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I wanted to start by primarily focusing on ruins. The rules for ruins are as such:



“RUINS
Ruins are difficult terrain. Models in ruins receive a 4+ cover save, regardless of whether
or not they are 25% obscured.”



And the reason vehicles are exempted from cover is here:



"• At least 25% of the facing of the vehicle that is being targeted (its front, side or rear)
needs to be hidden by intervening terrain or models from the point of view of the firer
for the vehicle to be in cover. If this is the case, the vehicle is obscured (or ‘hull down’).
If a unit is firing at a vehicle, the vehicle is obscured only if it is 25% hidden from the
majority of the firing models that are able to damage the vehicle. If a unit has firing
models in two or more different facings of a target vehicle, work out whether or not the
vehicle is obscured separately for each facing, using only models firing at that facing.
• Vehicles are not obscured simply for being inside terrain such as woods
or ruins. The 25% rule given above takes precedence."








So basically the 6th ed way of doing ruins was an “ok” compromise between the heavy abstraction of area terrain and the glorious wonder that is true line of sight (is my bias evident yet?). If a model was on the ground level it could do the whole area terrain thing if the ruin had a base but the second a model clambered up to a higher level to get a better shot, it had to hope it had some obscurement, if not it could get picked off.

This still had problem because often ruins had bases that were far too large and it was far too easy to abuse the area aspect of it. I can think of one example at the local GW. The ruin is on a 12x12 inch base, but the ruin itself is tiny and in one corner. But still, the 6th ed way of doin ruins was an “ok” compromise between 100% true line of sight and area terrain. At least it made it so terrain had some complexity.


Now in 7th the entire ruin is just a bubble of magic cover regardless of context but somehow not cover the second you have an armor value unless the facing is obscured. So a wraithknight or riptide with its toe on the base of a ruin is getting a cover save, you’re rhino however, sadly its not 25% obscured from the firer, sucks to be you. This is just bad and terribly inconsistent especially given the larger and larger models we’re seeing come out. Part of me understands the abstraction for infantry models, we assume they're making better use of the cover, ducking, leaning, going prone ect. However, as you start to cycle through unit types of larger and larger verity in terms of size, it all starts getting a bit silly no? I'm in the camp that always prefers 100% los, obscurement based cover. Why? It treats everything fairly, I mean god forbid you'd have to actually be obscured from the perspective of the firer to get over.

Some of the most visceral memories I have in 6th was flying a storm talon over a ruin to the other side so I could get a shot (no cover) on a unit on top that was on longer obscured, this makes movement matter, this makes flanking MATTER, from my experience the second you go with magic bubble (area terrain) you start to diminish tactical play for the simple fact that you’ve removed any context as to how one unit may sacrifice shooting for movement to gain a better firing angle later in the game.


Ruins used to have pages of rules. We lost the brilliant mechanic that allowed models to jump down from great heights, albeit at risk of taking damage without an armour save. This was a simple mechanic that worked well in games where it came up.

We also lost all the rules pertaining to levels. Meaning now you can run into pretty absurd situations like being able to target models under floors with barrage, and in some instances seeing multiple models/units on multiple floors all being hit by a single blast or flamer template.

We also lost the rule pertaining to what models were allowed on upper floor of ruins. (whether walkers or monstrous creatures could be on upper floors of ruins or not). Hell, we even lost the incredibly relevant restriction that the model you’re attempting to move ACTUALLY HAVING TO FIT where you wish to place it in a ruin. So legally I could pass a dangerous terrain check and tank shock vertically up multiple floors of a ruin. Oh and I guess now bikes may as well be jetbikes for the purposes of movement. Oh and while we're at it, I guess you can put artillery on the upper floors of ruins now.

Oh, let’s not forget all the rules for how to handle close combat in three dimensions. You know, the rules that allowed you to still charge and count as being in base to base if there was no room on the upper level because it was entirely occupied by the unit you wished to charge, ya, that rule is gone too. Throwing out area terrain while essentially making most terrain types area terrain just seems baffling to me.




