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This spins off from a discussion on Close Combat going on in the Tactics forum but that's incidental. What I really want to know is how closely most people are sticking to the RAW on terrain distribution, because this has a large effect on a game and on some units (CC) and army approaches (gun line) particularly.

Before voting, please understand I'm using the RAW definition of terrain (pg. 120) which is "a single substantial piece of terrain (such as a building, forest or ruin)". Also from the same section, a single substantial piece of terrain could be switched for "three smaller pieces of terrain such as battlefield debris". So a single crater or tree on a 2'x2' square, would by itself actually only be 0.3 pieces of terrain for that square.

Reason I'm asking this is because RAW states you place 1d3 pieces of terrain per 2' x 2' square. So on average, you'd have three ruins or equivalent for every two squares. A 4'x6' table should have (by RAW) NINE substantial terrain features on it. Do you play with nine ruins / buildings / forests on your standard table? Less? More?

Anyway, I just wanted to clarify the terminology as being that given in the book so that the results are meaningful. Obviously Dakkaites are going to be the most hardcore of gamers ( ), but it's still useful. If you're playing by RAW, the average in the above poll should be "1.5 Average". But I suspect it may not be.

Whilst Close Combat is weaker in Sixth and I'm not at all arguing that Gun Line isn't a good or effective approach (it certainly is both, imo), I think lack of terrain might exacerbate the situation.

Please do vote - it's really useful. And I'm really interested in any comments on this.

Thank you!

Every time I play a match, I talk with my opponent about doing it "by the book", rather than from personal preferences. They always tend to agree with me, and then we start laughing at placement. Had a game where we rolled and everything was a max 3 terrain section. The map was so clustered that it basically turned into a massacre for both sides. I personally love to fill the board with as much terrain as possible, and most of the players around here are too.

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
Every time I play a match, I talk with my opponent about doing it "by the book", rather than from personal preferences. They always tend to agree with me, and then we start laughing at placement. Had a game where we rolled and everything was a max 3 terrain section. The map was so clustered that it basically turned into a massacre for both sides. I personally love to fill the board with as much terrain as possible, and most of the players around here are too.

Games where neither side is massacred are boring.
Games where one side is massacred are cruel.
But games where both sides are massacred? Now that is a beautiful game.

Trying to achieve a draw where both sides are all dead is quite hard.

 Shandara wrote:
Trying to achieve a draw where both sides are all dead is quite hard.

Well yes, but I mean games where both armies are reduced to a handful of desperate models - I love those games!

Maybe there's a little bit of ork in all of us.


EDIT: Please vote, btw, people. 50+ views and 3 votes. I'm genuinely interested in how you play.

We usually make an even board that looks cool. I prefer a lot of Terrain, personally, and thats actually bad for me as a mech guard player.

Our group uses 2 pieces of terrain per 2x2 section of board, we play in a 4x6 table so thats 12 pieces of terrain. Now we have a really good variety of pieces to choose from, and I've seen games go from nothing to way to crowded depending on how many larger pieces the players have chosen from.

This may not be the best since none of us are tourny players, and have no drive to become so. If we think something is to bare, or out of place, it isn't uncommon for us to shuffle some pieces at the end of terrain placement.

We still use stratagy when placing our pieces....Nids player checking in, so depending on how seasoned your opponent is, he make take that in to account and try to screw you.....I know I would.

Trying to remember what all is on the board where I play, but I believe I averaged it out to right at 1 big piece or a few smaller pieces per square. Of course there's overlap on the lines n all that. I like terrain all over the place, but I mostly play nids.

We just fill 25% of the board and make a balanced board from there. I always thought it was weird to measure out 2x2 squares...

At first it might seem that the RAW is pretty straight forward, but it really is not when you try to implement those rules your own games. What I am referring to is actually composing your battlefield with terrain pieces from your collection.

One player's collection could be made up of everything from the GW line of products. Another player's collection could be made up of school books, Christmas Garland, and solo cups. Yet another player's collection of terrain pieces could be comprised of Lego Pieces. Players tend to use whatever they have at their disposal first and foremost.

If some folks only have a few pieces, then an open battlefield is going to favor a gun line army. Its all about how much LOS blocking pieces you have in the end.

 tybg wrote:
We just fill 25% of the board and make a balanced board from there. I always thought it was weird to measure out 2x2 squares...

