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I have played shooty armies vs nids, assault armies vs Ig. All I can say is one thing, all the terrain that you have isn't enough. but it all has to make since. I usually make small towns, and place things so that it looks good and play from there. If you can see what color the actual board is, you don't have enough terrain.

AtariAssasin wrote:I like 50% terrain with Multi-Level ruins. It adds so much to the game, and it forces you to think more tactically. Also, any good comander wouldn't engage in conflict in an open field IRL...

Yes, because every commander has 100% control over where he engages.

A tank commander's wet dream is a mostly open field with concealment for his tanks.

chromedog wrote:HA!

It's NOT a "Blade Runner LE" model.

That's a really close copy. Not bad.

There are better 'copies' around.
Antenocitis workshop does one.

This one is only reminiscent of the spinner in a more-or-less kind of way. It looks more like it on the back end than the front end.


This is a standard isometric front view of it. Besdies, I wasn't aware of the spinner having a rotary cannon in the nose.

I've got a "Not" Deckard mini to go along with it.

Heh, didn't see the cannon from that range. Makes me want to get the LE model out and see if its the right scale.

DeathReaper wrote:I always followed the 1/4th of the table covered with terrain "rule" and afterwards spread it around.

there are usually 3 pieces in each deployment zone (For pitched battle) and 4 in the center of the table.

Works pretty well.

Sounds pretty much like what I like to see, except a) whenever possible we like to have a third party set up the terrain to look nice and be evenly-distributed, and b) we set up the terrain before rolling for mission/deployment. No guarantee of "x" number of pieces in your deployment zone. One of my favorite techniques in setting up a table is to align buildings/ruins with one another to give the visual impression of streets/a logical settlement, but set them all at an ANGLE to the table edges, instead of square to the table edges. IMO this creates a more naturalistic feel, of a world extending beyond the boundaries of the play space.

Mywik wrote:

Lormax wrote:

Joey wrote:Terrain is awesome, the only problem with my usual game (and by the looks of it, yours too) is LOS-blocking terrain. It's frustrating not having a shooting phase because your opponant has hidden everything and there's literally nothing you can do. Then bam, next turn is assault and it's all over.

Then move away and out of range of the assault, perhaps?

Also, to those of you that are griping about the terrain selection at your FLGS...I'm sure they wouldn't mind some new terrain donated by yourselves to fill in the holes they are missing

Yeah. Because ive got nothing better to do than waste my money. Please go troll somewhere else.

A) It can hardly be considered a waste to improve your own game experience and that of your fellow players at the store, can it?
B) Making terrain at the local club/store is a long and honorable tradition. It's fun, it's easy*, it's something you can do while socializing with your wargaming buddies, it endears you to the owner (who may pay for supplies or even compensate you above and beyond that for the labor), and it makes the store better and more enjoyable.

*2"-3" high hills to block LOS, basic ruins, and areas of rocky difficult area terrain are incredibly easy, especially with a cheap hot wire foam cutter (I think mine cost $10), which your store likely has already.

A few of my recent battles:

A "rural" feel to things







An "Urban" feel







A mix






To be honest, sometimes I feel like I overload on terrain but thats usually because I try and assign a "theme" to each battlefield, perhaps its a city with its outskirts as rural fields, an industrial zone, defended by bunkers with heavy forests nearby, a Chaos ruin that has been bombarded from orbit etc.
The possibilities are endless really and sticking to a theme (always with a balance in mind) is very fun.

A lot, we like to make it look like an actual battlefield with lots of hills, forests, ice fields and buildings. This does make it awkward advancing your army as you find youself funnelled and prolongs the game because of cover saves but its not too much of a problem since its still fairly casual where I'am.

About the same as this guy above but on a smaller board unless its apocalypse.

Totalwar1402 wrote:About the same as this guy above but on a smaller board unless its apocalypse.

Those boards above are 6x4. That's the recommended size until you reach Apocalypse size, then they recommend bigger.

I guess no one where you play uses a horde army? I can barely get 1000 points of horde Nids on a 6x4's deployment zone.

Nice terrain. Shame about the surface.

Sorry, whats wrong with my carpet?

-Loki- wrote:

Totalwar1402 wrote:About the same as this guy above but on a smaller board unless its apocalypse.

Those boards above are 6x4. That's the recommended size until you reach Apocalypse size, then they recommend bigger.

I guess no one where you play uses a horde army? I can barely get 1000 points of horde Nids on a 6x4's deployment zone.