Was throwing out 4 pages of rules really a good idea?

 Crablezworth wrote:
Was throwing out 4 pages of rules really a good idea?

No. Welcome to 7th edition, the book full of terrible ideas that only GW would publish.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:
Was throwing out 4 pages of rules really a good idea?

No. Welcome to 7th edition, the book full of terrible ideas that only GW would publish.

How have you been playing ruins so far in your games?

My last game, my opponent seriously tried to argue I didn't get a cover save because the wood wasn't a Citadel wood, and therefore to qualify I needed 25% obscured.

 Crablezworth wrote:
How have you been playing ruins so far in your games?

Haven't had any games with (relevant) ruins yet. I think there might have been some terrain that could have qualified as ruins in one game, but we just agreed that everything was 5+ area terrain instead of screwing around trying to figure out what rules to use. If/when ruins do become relevant I'll probably just play it RAW, the rules are clearly stupid but I don't care enough to try to negotiate new rules for a random pickup game.

 Azreal13 wrote:
My last game, my opponent seriously tried to argue I didn't get a cover save because the wood wasn't a Citadel wood, and therefore to qualify I needed 25% obscured.

Your opponent was absolutely correct. The special rules for the Citadel wood apply only to that specific model, just like a Land Raider's rules don't apply to a Rhino. If you want other forest terrain to use those rules then it's your responsibility to bring it up before the game begins and convince your opponent to agree to it.

they could have fixed quite a bit by adding two more words next to the vehicle exception: monstrous creatures

The changes to ruins was one of the fixes that seemed minor, but I knew they could end up being game breaking. Just the "models below the template are hit" thing alone could be devastating. I use Dreadknights with Heavy Incinerators... I can now easy jump to the top of the ruins and just torch the entire thing now. And still assault easily.

Maybe someday I'll play a game of 7E, but as it stands, that's one of the rules that had me going "nope".

 Sir Arun wrote:
they could have fixed quite a bit by adding two more words next to the tank exception: monstrous creatures

This, so much this ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

And while we're at it, they should really specify that to qualify as in cover you have to actually be inside cover. So sick of the idea that a couple mm of a base qualifies.

7th is the houserule edition anyways, and I think in most informal settings people will continue to stick with 6th's building rules, especially the "can only target 1 level of a ruin" wording as well as the barrage limitation.

Else Ion Accelerators + 2 marker lights just got that much more brutal.

The second an opponent wants to re-roll his gets hot because he can point to a cog on a ruin I'll blow my top lol

This is what you get for bringing rubbish TLoS rules into the game in the first place.

4th editions area terrain worked brilliantly, but then they screwed it up by having area terrain and TLoS awkwardly bodged together simultaneously. Either they should go back to proper area terrain rules, or they should complete the transition to terrain being sort of useless by implementing a strict TLoS system and dispensing with area terrain rules altogether.

 Ailaros wrote:
This is what you get for bringing rubbish TLoS rules into the game in the first place.

Care to explain how tlos is rubbish?

TLOS only seems to matter if my opponent stands a chance of being instagibbed or penetrated. Other than that, everyone just runs/drives right through it and if you stay on it, you get 5+ cover.

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
This is what you get for bringing rubbish TLoS rules into the game in the first place.

Care to explain how tlos is rubbish?

it interrupts play by constantly having the players move their heads around and squint and bitch about weird angles aka "nah I can see you, look!"

If we had simple, coherent and strict area terrain rules and how they affect anyone inside them based on what unit type is inside (i.e. different categories - swarms, infantry, monstrous creatures, vehicles and superheavy vehicles) and when they count as being in cover, it would allow for faster, smoother play.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
My last game, my opponent seriously tried to argue I didn't get a cover save because the wood wasn't a Citadel wood, and therefore to qualify I needed 25% obscured.

