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 Ailaros wrote:

In the world of TLoS, a guardsmen could shoot a lasgun at the marine and kill him.

I think you mean in a world of extremely badly written TLOS rules....

 Peregrine wrote:

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

Quality doesn't matter as long as people buy it.

- GW design philosophy

I don't see why some people are arguing with ALL of Ailaros' points, some of them are pretty sound when using the rules as written. That said, many people have raised good points on both sides.


I'm not going to pretend to understand the motives behind the GW game designers planning and implementation. In an attempt to reason out why infantry are hidden and vehicles are not, I can only imagine that infantry are able to duck, hide / hit the ground and make use of rubble/logs etc while vehicles are unable to be so flexible. Of course we can't actually physically model the infantry lying down as they are static posed figures - so the rule allows for the ability without us having to physically lay down our models and attempt to find cover in the citadel wood / other terrain.

a few of the games I've seen at the local GW makes me wonder 'why bother with terrain?". It seems like everyone can just shoot through everything and cover saves are just randomly thrown about. Coming from the FOW system, my buddies and I are far more sensible about scenery and their effects, and all games begin with a quick briefing on scenery and what they can and can't do. No confusion to anyone. What's silly about the chaos marine example is that if his head were visible, he'd be a target simply because we can't modify our models mid game to be "ducking/crouching". Simply stating that you plan to be concealed behind the cover completely when you move up to it simply implies intent to your opponent. Unless you are hard core and have 3 types of every model you won..standing/kneeling/laying!

bullyboy wrote:
a few of the games I've seen at the local GW makes me wonder 'why bother with terrain?". It seems like everyone can just shoot through everything and cover saves are just randomly thrown about. Coming from the FOW system, my buddies and I are far more sensible about scenery and their effects, and all games begin with a quick briefing on scenery and what they can and can't do. No confusion to anyone.

This is so important its unreal. You need to have a pregame discussion regardless of how you play terrain

What's silly about the chaos marine example

Is that he doesn't even know the rules and yet still tries and to argue, that picture being proof

His example of the Citadel Wood is also completely off, as the new rules give anything in the woods a flat 5+ cover regardless of being obscured or not.

I thoroughly enjoy the fact that there are no more woods, trees, or forests anymore. They were completely overused and abused in my area.

 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.

I've lost my patience with people like this. I just concede and pack up when people pull stupid Please don't bypass the language filter like this. Reds8n like this. I'd rather not spend 2 hours of my time with some manchild quibbling over rules. There's only a handful of guys I'll play against/with anymore.

sand.zzz 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.

I've lost my patience with people like this. I just concede and pack up when people pull stupid see above like this. I'd rather not spend 2 hours of my time with some manchild quibbling over rules. There's only a handful of guys I'll play against/with anymore.

I'm inclined to agree, I'm 50/50 whether I'll play another "zero thinking" Waveserpent list, regardless of who's driving it, at a friendly club game. We are trying to rehabilitate this player though, as he's the only regular player at the club who significantly diverges from the slightly more relaxed attitude most of us have. Just when we think we're making progress, he relapses though, which can get a bit frustrating. (Waveserpent spam is justified as "at least it isn't Jetseer council")

It should also be pointed out that he folded relatively quickly, I suspect he gets his own way a lot when playing in the local GW, but playing an opponent older, bigger, more confident and more assertive than your usual 14 year old meant it didn't go too far.

Does it bother any of you that there is no more guideline as to how much, what type of terrain?

 Crablezworth wrote:
Does it bother any of you that there is no more guideline as to how much, what type of terrain?

Nope.

Has anyone tried playing with a high amount of dilapidated buildings on the field? It seems to me like that would be interesting for solving some of these issues.
Most stores I've been to have loads of buildings as terrain, but normally just run them as ruins.
What about a house rule that designated ruins as a dilapidated building with only bastions (4+ cover). You'd effectively 'embark' a unit into the ruins, but the ruins themselves could also be targeted and destroyed.

I'm basically in total agreement with Ailaros.

This is an abstracted wargame, and the terrain rules ought to facilitate and streamline gameplay. In practice, what TLOS means is: lots of leaning down and squinting, trying to figure out if something is 25% obscured or not. It also means that a bunch of the cool terrain that your FLGS built is now functionally useless, and gives static gunlines are huge advantage. You shouldn't HAVE to meticulously model all your terrain to make it work within the game's weird TLOS framework - it's just not a practical thing to ask of the player base. The abstracted system we had in 3rd and 4th edition worked a lot better - how intervening terrain features completely blocked LOS, the "grey area" concept when you were 6" into terrain, how terrain feature size corresponded to model sizes on tables. It was a lot quicker to glance at the battlefield and know what your units could or could not see, and it provided a lot more cover in practice. TLOS enabled the "shooty editions" (much more than the nerfs to assaults did), and the gameplay has suffered for it.

