I have had Gears of War for a while but am still trying to get it out enough to play. I had played emergence solo once and almost one, but got killed by a locust at the end of the game. I do hear it is a tough scenario to play solo (if you miss an emergence hole, you need to run back to get another grenade and try again). Which scenarios are best for a solo player?

All of them . Though, I've only played Emergence solo-solo, once with each COG. I prefer to solo running 2 COGs. Adds to the tactical element, ups the number of locust and makes all the cards fully useable. And it's not game over with a single lucky shot.

I did give emergence about 3 tries solo, with Baird and Marcus. Unfortunately, I have not yet won once. Here are some issues I found.

I was pleased to finally figure out that you only need to seal the final emergence hole ( I thought before you had to seal every emergence hole in every room). You can imagine the frustration that would cause if you were marcus forced to run to 12A every time he needed a grenade. Baird carried 2 grenades so he was able to seal the hole eventually. However, there are AI cards which allow you to spawn more emergence holes which could make the game last longer. Nothing is more frustrating than rolling for a Bolo grenade and seeing no omen signs show up.

There were many cases of figures bleeding out. Once Baird was assaulted by 4 wretches which basically ended the game at that point. However, I find that the Boomers are the ones that cause the most damage. During my last game when I finally sealed all emergence holes, I had 3 boomers coming after me and that caused enough damage to bleed out my whole team.

A major problem I had was with Marcus running out of Ammo, he cannot do anything against Boomers due to their immunity to the Lancer constant effect.

This is a work in progress, I am still learning the mechanics of the game and learning more about using reaction abilities. The game is great, but challenging.

I will probably try China Shop next.

peterstepon said:

Well, I would respectfully suggest you play the mission AS PER THE RULES!!! Look at the Setup card for Emergence. See how it lists the General AI cards used? See how the numbers are 1-6, no #7, which is the new EH card. For some reason (completely alien to me), this seems to trip up quite a number of new players, based on the threads on BGG as well.

www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/698424/before-your-first-play-of-the-game-commonly-mispla

Dam said:

LOL!… so that is what those numbers mean on the set up stage. I am learning the mechanics of the rules but there are lots of little rules that I am slowly getting the hang on. I was so happy to finally figure out that you only had to fill 1 emergence hole at the end.

I did find that the difficulty of the scenario is related to the distance of the grenade room to the location of the emergence hole. If the two rooms are far apart it can be frustrating running back and forth trying to get the grenade needed to fill the hole.

"Create the AI deck. Shuffle the Locust AI cards
for each type of enemy included in the mission
(there are four AI cards matching each Enemy
card) along with the numbered “General” AI
cards listed on the Mission Setup card." (p. 5)

Now, I'm a very anal-retentive rules freak, but considering this is stated plainly under the setup instructions, so it baffles me how so many people miss it.

I won! I defeated emergence! I think I am finally getting a handle on the rules (it took a while, but I left it for a long time on my shelf so I had to re integrate myself back into the rules). I must say however that it is not exactly a cakewalk (I played with Dominic and Marcus and Marcus bled out twice due to boomer firepower). Here are some thoughts.

Dom's shotgun is great for blowing apart boomers.

The guard ability is extremely useful for when you get an AI card which says that every boomer moves closer to you and attacks. I had to throw a bolo grenade to prevent an incident in which my team got mauled. I wonder how using Cole in a team will help since he has the ability to have 2 cogs guarding in the same turn.

Using the boom gun from a fallen boomer is a great way to turn the weapons of the enemy against them.

I did not really find the Drones and Wretches to be much of a threat. They are more of a speedbump. I found that charging Marcus into either with his lancer constant ability was a great way to eliminate them. This is especially if he has the "slaughter" order card which can clean out an entire room.

I find that dodging a powerful attack us usually much better than letting it hit you and keeping the card.

Great fun was had. Tonight, I give China shop a try…

peterstepon said:

Can't guard with a Bolo (as per page 19).

Dam said:

Ooooops

I played China Shop last night, I lost, but it was a really close game. What I liked about the scenario is how you don't need to kill every locust along the way, just keep running to the hammer of dawn and then engage the Berserker.

I was plagued by bad dice rolls. The last few turns were basically hitting the Berserker with all the firepower I could muster. I managed to wound it twice, but could not at the end get enough wounds to get over the 3 would threshold. Eventually it ran to where the COGS were and pummeled them to death.