Your opponent was absolutely correct. The special rules for the Citadel wood apply only to that specific model, just like a Land Raider's rules don't apply to a Rhino. If you want other forest terrain to use those rules then it's your responsibility to bring it up before the game begins and convince your opponent to agree to it.

I didn't have to "convince" him of anything. We had agreed that they'd provide a 5+ cover save, and that all the large rocks would provide a 4+.

This is aside from the fact that the club has, collectively, already decided that all woods are functionally "Citadel" woods, just as all of our awesome, hand made, terrain is functionally the closest analogue to whatever generic Citadel kit is produced, because we all agreed that it was a pathetic, transparent attempt to railroad naive players into buying more GW's product, and you'd have to be a barely functioning moron to try and enforce the RAW.

He's just the sort of player who is, shall we say, very results orientated?

 Sir Arun wrote:

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:

 Ailaros wrote:
This is what you get for bringing rubbish TLoS rules into the game in the first place.

Care to explain how tlos is rubbish?

it interrupts play by constantly having the players move their heads around and squint and bitch about weird angles aka "nah I can see you, look!"

If we had simple, coherent and strict area terrain rules and how they affect anyone inside them based on what unit type is inside (i.e. different categories - swarms, infantry, monstrous creatures, vehicles and superheavy vehicles) and when they count as being in cover, it would allow for faster, smoother play.

Yeah but regardless of area terrain, you still need to see what you want to target if you're not barrage meaning that whole having to see thing is still there regardless of whether you argue with your opponent about cover saves or what percent something is obscured. I can buy the argument that area terrain saves time in the movement phase in terms of not having to carefully position each model and check los to enemy models as much because you know they're in the magic bubble, but when it comes to your opponent's shooting phase, they still have to check to see if they can target something before rolling bones.

You can abstract that though. Eg

Woods
30mm base size. No LOS
40-60mm base size. Obscured. Cover save.
Any larger base. No cover given.

All you need to establish is if the shooting travels through the terrain or not, which can be done from a conventional standing position.

Not only does TLoS create way more disagreements about what is or isn't in cover, and not only does it make the game rules dependent purely on a player's artistic aesthetic ("modelling for advantage" was something created by TLoS), but it also reduces the effectiveness of terrain.

The very first game of 40k I played with my guard army (where we didn't know the rules very well) showed me the difference immediately. We had a large brick wall that had kind of jagged edges and a random brick removed from somewhere for aesthetic reasons. The terrain was clearly designed to block line of sight, but due to an artistic foible, my opponent was just barely able to see a tiny bit of my basilisk through the missing brick, shot it with a missile launcher and blew it up on the top of turn 1.

And this kind of thing is rife and obvious in a TLoS system. I mean, who even uses forests anymore? Nobody, because they barely ever give cover saves, they're just there to make gunlines stronger as they create an obstacle to movement and pretty much nothing else.

The same is true for all other terrain as well. TLoS only makes it much, much easier for you to ignore cover saves or still be able to shoot at stuff that is ostensibly out of line of sight.

Back in 4th edition, with a brain-dead easy abstraction system, terrain gave cover saves and blocked line of sight, and were a strategic part of the game. With a pure TLoS system, terrain only exists to cause vehicles to crash into and slow down infantry and every once in a while accidentally offer a cover save. It heavily encourages people to set up palisades (or aegeses as the case may be), and shoot at each other unimpeded.

And 40k doesn't need more advantages to gunlining. Especially at the cost to everyone else, causes more disagreements, is more bothersome to implement on the table, and makes rules more of a slave to art.

Tlos is much better suited to skirmish games, not larger scale battles such as 40k. Area terrain is the way to go.

I still, to this day, catch myself playing as if it was still second edition and that cover actually reduces incoming fire, rather than provides an extra save.

It just feels right, moving from cover to cover, despite the fact, as a daemons player, a significant percentage of cover has no functional benefit to me whatsoever.