Yep, that's my method. I try to get a couple big impressive ruins or signal towers or something and a few hills, then a bunch of craters/forests/rivers (and maybe a couple wrecked vehicles just because). Then I just start stacking them on the board like a parking lot until it's about 25% full. After that I spread it around until it looks fairly random then when my opponent shows up I ask if it looks good.

It always feels like there's not quite enough cover in the deployment zones for me though, then again I play Tau and can pretty much fill a table quarter with pathfinders and fire warriors. I should probably buy an aegis come to think of it...but I just can never bring myself to stoop that low

Generally we just throw down a roughly symmetrical distribution of buildings and rubble with some that block LOS in the middle and go. Largely to save time on the table setup stage. I've done the BRB deployment before and I like how it plays out, but it adds 10-15 minutes to setup if both players are trying to out-terrain the other guy.

It varies from game to game, we just throw stuff together until it looks cool. That's all it comes down to, really. Usually we'll have at least 6 LOS-blockers and 5 areas of area terrain.

this is where building a large quantity of themed terrain pieces comes in handy. You can have a "city set", a 'jungle" set, A "desert valley' set ond so on. With each 'set', just ensure that you have far more than is needed so that you can do the official set up and still have a table that looks good with matching terrain pieces with both players being able to put on pices that meet their needs.
I have playe at the shop and found players who refused to use certain terrain pieces because they said it 'didn't match the rest of the table". It had nad to do with the fact that it blocked los to a section of the board (insert eyeroll smiley).
The game and rules were designd for players to use the table set up in order to keep it more balanced and fair (as balanced and fair as 40k can be lol). A little bit of forsight (laying the 'theme set" you plan on using next to the table before the other players arrive can whittle down the terrain setup phase to 5 minutes if you don't fool around (I know that IS easy to do with discussing the game, trash talk, whats to drink ect ect.

Well this is proving interesting and not what I expected. It seems that the majority of people so far are playing by RAW and where they vary, they're actually adding more terrain rather than less on the whole. I had this feeling that perhaps terrain was being underused compared to what the game developers had based things on.

Well this is good, then. Thanks for all replies and those who voted. Still interested in any further replies / votes. I had this idea that perhaps one source of the CC is overcosted / disadvantaged might be overly-clear tables. Seems that I'm wrong and this isn't much of a contributing factor after all.

Other. We set our terrain up for a table that looks good. It tends to shake out in the 1.6-2.0 range for most games, though. When it's outside of that range, its because there's more terrain, not less.

In large, US event, where you've got 80+ players, i think it would be hard to come up with 9+ BRB defined pieces of terrain per table, leading to emptier tables. I remember seeing photos of some tables on Bell of Lost Souls (can't remember which tourney it was for) and being horrified at how little LoS blocking terrain there was, or even how much terrain obscured targets (i hate craters. they're some of the least "useful" ways to fill a board w/ terrain; you only get saves for being in them, not behind them)

New Zealand tournaments are much smaller affairs, esp down in the South Island (30~45 is about normal) and even then, we need to pool the resources of 2 clubs, the FLGS, and several large private collections to ensure we have 11~12 decent bits of terrain per table.

When 6th dropped last year, we made a push to put the suggested amount of terrain onto tables, and the local feedback has been really good. people are happier having to manoeuvre and work to get shots/assaults off

it might be a good idea to expand it from the amount of terrain to the type of terrain.It can vary from a small mud puddle (extreme example) to ahuge mountain(another extreme example). From what I have seen, it is often a small foam hill or a bulding with all of the windows open. Rarely something that actually blocks LOS.
You will also not thatin 'preset boards" you usually find buildings or cover in the deployment zone with anything between them being very sparse. This will often still happen if setting it according to the rules, but it it does, the players shouldn't complain. lol

At our club we get a neutral 3rd party to set up. Usually it'll be a yell of 'Oi, *name here*, give us a table' while we're unpacking forces or whatever. Generally we end up with fairly densely terrained tables, usually leaning towards the city outskirts sort of theme. Probably falling in the 2.6+ bracket above.

But then there was one time when 2 SM players asked me to set up a table. I stuck our little tower (made out of the Cities of Death ruins) dead centre of the table (where it always goes) and told them that was it. Open field. I seem to recall a lot of bloodshed that day.

Last table I set up was an Imperial defense complex. Load of stuff from the Wall of Martyrs kit, a few scratchbuild foamcore bunkers and a Bastion. Worked out at about 12 items (which would 2 on the above table, above average by BRB) I still got moaned at that it wasn't dense enough scenery wise...