Lesson 1

Know yourself. Your health bar, your weapons and maps.

The Health Bar:

Unlike many other games, in Gears, you regenerate your health in all multiplayer modes.

This makes it that much harder to kill an enemy and makes hitting an instant kill shot much more important.

The health bar is the Gears of War symbol, each time you get hit the Gears symbol slowly fills in on the center of your screen, when it completely fills you are either down or dead.

Down but not Out Status:

When in multiplayer, you'll often find your teammate, your enemy or yourself in the down-but-not-out status. (Or just Down for short.)

Going into the down position happens when all of the health bar has been depleted, but one does not yet die from being attacked.

When you, an ally, or an oppponent goes into the down position, you will hear a sound that is familiar to the "checkpoint" noise during singleplayer. Also hitting the back button brings up the score screen and will show a down arrow on the player who is down.

During Execution mode, a player can repeatedly hit A to bring themselves back from the Down position.

In the new patch, if you are downed three times, you will die upon the third downing; thus stopping a player continually reviving a downed partner.

Cover:

It is important to learn when to go into cover, and when not to. Cover, while it can give you a great view of what's around the corner, also closes your view to certain areas as well as forces you to a stationary spot, so only go into cover when you're sure you want to.

Roadie Run:

Pretty simple concept, you hit and hold A to run. While running you can't shoot, but you make yourself a smaller target.

Thus, why not always run when you can?