I still regard this as a better way to go, and would be one of the first things I'd reintroduce if I were rewriting the game.

 Ailaros wrote:
Not only does TLoS create way more disagreements about what is or isn't in cover, and not only does it make the game rules dependent purely on a player's artistic aesthetic ("modelling for advantage" was something created by TLoS), but it also reduces the effectiveness of terrain.

The very first game of 40k I played with my guard army (where we didn't know the rules very well) showed me the difference immediately. We had a large brick wall that had kind of jagged edges and a random brick removed from somewhere for aesthetic reasons. The terrain was clearly designed to block line of sight, but due to an artistic foible, my opponent was just barely able to see a tiny bit of my basilisk through the missing brick, shot it with a missile launcher and blew it up on the top of turn 1.

And this kind of thing is rife and obvious in a TLoS system. I mean, who even uses forests anymore? Nobody, because they barely ever give cover saves, they're just there to make gunlines stronger as they create an obstacle to movement and pretty much nothing else.

The same is true for all other terrain as well. TLoS only makes it much, much easier for you to ignore cover saves or still be able to shoot at stuff that is ostensibly out of line of sight.

Back in 4th edition, with a brain-dead easy abstraction system, terrain gave cover saves and blocked line of sight, and were a strategic part of the game. With a pure TLoS system, terrain only exists to cause vehicles to crash into and slow down infantry and every once in a while accidentally offer a cover save. It heavily encourages people to set up palisades (or aegeses as the case may be), and shoot at each other unimpeded.

And 40k doesn't need more advantages to gunlining. Especially at the cost to everyone else, causes more disagreements, is more bothersome to implement on the table, and makes rules more of a slave to art.

Wait a second, one of your first games used TLOS but then you refer to 4th that didn't use it. I'm a bit confused

I'm also confused how you think everything always having a cover save that can't be taken away is worse for causing gunlining than cover that is purely directional in nature and you can use tactics like flanking to circumvent. Surely being able to maneuver to the point where they no longer get cover is more strategic?

I think the actual problem you're experiencing is playing with too much low cover; large, impassable LOS blockers like high walls really even out the game against gunlines and make jump infantry really interesting for closing and maneuvering

Skimask Mohawk wrote:Wait a second, one of your first games used TLOS but then you refer to 4th that didn't use it. I'm a bit confused

Right, that's why I said we weren't very good at the rules yet. We mistakenly used TLoS in a rules system that didn't use TLoS.

Skimask Mohawk wrote:I'm also confused how you think everything always having a cover save that can't be taken away is worse for causing gunlining than cover that is purely directional in nature and you can use tactics like flanking to circumvent.

You can still do this in the world of area terrain. There was plenty of "directional" stuff. It's just that there was also non-directional stuff.

Skimask Mohawk wrote:I think the actual problem you're experiencing is playing with too much low cover

...because of TLoS.

Nowadays, forests are basically non-terrain. They slow down assault units, barely give cover saves, and don't block line of sight. Forests in 4th edition blocked line of sight, so assault units still had to navigate the terrain, but gunlines didn't get to just sit there making farting noises while they tried. And the best part was that terrain used to be semi-permeable, which greatly increased the amount of strategy with them. You could, say, not have LOS to a unit form the front, but you could have it from the side, so you gained a real advantage from flanking. You could do things like infiltrate into forests and then move to the edge, and that actually meant something. And terrain in general was a real, double-edged sword for gunlines because any time they fell back, they denied LOS to their opponents but also to themselves.

You had to actually think about how you used terrain, rather than saying "I can see an elbow, OPEN FIRE!!!", and letting everything always shoot at everything else.

Yep, this frustrates me immensely about the current game, playing the table used to be a real skill and manoeuvring your units to take advantage of cover could mitigate a lot of the problems which continually raise their heads in the current game.

