So, I’m up to 22250-something frags on my Seriously 2.0 chart, and I’m somewhere in the 30s towards Veteran Gear. That’s still a long way to 100 000 and 100, of course, but WAIT, WHAT’S THIS? From today until 6 July, all Gears of War 2 games are going at 4x XP. More specifically, however, Horde mode is completely stuffed with Tickers (waves *1-*9) and Boomers (every 10 waves). And when I say “completely stuffed”, I mean “that’s all there is”. Tickers and Boomers. Mostly Tickers.
They did something like this last year too, actually. This is my score card. I’ll draw your attention to the way the number of kills actually exceeds the width of the score card.

Right click, select “view image” or “open in new tab” to enlarge
I think my favourite thing about Tickers is the way they cluster. Because a single, well-placed Gnasher shot does one of those magic domino-effect things, where they all blow up. Now, let’s do some hard sums – at 4x XP, a single wave of Horde awards 1600 XP on Hardcore, and 2000 XP on Insane. A single wave of Horde stuffed with only Tickers takes approximately 2-3 minutes to finish up. Rank 100 requires 6,825,825 XP. Time to grind (GRIIIIIND!) out those achievements.
