Gears Tactics Guide: 10 tips & tricks for the tactics game

In this tips guide to Gears Tactics you will learn:

  • Which simple combat tactics will make your life easier
  • How to get new equipment for your gears as fast as possible
  • What you should consider when putting together your team before a mission

Up to now, Gears of War has stood for merciless action and a lot of shooting from the third-person point of view. The last part, Gears 5, was released in July 2019 and impressively continued the story about the fight against the Locust and the Horde. You can find plenty of guides to this action game on the Gears 5 overview page, such as a walkthrough through the complete campaign of Gears 5.

The game series for adults now gets a spin-off with Gears Tactics for the PC and Xbox One, which is supposed to appeal to players of XCOM 2 and the like. Instead of experiencing the action up close, you command a squad of so-called Gears through the missions based on turns.

In this guide, we'll give you ten tips and tricks so that you know right from the start what you should watch out for and which strategies work best in certain situations.

1. Gears Tactics: Tips for the right team composition

No matter if you start a story or a side mission, Gears Tactics always lets you put together your team beforehand. You can choose between the heroes that join your squad during the story, the regular gears, and the ones you recruited for a short time. However, there are a few things to keep in mind when putting together a team.

In the main missions, for example, certain gears are often already set and you can only fill up the remaining slots. Some side missions in Gears Tactics, on the other hand, prohibit you from having a medic on your team, for example.

More importantly, though, consider whether you'll always use the same team, if possible. Or, alternate the members of the team. For each mission, the experience points of your soldiers will ring, but those you left at home will go empty-handed. So if you want to have a reasonably balanced team in Gears Tactics, you should swap them regularly.

2. Fire protection and flanking as standard tactics

In the missions you can fall back on a lot of skills, especially later in the game, and Gears Tactics also gives your soldiers one main weapon, one pistol and one grenade slot each.

The most important tactic, which is available from the very first mission, is called flanking and covering fire. Frontal attacks against your enemies in Gears Tactics are usually tedious or sometimes even hopeless if your opponents are well entrenched.

Although several cover options in the game can be destroyed, it makes more sense to flank the enemy and then attack the unprotected side or from behind. To protect your guys while advancing, you should activate the ability "Fire Protection" with another one. Then he secures a certain field of view and fires directly if an opponent moves in it.

You can use the Cover Fire ability to give soldiers cover when they need to flank an enemy. Or you can cover an area at the end of the round to finish off onrushing enemies.

This skill is a general panacea in Gears Tactics if you're not sure where the enemy might attack from or they're not currently in direct line of sight of your Gears. For example, if you have an entrance covered by four soldiers, then the next enemy move is no longer a threat.

3. Grenades as a miracle cure against creepers

Creepers are a type of enemy that you will have to deal with early in the game. The little beasts can only attack your gears in close combat. However, they do a lot of damage there.

The big advantage in fighting these monsters, however, is that the critters have comparatively low health and are usually in a group.

Grenades are the best weapon against creepers, which attack only in close combat and usually appear in packs.

Therefore, do not waste ammunition on the creeps, but rather pull out a grenade. If you place it well, you can kill four or five c reeps with just one explosive device.

4. Always focus on the exit holes

Speaking of grenades. These are the means of choice when you want to close exit holes in Gears Tactics. In quite a few missions, they break open somewhere near you and then spit out new enemies at regular intervals as long as you don't close them - in some missions, you'll even have to deal with several holes at once.

In such a situation, focus on closing the exit holes first with a well-placed grenade. Even if there are opponents around you in the meantime.

If you ignore the exit holes, fresh creeps will keep coming out of them to attack you. This only drags out the fight unnecessarily. Taking a few enemy hits before focusing on the creeps around you is always better than having Gears Tactics constantly throw new ones at you.

5. Use executions whenever possible

If you've been around Gears of War for a while, you'll know that there are always scenes in the action games where your character dismembers enemies in very bloody maneuvers. This made the series famous and infamous for the German youth protection.

That's exactly what you'll find in Gears Tactics, and it's a special action called "Execution". As soon as you hit an opponent enough times, but don't kill him, he will go down on his knees. Then you can select the action so that your soldier runs over and directly kills the monster with the weapon you just used.