 Ailaros wrote:
You can still do this in the world of area terrain. There was plenty of "directional" stuff. It's just that there was also non-directional stuff.

The only directional stuff used to be barricades pre 6th

Skimask Mohawk wrote:I think the actual problem you're experiencing is playing with too much low cover

...because of TLoS.

How is deciding to play with non LOS blocking terrain a problem of TLOS? You made the choice to not use the terrain that makes for a more engaging game; allowing assault armies more time to close, breaking up firing lanes and preventing a gunline to see everything. Instead you just went with low cover which is essentially area terrain if you're playing a gunline

Forests in 4th edition blocked line of sight, so assault units still had to navigate the terrain, but gunlines didn't get to just sit there making farting noises while they tried.

Everything used to be that way in 4th. I agree it was cool to leapfrog with jump pack units to close with the enemy because all area terrain blocked LOS through it. You know whats actually more cool? Using real impassable terrain to leapfrog because treating the corner of a building on a base as a 12"x12" of unseeable mysteriousness is ridiculous.

And the best part was that terrain used to be semi-permeable, which greatly increased the amount of strategy with them.

How can you actually say this? Being able to melt through walls at any point takes away any level of strategy, whether its creating choke points for an assault or hiding from their shooty units on your objective. Being able to park your rhino in the middle of a street and prevent your opponent from advancing is huge. But melting through walls has an increased level of strategy involved

You could, say, not have LOS to a unit form the front, but you could have it from the side, so you gained a real advantage from flanking.

But you can do that with TLOS without any abstraction? I know my advantage with TLOS is they don't have cover because they're not behind cover. What's the advantage of having LOS to the side if they're in area terrain?

You could do things like infiltrate into forests and then move to the edge, and that actually meant something.

What did it mean?

And terrain in general was a real, double-edged sword for gunlines because any time they fell back, they denied LOS to their opponents but also to themselves.

That's what they do now too, assuming you play with an appropriate amount of terrain thats solid and above 1" in height

You had to actually think about how you used terrain, rather than saying "I can see an elbow, OPEN FIRE!!!", and letting everything always shoot at everything else.

I'm sorry but I played 4th too; there's like 5 points in choosing a target where it tells you to look from a model's view. In fact the only time you didn't use TLOS is if an MC or vehicle was directly in the way or if you were in area terrain. For the area terrain you only got to be out of LOS if you were 6" inside of it, but you also couldn't see anything; essentially it was like being behind solid terrain that blocked LOS without using it. The only way you had to think about area terrain was "how can I be in it?" if playing as a shooty army vs another shooty army or " how can I stay behind it and then be in it" if assault vs. shooty, and to be clear this isn't more strategic

Well-defined area terrain is the absolute best way to play a game on the scale of 40K and still have everything function in a way that doesn't constantly get bogged down.

Especially for things like forests, scrub fields, rubble areas. I would have to be on crack to enjoy a mass-battle game where each and every tree matters for line of sight. I'll grant you obvious things like buildings and rock outcroppings, but that's it.

Skimask Mohawk wrote:The only directional stuff used to be barricades pre 6th

And any piece of terrain 4" wide or thinner.

Skimask Mohawk wrote:How is deciding to play with non LOS blocking terrain a problem of TLOS?

In a TLoS system, the only pieces of terrain that block line of sight are ones that are massive contiguous blocks. Which means few terrain pieces. You have to contort yourself backwards to get terrain that meets the criteria. You have to do this, if to a lesser extent, when only giving cover to X% concealed models. This makes most terrain not actually give cover saves.

I mean, look at this:



This has no tactical significance in a TLoS world. It might as well just be random ornamentation. In 4th ed, this piece of terrain was real terrain, blocking line of sight, giving cover saves, and having people to carefully judge when to make use of the 2" rule. You could even have mini battles taking place inside of the terrain piece, where you had to make decisions about how to attack because you couldn't necessarily see units on the other side unless you broke from cover or took risks with terrain rolls.

