Gears of War: E-Day Horde Siege Guide: Missions, Energy, Difficulty and Extraction

Horde Siege is Gears of War: E-Day's new large-scale PvE mode. Instead of one squad sitting through a traditional Horde match, three COG squads share a larger battlefield, with each squad pursuing its own mission while other players fight elsewhere on the same map.

How Many Players Are in Horde Siege?

Horde Siege supports 12 players.

Those players are divided into three squads operating across large maps set in Kalona. Squads can cross paths, help each other and make use of equipment or fortifications left behind by teams that have already moved through an area.

Horde Siege Mission Types

There are three main mission playlists.

Blitz

Blitz is the short option. These missions usually contain one or two objectives and are designed to take around 15 to 20 minutes.

Siege

Siege is the standard-length playlist. Missions can contain several objectives and usually run for roughly 20 to 40 minutes.

Horde

Horde is closer to the classic hold-your-ground format. Your squad sets up defenses and survives 10 waves with limited support. These missions can run for around 50 to 60 minutes.

How Energy Works

Your squad earns a shared pool of Energy by completing objectives and killing enemies.

Energy can be spent at Supply Caches to:

• buy equipment
• upgrade Squad Perks
• purchase weapons
• prepare for later objectives

Some defensive positions also let you spend Energy on turret installations and upgrades.

The pool is shared when earned, but spending is handled individually. That means each player can decide how to use their own available options at a Supply Cache.

R.I.G. Objectives

Many missions revolve around R.I.G.s, or Resonation Imaging Geographers. These were originally mining tools used to locate underground Imulsion pockets and are repurposed to map Locust activity below Kalona.

Expect missions to move squads between R.I.G. objectives, secondary events and extraction points rather than keeping the whole match in one defensive position.

What Happens When You Die?

When a player dies, they drop COG tags.

A squadmate can take those tags to a Supply Cache to revive the player. Players from other squads can also pick up the tags and revive the downed player immediately.

If an entire squad is wiped, the squad loses a life. Running out of squad lives fails the mission, although partial XP can still be awarded.

How Extraction Works

Extraction matters because some rewards only stay with you if the squad completes the mission successfully.

Weapon Parts are the most important example. You can find them during Horde Siege, but you need to extract successfully to keep the parts collected during that mission.

For progression-focused runs, surviving to extraction is often more valuable than taking unnecessary risks near the end of a mission.