In Gears Tactics you'll have to deal with a wide variety of enemies, all of which require a different strategy. Therefore, always pay attention to the respective peculiarities.

In principle, you could just do nothing in this situation, since your enemy will go over the edge all by himself after some time. But this is not recommended.

As soon as you kill an enemy by execution, each of your soldiers gets an additional action point. Even those who had already used up all their points can then run, shoot or the like again.

Also, the extra points add to the base points, so if you execute enough monsters in a round, you can get six instead of three. This is an advantage that you should not despise.

6. Break enemy fire protection at all costs

While we've already explained to you why the "Fire Protection" action should be a standard tactic of yours in Gears Tactics, your opponents also use this ability.

If one of your soldiers is in the enemy's line of sight, which you can tell by the red color, the enemy will open fire as soon as you move or start firing.

By the way, just because Gears Tactics is a strategy game, it doesn't sacrifice the excellent graphics and staging of its action game predecessors.

The enemies like to use the ability very much and often target the same area with multiple weapons. Thus, you'll sometimes have to take heavy damage if you ignore the enemy's fire protection.

Therefore, always look for one of your warriors who is not in your line of sight and switch to the pistol. With the action "Incapacitate" you interrupt the fire protection of the monster - provided that your character hits.

7. When should I reload in Gears Tactics?

Each weapon your character carries in Gears Tactics has a magazine with a limited number of rounds. Once those are fired, you'll have to reload before you can fire at any more monsters. Reloading, however, costs one action point.

Therefore, we advise you to keep a close eye on the number of shots you have left and reload a bit earlier rather than being left without ammo - except for the missions where there are optional targets that limit the frequency of reloading.

In Gears Tactics, all weapons have a limited number of shots before they need to be reloaded. Do this too early rather than too late, so you don't give away hits by "covering fire" during your opponent's turn.

For example, if you have a soldier perform the Cover Fire action at the end of your turn and the guy only has one shot left in the magazine, you're wasting a lot of potential damage.

8. Take all the supply crates and optional targets with you

Each mission of Gears Tactics takes place on a limited-sized map. On it, you'll have specific objectives that you'll need to get to. But: keep your eyes open, or even better, scroll the map at the start of the mission to look for the supply crates that can be found in each area.

Then, as the mission progresses, try to collect all the crates. This way you'll bag a lot of new equipment, which you can use to improve your weapons or provide your soldiers with better armor.

In addition, you should read carefully about the optional objectives in each mission, because completing them will also bring you supply crates as a reward. The optional objectives aren 't always easy, though, since sometimes you'll have to complete the mission within a certain number of moves or you'll only be allowed to reload five times.

However, even though these challenges make the mission in Gears Tactics trickier, the rewards are usually quite good.

9. Choose missions wisely

When it comes to missions, you have a choice every now and then, when there are no story missions available, but only side missions. Most of the time you can choose between two missions and you will also be shown directly what restrictions or requirements there are. For example, there are side missions in which you can only use one soldier or no medic is allowed in the team.

You can tell how difficult a side mission is by the reward that Gears Tactics promises you for completing it. For example, if you're promised an epic piece of equipment, then you can assume that the mission won't be a piece of cake.

So consider carefully whether you want to take the risk or maybe accept the less challenging alternative and thus a slightly worse reward instead.

10. Skill reset only in case of emergency

In your barracks you'll find all your soldiers in Gears Tactics, be they heroes or regular fighters. They each have a predefined class and thus an equally predefined skill tree.

With each mission, your men and women gain experience points and level up. Then you may use two skill points to unlock new active or passive abilities.

The skill tree of your soldiers may be tempting if you are dissatisfied or stuck with boss enemies. However, Gears Tactics does not allow this for free and should therefore be considered carefully.

Gears Tactics also allows you to completely reset the skill tree if you're not satisfied with the choices you've made or if you want to specialize a class in a different direction.

But: We really recommend to use this option only in case of emergency, because resetting skills is not free. Every now and then you'll get points after missions that you can spend on resetting. However, this doesn't happen too often, so they are comparatively valuable and should only be used wisely.

More guides to tactics games and Gears of War on GameZ.de

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