.

Anyway on to some photos.  In the first photo you can see my tablet with the map in Bundaberg.  We are currently on level 1.

Another closer photo of Skype.

 

We now manage to clear a path to the 3rd board section.

Next up is Baird being attacked by a Theron Guard and going down to an absolutely horrible die roll (next photo).

The Theron managed to roll 7/8 possible hits with Baird only being able to roll 1 defence die.

The next photo shows Dom making a break for the door (at the beginning of his turn the board was empty and in his locust activation 6 lambent wretches spawned).

We have made our way up and like all good horror movies, I open the door for level 2 before we have cleared the section we are on.

This next photo shows Cole going down from shots from Drones at the other end of the corridor of death.  These drones are visible on the left hand side of the above photo.

Drones POV

This is how the game ended, Baird and Dom down (again due to the corridor and open LOS) with Cole preparing to make a run for the troika that Dom was going to use before he was bleeding out and our fearless (or more to the point fearful) leader Marcus hiding at the back.

All in all a great game.  I really do like how this game captures the feel of the Xbox game with intelligent locust AI that reflects the game.