Nope, cost prevents it for most people. Chiefly they use small 'elite' armies with a few heavy tanks. The guard players invariably take three squads of upgraded vets with two russes and a vendetta in a 1500pts game. One necron player took a monolith, two doom barges and the rest immortals/lychguard as his infantry. So no, I rarely use hoarde nids, although I do have the models I just don't think they're very effective next to trygons/stealers. Ironically most of my friends armies are usually tooled up to fight a horde army with lots of blast weapons and flamers creeping in. Usually because they like big splosions.

Ratius wrote:Sorry, whats wrong with my carpet?

There's no spidermen or hulk pictures patterned on it!

Mom said Im too old for those now :(

It would seem that using 50% + terrain coverage is a benefit to Assaulty armies that can use the terrain to move in under cover and the 25% - are for Shooty armies that want open fields of fire to blast oncoming hoards. In our houses we use the 25% coverage rule almost entirely....but we are almost exclusively urban battlefields with lots of full vehicle/MC cover buildings, ruins, walls, and shipping crates with a smattering of trees and hedges. It seems to give us the best of both worlds as there is always a long fireing lane mixed with short range spots.

Myself being a Tau and IG player: I would prefer to play on a field that looks like Kansas......endless flatness with no cover. Take that you creeping 'Nid Bastich!

Too much terrain is bad because all the powerful units/ big units can't move. Only Named people are good for that .

Ratius wrote:Sorry, whats wrong with my carpet?

I wasn't talking about the carpet. I was talking about the RoB board.

I got it HBMC, c'mon cut us a little slack!

I've got 8 of them btw, I know your views on them but with 8 the combos equal 12 possible board layouts, that isnt bad (yes cost dependant!).

I have 0.0 regrets on them

Dragonheart wrote:Too much terrain is bad because all the powerful units/ big units can't move. Only Named people are good for that .

The biggest footprint you'll find is the Land Raider, and even that can move around on tables with over 50% terrain.

I'd rather end up with too much terrain, forcing people to actually leave their deployment zones, than too little and watch two parking lots slug it out.

I do generally try to leave lanes of at least 4" - 6" between pieces of terrain, unless there's a specific thematic reason otherwise (like barricades around a fortified building).

A) It can hardly be considered a waste to improve your own game experience and that of your fellow players at the store, can it?
B) Making terrain at the local club/store is a long and honorable tradition. It's fun, it's easy*, it's something you can do while socializing with your wargaming buddies, it endears you to the owner (who may pay for supplies or even compensate you above and beyond that for the labor), and it makes the store better and more enjoyable.

*2"-3" high hills to block LOS, basic ruins, and areas of rocky difficult area terrain are incredibly easy, especially with a cheap hot wire foam cutter (I think mine cost $10), which your store likely has already.

First of all I play in a private gaming club so i dont care about flgs terrain at all and even if i would ... no i wouldnt donate anything to a shop. Additionally thats not even the topic of this thread. I asked how much terrain the people consider enough on their gaming tables. Not how a lack of terrain could be solved. Becaus we have the problem that some people (shooty army players) sometimes complain about too much terrain.

As you can see in the picture i posted we know how a hot wire foam cutter works and already built a s**t ton of terrain.

Ratius wrote:I got it HBMC, c'mon cut us a little slack!

I've got 8 of them btw, I know your views on them but with 8 the combos equal 12 possible board layouts, that isnt bad (yes cost dependant!).

And think of all the terrain and models you could have bought had you saved yourself the money and instead bought a flat piece of 6x4 MDF. You might even be able to choose the locations of your hills or, even better, had the choice not to have hills at all in some games!

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Ratius wrote:I got it HBMC, c'mon cut us a little slack!

I've got 8 of them btw, I know your views on them but with 8 the combos equal 12 possible board layouts, that isnt bad (yes cost dependant!).

And think of all the terrain and models you could have bought had you saved yourself the money and instead bought a flat piece of 6x4 MDF. You might even be able to choose the locations of your hills or, even better, had the choice not to have hills at all in some games!

The twirly Commissar has a point Rayius, I feel you need a time out for buying so many boards and not making your own 6x4 boards, loads of terrain and spending the rest on 40k preference hookers and pizza. at the same time... yum

Depends,

sometimes a lot, sometimes a lot more.

Two things I can contribute from my own terrain experiences:

#1 find a nearby factory and see if you can pick up scrap packing foam/polystyrene - I've got about 40sqm of the stuff from work for free and am planning on making myself some canyon/butte terrain (think Starship Troopers)

#2 I always find terrain with a story makes for a more interesting game than just randomly scattering it around.
For example in a recent game we setup some ruins as a temple complex in one corner (occupied by my orks), with a huge avenue of tress running right across the map. My friends IG had to try and recapture, but with unexpected results when I immobilised a Chimera in the lane between the trees and was able to leap frog my way down the board behind the trees, whilst he had a traffic jam stuck behind it. Great fun and much more realistic IMHO.