YMMV / Gears Tactics

• Complete Monster: Ukkon, also appearing in The Rise of RAAM comic, is the Locust Horde's chief geneticist, purely motivated by his misanthropy and pursuit of knowledge. Prior to their invasion, Ukkon kidnapped countless humans to be killed and mutated into Locust Drones. Also producing the many beasts used by the Locust, Ukkon supplies the Horde with his creations, aiding their genocidal invasion in exchange for more test subjects. Following the Coalition of Ordered Governments' Hammer of Dawn strikes and building a Locust army charged on Lambent, Ukkon commands his forces to execute the survivors or have them tortured via "processing" in iron maidens, all in preparation for an invasion on Ephyra.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Grenades, Grenades, Grenades. Players will quickly find out that Bolo Grenades are this. Due to the way turn-based strategy works, enemies do not move when it's not their turn, especially since it immediately explodes upon landing instead of possibly bouncing away like in the original Gears of War gameplay. It is good for dealing with a group of enemies, highly damaging compared to their X-COM cousin, not to mention are totally unlimited in usage and only the cooldown prevents outright spam - which can be worked around with either certain equipments or waiting out the cooldown when no enemies are around. While it cannot reliably destroy cover like X-COM grenades, it generally doesn't matter as anything in the blast radius gets damaged anyway while also interrupting their Overwatch and knocking them out of cover as a bonus. It's generally agreed that even Support class should switch their Stim Grenade for Bolo Grenades and unlock the Scout's class Proximity Mine skill for more explosive potential. However, their effectiveness is warranted as Wretches can quickly overwhelm units, since not only do they Zerg Rush, but they also get automatic Attacks of Opportunity on all actions save gunfire when adjacent to units.
  • The Scout is an entire class of this due to the simple fact that they can easily spam their Bolo Grenades. The easiest, and possibly the most game breaking use of the class is to go towards unlocking their Proximity Mine and Cloak skills in the Commando Skill Tree. Now it's just a matter of having them run closer to the enemy group, throw their grenades and Proximity Mine skills, then Cloak themselves out of danger, usually with the help of Support's Empower skill. Two well-equipped Scouts in a squad can easily trivialize most missions.
  • A kitted up sniper rifle turns Snipers into one wo/man death machines. As PC Gamer's review stated:
    Taking aim at the final boss with 85 percent crit chance almost felt like cheating.^note This was a point in the game's favor, as the game took the power fantasy and ran with it.
• Goddamned Bats: Wretches, especially early in the campaign. They come in groups of four or five, close ground quickly almost across the entire map, and they hit hard when they reach their target. And don't think you can just have some chainsaw or charge them, the Wretches will automatically interrupt the attack and counter with their own as soon as they get close, adding insult to injury since you just wasted a turn AND had your unit take damage that could have been avoided.
• Narm Charm: The Boomers and their Calling Your Attacks "BOOM!" are back.