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It seems that the cheaper models benefit greatly from the ever present 4+ cover seem on GT boards. Would players taking turns placing the terrain reduce this or does this even matter to you?

Personally, I don't think players should ever place or move terrain at a tournie.

Having said that, it's up to the TO to ensure that tables are fair for all armies involved.

I agree 100% with Insaniak.

Terrain should only be placed by the TO.

One more for TO placed terrain. Player placed is one more opportunity for Shenanigans and to be avoided, IMHO.

In an ideal world, the terrain would be pre-placed by the organizers before a battle. In practice this doesn't work as terrain gets nudged, shuffled, or outright repositioned by players during the course of the day. Most often the terrain slowly migrates toward the edges of the boards, leaving certain army builds at a disadvantage in the later games. It takes too much manpower to watch and maintain every table so that it doesn't alter during the tournament.

So the standard answer at most tournaments in which I have been involved is to simply allow the players to place the terrain before each battle. Personally I hate this as it is just another stress point where you are competing with another player for the most "screw you" terrain layout possible. But there seems little other choice given the limited manpower resources at a tournament.

In every tournament I've ever been to where players placed terrain, if the round was competitive, one player would realize that they benefited more from an empty table, and half the terrain would invariably end up on the very corners of the board.

Usual problem I see is that the terrain has all been pushed to the middle to make room for a display board.

Setting up the terrain is part of the game.

In real war, a general would only fight if the terrain favored him. Don't see why it would be differnt in a wargame.

Preset terrain invariable ends up being the 4 pieces in the corner and one in the center. That gets lame real fast.

Plus, since alot of players know they end up with the Dice-5 terrain set up, they plan their strategies and tactics accordingly. Letting players set terrain up alleviates this.

don_mondo wrote:Usual problem I see is that the terrain has all been pushed to the middle to make room for a display board.

Which means the table is not as "fair" for other players. This changes the competitive balance. Letting players reset or arrange the terrain on their own keeps things fair.

Ummm, yes, we spread it back out when it's clustered in the middle. But as a general rule, I support the terrain being set in stone at a tourney.

General Hobbs wrote:Which means the table is not as "fair" for other players. This changes the competitive balance. Letting players reset or arrange the terrain on their own keeps things fair.

This is only true if all the terrain pieces come in identical pairs. Otherwise there will be better and worse terrain pieces to place and the person who wins the terrain dice roll will start with the most choice piece and also get to place it first: for example, the shooty player gets to place the only large ruin off in the corner or the assaulty player places the long tall wall in the center of the board.

The 'migrating' issue can be solved many ways, depending on the table and how it is made.

1) you can use some masking tape to attach the terrain

2) light pencil marks to indicate where the terrain goes

3) outline drawing indicating where the terrain goes

4) Digital picture of the board indicating where the terrain goes.

General Hobbs wrote:
Setting up the terrain is part of the game.

Yes, but it is expected to be done in a reasonable manner by two players looking to have fun together. At a tournament, taht isn't necessarily true, you're playing a stranger, with the goal to win. Like I said before, I've seen, far too often, one of the players take the only LoS-blocking terrain and stick it in a corner where it has no ability to impact the game at all.

I would argue that putting terrain pieces in the far corners where they don't impact the game is equivalent to not having those terrain pieces on the table. As the game is designed to be played with 25% terrain, if you cut this down to 15%, it's a much different game. Just because that is advantageous to one of the players doesn't mean that it's appropriate.

If players set the terrain, you either need a lot more of it (to counter-act the corner-dropping), or the longer-range player will be at an advantage each time.

I couldn't agree less about letting the players do it.

Even in my friendlies, where possible, a third party arranges the board. That way, there can be no complaining about one player trying to stack things their way. I know there are rules and that for it Warhammer, but to have someone impartial sort it out really helps.

Part of the challenge now with 40k is how best to exploit the board. Has been that way pretty much forever in Fantasy!

I voted no but there should have been another option -- No, but there is an issue that can be fixed another way.

Cause honestly it isn't as much about how the terrain is arranged as much as the type of terrain. If they used more hedges, bush area terrain instead of forests, eg variety, then it would not be as much of an issue.

But on a related note, there should still be a variety in how the boards are arranged. No one likes to play 5 games of shooting gallery terrain with all of it in the deployment zones, nor 5 games on a maze board with no real firing lanes. Mix it up a bit in terms of % (20-35% perhaps) and placement.

In real war, a general would only fight if the terrain favored him. Don't see why it would be differnt in a wargame.

Yes, but sometimes the general has no choice (after all, if generals only ever fought in favourable terrain then there'd be no battles at all!).