This was a dynamic, vibrant part of 4th ed. It's nearly meaningless now - the only thing it does is nerf assault.

Meanwhile, look at this:

Nowadays, it neither stops you from effectively shooting a vehicle, and with the new cover rules probably doesn't even give it a cover save either. The directionality you're talking about is a bad one here because there's very little terrain to this terrain - only some units get a cover save in one direction - instead of it being something that you could fight over properly (the idea that you could flank this is silly if the defenders always have LoS shooting out of everywhere.

Likewise, most of it is just board decoration, it's only a 1/8" by 12" piece of terrain, suitable really only as a palisade for a gunline.



Meanwhile craters and fox-holes, one of the most-used forms of cover, is meaningless in TLoS, because it doesn't obscure enough of the model, in part because it can't physically dig down into the table. Literally all this does is make short-range and assault armies worse compared to gunlines, as literally the only thing it does is slow down movement. TLoS makes this piece of terrain completely worthless otherwise.

TLoS only exists to make it easier for long-range guns to shoot stuff without needing to think about the movement phase, and makes it easier to use smaller amounts of movement to ignore cover saves.

It takes wide swaths of terrain and makes it non-terrain. Yes, it is possible to work around this problem, but it's still a problem. One pretty easily solved if we just went back to terrain rules the way they used to be.

You know that they only had barricades as pieces of terrain 4" and shorter?

In a TLoS system, the only pieces of terrain that block line of sight are ones that are massive contiguous blocks. Which means few terrain pieces. You have to contort yourself backwards to get terrain that meets the criteria. You have to do this, if to a lesser extent, when only giving cover to X% concealed models. This makes most terrain not actually give cover saves.

This is wrong; I've seen your terrain on dakka, you know how to make well thought out terrain, its not hard to make LOS blocking terrain in segments to make it modular, Crabz has done it, you can easily do it yourself. You would get cover saves by hugging the corners, the thing they do in real life with real life tactics, that is if you can be shot at since you're out of LOS.

This has no tactical significance in a TLoS world. It might as well just be random ornamentation. In 4th ed, this piece of terrain was real terrain, blocking line of sight, giving cover saves, and having people to carefully judge when to make use of the 2" rule. You could even have mini battles taking place inside of the terrain piece, where you had to make decisions about how to attack because you couldn't necessarily see units on the other side unless you broke from cover or took risks with terrain rolls.

Those trees were made for fantasy, that's why they don't work for 40k. Also it was 6" in 4th for being out of LOS, not 2"

Nowadays, it neither stops you from effectively shooting a vehicle, and with the new cover rules probably doesn't even give it a cover save either. The directionality you're talking about is a bad one here because there's very little terrain to this terrain - only some units get a cover save in one direction - instead of it being something that you could fight over properly (the idea that you could flank this is silly if the defenders always have LoS shooting out of everywhere.

But badly made terrain of course suffers from the flaws of badly made terrain. There should be no windows on the bottom floor for starters. How is the idea that flanking this terrain silly if, as you've said, only some models get cover from that direction? It seems like you've proved my point that TLOS encourages movement and strategy. I'm not quite sure why you think that model would get a cover save from that POV.

Again I've seen the terrain you make, its really nice. How can you try and use the worst examples for terrain (the gw forest, the most open building and craters) and say "all terrain is like this, we can't build it intelligently, look at how much space there is; if we don't use area terrain then it's useless!" when you've proven you can make terrain that's compact and well thought out?

TLoS only exists to make it easier for long-range guns to shoot stuff without needing to think about the movement phase, and makes it easier to use smaller amounts of movement to ignore cover saves.

It takes wide swaths of terrain and makes it non-terrain. Yes, it is possible to work around this problem, but it's still a problem. One pretty easily solved if we just went back to terrain rules the way they used to be.

