Gears Tactics: Brumak boss guide

The Brumak is a hulking behemoth that you’ll face at the end of Gears Tactics‘ first act. Though it’s only a few hours into the game, you should still have some squadmates leveled up and equipped with basic items. Here’s our boss guide to help you out.

Note: For more information, check out our Gears Tactics guides and features hub.

Gears Tactics: Defeating the Brumak boss

The Brumak boss fight in Gears Tactics happens at the end of Act 1 – Mission 8. This mission takes place on a bridge that your team has to traverse, guarded by Sniper Drones, Wretches, and Grenadiers. Gabe, Sid, and Mikayla are required for this mission, and you’ll also end up using them for the Brumak battle. For your fourth squad member, you can choose anyone you want (except for a Scout). I ended up using Augustus Cole (the pre-order DLC character and Gears of War series vet) since I was also leveling him up.

Anyway, once you’re done with the mission and you’ve reached the vantage point, you’ll be treated to a cutscene. Your squad gets separated into two teams of two when the encounter starts. The boss fight has three phases denoted by sections of the Brumak’s health bar and the difficulty ramps up as you enter a new phase.

The Brumak’s abilities

Ground Stomp

If the Brumak moves around the battlefield close to one of your characters, or if you ended your turn fairly close to it, it’ll stomp on the area and send anyone nearby flying.

Arm-mounted Machine Gun

The Brumak has arm-mounted guns that’ll fire at a frontal cone, hitting anything it sweeps through.

Missile Launchers

At the end of the Brumak’s turn, it’ll fire missiles from the launcher on its back. These will target the locations of your units. The missiles would obliterate those locations after the player’s turn.

The number of missiles increases from two, three, then four as you progress through the phases of the boss fight.

Emergence Holes

E-Holes will periodically spawn throughout the encounter; Wretches, mostly, would come out. Try to cover these areas via overwatch and have a grenade in hand to collapse the tunnel permanently once it’s opened.

Damaging the Brumak

The Brumak has three body parts that you can target. Its back has an Imulsion tank, and doing damage to this area actually depletes its health bar. You can also target its arm-mounted machine guns to put them out of commission. I personally didn’t need to destroy the boss’ weapons since I was able to hide behind the obstacles on the map.

Let’s go back to the Imulsion tank on the boss’ back since that’s the important target. Now, this beast will actually turn around whenever it gets shot since it’s trying to protect its weak spot. Given that your team is split up, the goal is to “ping pong” the boss by grabbing its attention — one team shoots the back, the other team shoots it again when it turns, and then the other team does it again, and so on.

This is where the Sniper class soldiers like Mikayla Dorn truly excel in because it’s extremely unlikely they’d miss from long range. Plus, using “Chain Shot” really helps if you need the extra AP.  The Heavy class is also nice to have here due to their machine gun.

As for the Vanguard or Support classes, they might have a hard time due to medium-range firearms and lower DPS output, but you can still manage with Gabe, Sid, and Gus in your group. If ever you did bring a Scout class, then it’s going to be a pain in the butt to land your shots from further away, and you may need to use your Snub Pistol or risk getting close for a shotgun blast (and you’ll probably get stomped when you end your turn).

In some cases, your characters might need to reposition due to missiles or because the Brumak is getting close. Among other reasons, these can mean that characters in one team won’t have enough AP to shoot and turn the boss as often as the other. This would be a good time to shoot at its arm weapons instead if you can’t shoot its back.

Keep at it, and you’ll eventually see the Brumak drop dead:

Gears Tactics is available via Steam and Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass for Windows. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.