Cover

Cover is life in Gears of War.

When you’re in hard cover, you’re fairly well protected from frontal shots, and you’re difficult to hit cleanly even from an angle. On top of that, you gain a very slight damage-resistance boost when you take hits from the frontal arc. However, a player with a Scorcher can do damage through cover.

Aside from the slight damage resistance, note that cover does not provide any sort of magical shot blocking. A well-placed Boomshot can still blow you to bits. A good sniper can take your head off at the edge of low cover, and precision shooting can hit any exposed parts of your body.

Flanking

> Flanking is simply attacking an enemy from the side or the rear.

This is an effective combat tactic in any situation, but it’s especially strong in Gears combat. Flanking an enemy nullifies an enemy’s cover advantage. By the time a target realizes it’s in danger, it’s usually too late to escape. Study the maps carefully. Most provide multiple routes that you can use to flank an enemy position, and doing so is often vital to remove an entrenched defense.

If you are flanked, doing a quick mantle kick or cover slip and sprinting away can be critical to your survival. Don’t try to fight back against an enemy who already has the upper hand.

Elevation

> Elevation goes hand in hand with flanking as a valuable tool to use against opponents in cover.

When you have an elevation advantage, you can often shoot down at a target behind cover, even if it would normally be difficult or impossible to hit straight on from even ground. Thus, high ground is almost always a critical area to control on a given map.

Spend some time exploring each map to learn which areas possess both elevation and useful lines of sight—elevation doesn’t help much if you can’t cover a strategically relevant area.