Gears of War: The Board Game is the brainchild of tabletop designer Corey Konieczka, whose previous works include board game versions of Battlestar Galactica, StarCraft and Lord of the Rings (aka Middle-Earth). His latest creation based on Epic Games's third-person shooter is advertised as a "cooperative board game of fierce firefights" wherein one to four players carry out various team objectives in seven different scenarios inspired by events from the series. These objectives are dictated by Order cards, and include an assortment of heroic actions that range from laying down suppression fire and planting sonic resonators to finding cover and simply surviving an onslaught of Berserkers, Drones, Boomers and other Locust uglies. The map itself is built randomly at the beginning of every game, forcing teammates to adapt their strategies with every session.
The game will ship with over 30 plastic figures; over 200 action, tools and Locust AI cards; 17 double-sided map tiles; roughly 75 tokens and markers; a line-of-sight ruler; multiple sets of attack and defense dice; and reference material.
The game is slated for release in Q3 2011, and will retail for $79.95 USD.
[Source: Fantasy Flight Games]
May 18, 2011
