Victory and defeat in one evening.

At around 8pm Ross, Peter and Gareth, three of my imaginary buddies, turned up at the gaming garage.
Ready to kick ass and take names, we threw down the "Gears of War" boardgame and prepared to tackle the first scenario "Emergence".
The plan is to advance through locust territory to find and seal a spawn point, the "Emergence" hole in the title.
 Armed with a plan, an attitude and some big guns, the four of us ripped through the enemy positions and closed in on the objective. Except for Ross who playing as "Cole Train" had expended his ammo early and spent the rest of the battle sneaking around the rear taking potshots with a pistol. Gareth provided cover fire while Peter and I charged the objective guns blazing and grenades blasting.
One accurate and lucky grenade toss later and the emergence hole was sealed.
The locust then launched a vicious counterattack. A wave of enemy knocked down "Baird" (me) and went after the other COGs. Last thing I remember was Peter "Roadie running" into the distance!
But the three guys managed to ride out the attack and eventually killed the last of the locust.
Well deserved victory in the first round.

We decided to try "China Shop" the second scenario.  This has the COG players being chased by a huge beserker. Blind, it charges towards the sound of the players weapons and smashes anything in its path. The scenario requires you to "guide" the beserker and use it to smash through blocked areas of the map.
We started well enough but not having played this scenario before, we did not have a plan. This very quickly left us spread out and unable to support each other. The game ended with all COGs bleeding out, swarmed with locust and squished beneath the beserker.

Back to the drawing board.
We plan to play again next week.