How is spending the time to maneuver around something to get LOS not thinking about the movement phase and why should you not be rewarded for committing to a tactic, instead of finding out "oh man he's invincible from every direction, we should have stayed wayyyy back and shot him because it makes no difference"?

You haven't used an example of LOS blocking terrain in your argument yet, only the most generic area terrain. Did you know that people who want LOS blockers don't use forests and trees and open buildings? Of course we don't and thats not just because they look awful, its because they don't work to block LOS. Saying a piece of terrain is "the most used" is pretty ambitious since it changes from community to community.

Skimask Mohawk wrote:How is spending the time to maneuver around something to get LOS not thinking about the movement phase

Because TLoS takes things that blocked LOS and makes them not block LOS. So you don't have to move to get LOS.

I guess I'd believe that there's a platonic world of perfect terrain where even bad terrain rules still work correctly. Sure. But it's rather specious because there aren't that many people who live in that world.

It's really difficult to make terrain that you can fight in (not just with it in between stuff) and still have the rules for terrain work correctly with TLoS. With area terrain, it just worked, instantly, and you didn't have to be a modelling master or fork over a huge ton of cash to make it happen. You didn't have to consider how every possible potential flaw could give a dramatic boost to a gunline player. You didn't have to make basically one terrain type (tall, contiguous walls or rocks) in order to have the terrain rules affect the game.

I'm not saying that it's literally impossible to come up with a way to make TLoS work. I'm saying that the old terrain just worked, without trying to come up with nearly impossible ways to make it so.

I personally think 40k benefits more when it has terrain rules that aren't relegated to "I made great terrain so now you can't see me" and "Maybe you get a cover save. Maybe." That's shallower than it used to be when it was easier for terrain to have more of an impact, and more commonly in different ways.


---


I mean, look at how ridiculous it is.

Let's take a chaos space marine:



Now let's put him behind a piece of brick wall terrain:



In the world of TLoS, a guardsmen could shoot a lasgun at the marine and kill him. Which is absurd. The only thing moreso is the fact that if I'd made that piece of terrain .001mm taller, then the marine would be absolutely fine. The margin of it's effects on the rules is literally that razor-thin. When I say perfect artist making perfect terrain, I sort of mean it. Even take it away from this extreme and you have the EXACT SAME PROBLEM, just different in scale, not in scope.

And you look at this, and you think, should a guardsman be able to kill a space marine just because it could see the tiniest amount of the model? Will situations like this cause a player disagreement, especially if they can't both quite see from the correct angle? Could this situation be EASILY fixed instantly by just having a rule that says size 2 terrain, like fences block LOS for size 2 models, like regular infantry models?

Or would we rather rely on modelling for advantage (terrain style) in order to determine what happens in a game?

The only thing worse is if you then come back later and say "Well yes, but ruins are a special type of terrain that doesn't use TLoS, and this other specific type of terrain also works differently for different reasons...

 Ailaros wrote:
And you look at this, and you think, should a guardsman be able to kill a space marine just because it could see the tiniest amount of the model?

Yes, by shooting through the wall. The only unrealistic thing here is that you can't target and destroy terrain (along with whatever is on the other side), you have to see and target the model behind it and the terrain will never be damaged.

Aileros do you even read the rules?

For one model to have line of sight to another, you must be able to trace a
straight, unblocked line from its body (the head, torso, arms or legs) to any
part of the target’s body.

Sometimes, all that will be visible of a model is a weapon, banner or other ornament he is
carrying. In these cases, the model is not visible. Similarly, we ignore wings, tails and
antennae even though they are technically part of a model’s body. These rules are
intended to ensure that models don’t get penalised for having impressive banners,
weaponry, and so on.

So in your example you model wouldn't be able to be targeted from that angle.

You dont need to be a modelling master, you just need to be able to measure your pink foam and your infantry and add an inch to the foam wall. Presto, better LOS blocking terrain than you've shown this entire time