Whenever I play one of my friends, we have a pretty specific set of rules for setting up terrain. It goes like this:

1. Divide the board into 6 2'x2' squares and assign a number for each of them.
2. Divide the terrain in 6 roughly equal groups.
3. Roll a D6 for each group. That terrain group then goes into that square, with any doubles moved to the next available square so that once this is done each square has roughly equal amounts of terrain in it.
4. Each player then alternates placing all the terrain in each group (so player A would set up all the terrain in the first block, player B would set up all the terrain in the second block and so on), making sure not to initially position a piece of terrain within 12" of another and then rolling a scatter die and 2D6 and moving the terrain that many inches in that direction.
5. Once everything is placed, a scatter die is rolled and any buildings on the board are turned to face the direction of the arrow (or the little triangle in the case of a hit).

It works well for us, and only takes 5mins or so to set up. It provides a semi-random setup of terrain with the players still having some say in how terrain is arranged. In a GT environment, however, I can't see this working too well all the time, so TO-arranged tables would be best.

For friendly games, setting up the terrain generally isn't really an issue. For the group that I used to game with, since we generally played at my house and it was easier to set things up early, I would just plonk as much terrain as I could fit on the table, arrange it into something that looked cool, and when I was playing, just let my opponent choose which side they wanted.

Tournaments need to be a little more structured, though.

At our club, it goes pretty quickly.

Fill one quarter of the board with terrain (thus 25%)
then take turns placing it, and don't be a goob.
quickly roll scatter dice for each piece to give some randomness to it.

Takes about 5 minutes

I've played in tournaments both ways. Here is what you end up with:

TO placed terrian tends to be more scattered and less of a pure advantage for anyone. In general, no one has a real advantage with or without the terrian. Players usually agree on sides or roll for who gets to pick the side.

With player placed terrian, assault armies pile it all in the center while shooting armies pile it all on the edges. I have seen games where two shooting armies lined up all the terrian on the board edges, set up in it and didn't move the whole game. The same holds true for Warhammer where a player with shooting units always puts a hill in his deployment zone (to which I usually put a tree base directly in front of it).

TO placed terrian is the best.

Alright well this was about GT terrain, not local game store tournaments. So many of the points made by players who want static terrain do not apply.

The conversation I was trying to create was about the rampant cover saves offered on the GT tables at Baltimore. The tables had about 25% of terrain and you would have had to be really creative to not almost always have a 4+ cover save. It seems to be one of a few massive oversights in the 5th edition rulebook.

WC_Brian wrote: The tables had about 25% of terrain...

So about what is recommended, and what the game was designed for...

Sorry, where's the problem?

For tournaments, the TO should place all terrain.
In friendly games, we place alternative pieces, and then roll for sides. This can still unbalance assault vs shooty armies, but also allows tactical creation of fire-lanes (and the blocking thereof).

On a side-note, we are thinking of making some scenario-battles, e.g. assaulting a fortified bunker. Are there are rules/tips for such things?

WC_Brian wrote:
It seems to be one of a few massive oversights in the 5th edition rulebook.

I'm of the opinion that in this specific matter, its not an oversight at all. Particularly when you factor in just how devastating combat can now be as well.

insaniak wrote:Personally, I don't think players should ever place or move terrain at a tournie.

Having said that, it's up to the TO to ensure that tables are fair for all armies involved.

Agreed 100%!

G

On another note I don't have any problems playing against horde armies that benefit from the plethora of 4+ cover saves now available. If you are not playing a horde army then I believe it is part of the challenge of 5e to create an army that can negate the advantage of cover...

Have so much shooting that the opponent is still bound to fail a lot of saves.

Have a mobile army so that you can target enemy units out of cover... this includes targeting those enemy units which are closer and not behind another friendly unit or in cover.

Use powerful assaults that can destroy an entire enemy unit the turn you charge them.

I used to play an EC army back in 4e that relied solely on sonic weapons for shooting... so against armies such as Space Marines, Chaos and Eldar my opponents were always going to get their armor saves. I designed my army to feature so much shooting they were still bound to fail a lot of armor saves. I used close combat and high S guns to punch through armor. It worked very well and I never had a problem against armies with a lot of 3+ armor saves. Seeing that a 4+ save is much worse than a 3+ it has not been a problem for me in 5e against hordes... I simply use the same strategies/tactics to deal with these situations on a case by case basis.

G

I agree with Redbeard, when you a playing a tournament game vs. stranger guy you need to have the tournament folks set the terrain in stone.

Most perplexing situation I was landed in. Free tournament at the Chicago Bunker. Guy sets his display base down before the game, moving all the terrain on his side out of the way. Before the game starts, I suggest we grab a staff member to reset the terrain or place it ourselves. He is flabbergasted that I would have the gall to suggest that we should play with anything but the current setup. Attitude lasts all game.

- Blackbone

Blackbone wrote:Guy sets his display base down before the game, moving all the terrain on his side out of the way.

Which rasies two points, really...

- Tournament terrain should be fixed in place, IMO. It makes for a bit more expense, but keeps everything where it should be for every game.

- Players really need a side table, or a bit of room on the table beside the actual game board, for their army pre-setup, or for rulebooks and the like.