I've always found this to be a very punishing game.

We were playing the other day and discussing how we thought it was very difficult because your health is represented by your cards, which in turn must be discarded to do anything.

Need to pick up a weapon? Take damage. Need to heal a friend? Take damage? Need to run somewhere or shoot at someone? Take damage.

We thought it would be much better if the player's health was measured sepearatly from the number of cards in your hand.

With tokens representing health or just a d8 faceup representing your health.

Dissasociating losing health with everything you do would make the game make more sense (especially in terms of emulating the video game) and play easier. Maybe I just suck but I've always found it to be fun, yet extremely difficult to survive.

Any thoughts on this?

Don't think of having to discard for an action as losing health, look at it as the COG exerting himself and getting winded (less able to perform at maximum), especially if you try to do two or three things besides just your normal action(s) for the turn.

Dam said:

eeehhh. I guess. Picking up a gun shouldn't really be that physically taxing. I don't think you shouldn't have to give up a card for it, i just think health should be measured differently.

Everything would remain the same except health isn't tied to cards. Discard for things as you normally would.

it still doesn't work right for me. I think the game is very punishing

Have you played the video games? Basically any time your head pops out of cover, you're taking incoming fire. Might not be physically taxing at all times, but mentally for sure.

Besides, game isn't that hard. I have a 39-16 record after 55 plays, four games with 1-COG, rest 2-COG games.

And there is of course the argument that what the hell are hit points anyway? If someone has 8 hit points, how are they measured? GoW (and MEQ, which has a similar mechanic) system makes much more sense than arbitrary hit points and losing them, but nobody seems to have issues with hit points when they are called hit points.

Dam said:

I guess I just suck at this game. I've always found it to be pretty hard. Any tips?

Stay in cover, use Follow (esp when Dom Roadie Runs), guard. Guard, guard, guard. Screw dodge, guard, guard guard. Dodge should be the latter choice. While it might feeling like gaming the system, it's better to leave 1 Wretch alive than face the spawn 2 Wretch at each EH within 4 spaces AI card.

To paraphrase Tuco from "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly": When you gotta guard, guard, don't dodge.

I agree. I really like this game, but find it frustrating at times as you have to discard health to do anything. It does make it difficult when you have little health and have to decide to pick up an item, heal a team mate or perform an action etc. I've got a few other games that use a hand of cards as your health e.g. Level 7: Here, you don't actualy have to discard cards to perform an action (they are used to adjust stats/bonuses etc), but you do lose cards when taking hits. However, during the game there are places that allow you to pick up cards/heal to give a bit of respite.

As a variant, you could place 1 or 2 tokens on the map that allow you to draw up to your max hand limit or draw 2 cards etc. to represent a 'healing station', with each cog only being able to do this once…just a thought if you find the game tough. However, if the game was a complete walkthrough it would just be a run and gun with no real need for tactical play. Maybe just a slight tweek in the rules will make it more enjoyable for you.

I won't go into the debate of what your cards really represent (the game works so well to me that it's pointless), but I wanna comment on the difficulty of the game.

It's not a game to simply attack, roll dice and mow opponents down; it's a game to move strategically. You gotta know when to advance and when to fall back. The AI is really tough, so if you try to kill everything before trying to achieve the mission's goal, you might find yourself without ammo, surrounded and outnumbered. So you may want to game the system and go for the objective, dismissing dropped markers and "easy" kills.

And yes, I'm for Guard whenever you have a good chance of killing the Locust. Dodge is for when the chance of taking much damage is higher than killing the opponent.

RogueLieutenant said:

No way, it's an extremely challenging game. I lost my first 4 tries (2 co-op, 2 solo) before finally winning on my 5th try. I personally think the Order Cards doubling as health doesn't make much sense, but I still really like it. It makes GoW a bit different and a bit more challenging that other games I have with similar play (like Dungeons and Dragons: Castle Ravenloft and similar games).

In my mind's eye, human body soaking up bullets just never make any sense, even in video games.

Even the contra game from the nes era makes more sense than many modern shooters they released this couple of years where the good guys took rains of bullets like taking a shower and it only hurts occasionally when a ****** flush the toilet while you're at it.

Unless there's a scifi force field or super futuristic armor suit, I prefer to take the red omen that accumulate on screen in the gears of war video game as heavy fire landed so close and the somebody that fires it is getting closer and closer to actually hit you.

The blood? Oh... it was just bullet graze or splinters of concrete from all of the fires directed at you.

Works the same with the board game. I never take the cards as hit points or live bars.

To me, it represents your constitution (more cards, more tactical choice), risk (the more action you take, the more viable target you are for the locusts).

With bullets raining down on you, lay low and hope your fellow cog took the heat from you (with cover fire order card or other card distributing order cards or charge ahead and offer himself as new target to shoot at).

And heal phase, just because it's called heal doesn't mean that getting those two cards seal shut those bullet holes you suffer when that locust attacks you. You never got shot you see, you are just taking some heavy fire that disoriented you, making your decision making was impaired and your soldier instinct tells you if you make more stupid unnecessary move, you might eat that one bullet that could end you.

No kids, when you received those two fresh card, time passes by. You regain your nerve to take more action, the heavy fire which suppressed you are less intense, allowing reason to win over fear, thus your cog may think how to overcome the situation.

Finally... when the locust hit you when you got stupid or reckless enough to pop your head too much, or when you inject that adrenalin shot to revive a downed soldier in the open, or foolishly expose your hand to try reaching and grabbing extra ammo... then your armor took two or three hits that took air out of your lungs, wounds your cog to the point of almost loosing consciousness. And then he pathetically crawled for help.

Just pray that no locust advanced to your area and crack your skull with his boots.

If you consider that elegant mechanic flawed, then the game isn't for you.

I don't think you should be looking at the system as discarding health but, a system that every time your performing an action (discarding a card) your soldier is concentrating on something else, his eye is off the game as he picks up that weapon, or heals that fallen comrade, the more he tries to do in a turn the less attention he is paying to the surrounding area and the more likely he will get shot or injured as the enemy attacks.