 McGibs wrote:
Has anyone tried playing with a high amount of dilapidated buildings on the field? It seems to me like that would be interesting for solving some of these issues.
Most stores I've been to have loads of buildings as terrain, but normally just run them as ruins.
What about a house rule that designated ruins as a dilapidated building with only bastions (4+ cover). You'd effectively 'embark' a unit into the ruins, but the ruins themselves could also be targeted and destroyed.

We have sort of done that (we usually have a couple small buildings on the board). We use the proper building rules, which is not quite what you're describing. The major problem is that they're deathtraps - getting a Total Collapse or Detonation results is bad news for the squad inside (ruins are SO much more desirable). But also, it's really strange to play against if you have an assault army - you need to destroy the building to get at the embarked unit, so your hormagaunts or boyz sometimes just sit around for a turn, or just totally ignore the building. At least with ruins you can assault the enemy directly.

The problem with Aileros is that he's arguing from that in 4th ed area terrain was king and you didn't need to look for los. But in the 4th ed rules it still tells you to lean over and look.

It seems like the actual issue is that tlos doesn't work well with some people's home made terrain and badly constructed gw terrain. I agree 100% with that; there's no point of a wall if there's holes in it and that let's people shoot through it. Gw certainly doesn't help by selling the forest of craters or having pictures of ruins with windows everywhere.

However with functional los blocking terrain and a board set up with that in mind, it helps assault armies far more than gun lines and makes the game more tactical. I'll see if we can take shots of the board and terrain at some point to help out with what functional los blockers look like because so far Aileros has just posted pictures of traditional area terrain

With the way that 7th's modular terrain datasheets work, I don't see why not cook up some 4th ed esque ones to run at the local club. Most of the existing 7th datasheets are area terrain anyways, giving cover regardless of model obstruction. Make a datasheet for each general type of terrain you plan on using, and integrate it with the people you regularly game with.

Something like:
Solid Wall:
Terrain Type: Ruins (4+)
Special Rules:
'Its a fething wall' Models cannot draw Line of Sight through a Solid Wall (regardless of holes or damage modeled). Models on 28mm bases in base contact with the wall are considered to be out of Line of Sight as long as they are also claiming cover from the wall.

One of the things I actually liked from 5th (and maybe earlier, I'm not that experienced) is that units had or did not have cover as a whole, not on a model by model basis. It makes more abstract sense to me that a squad is operating as one entity, rather than having to worry the jimmy over there has his ass hanging out in the open. 50% or more of the unit is in cover? then the whole thing is in cover. Majority toughness? Weapon skill? Majority cover.

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
However with functional los blocking terrain and a board set up with that in mind, it helps assault armies far more than gun lines and makes the game more tactical.

With big, solid LOS blocking terrain you CAN achieve this (and we've been building LOS blocking terrain for our FLGS just for that purpose). But what annoys me is that we have to use "solid" terrain. I would love to play with more terrain like forests, but the lack of LOS blocking means they don't do much except slow down assault armies while they get shot to pieces by gunlines. It sucks, because it means an entire category of terrain type (the "forested" battlefield) has become totally uninteresting to play on, whereas it played just fine in old editions.

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
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

And then Ailaros bows out of the thread to thread gak elsewhere.

Forest
Terrain Type: Difficult Terrain
Special Rules
'Dense Foliage' Models within a Forest receive a 5+ cover save regardless of model obstruction. If Line of Sight is drawn through more than 2" of Forest terrain, then Line of Sight is considered blocked.

That is one advantage of the dataslate system: we have been given permission in the BRB to just make up whatever the hell rules we want for terrain, as long as it's appropriately document it and both players agree on it.

To be honest, the lacking effectiveness of forests is mostly due to the lack of their density, amount, and tree size. Most forests use thin, loosely packed trees, which don't provide a lot of TLOS cover, nor should they. If you really want to get a good forest battlefield going, put more terrain on the base. Add more trees, or make the trees larger. Make the trees taller if you want to avoid tall model syndrome. Secondly, a model behind even a scrubby tree has at least a 5+ cover save due to being obscured. Furthermore, your chaos marine would not be target-able behind that wall. Secondly, the basilisk getting sniped through a deliberate crack in the wall isn't problematic, and your vehicle should have had a 4+ cover save or better if modifiers such as night fighting where in effect. If the guardsman aimed the round well enough to get it through, Emperor help your poor basilisk. Before you say that the terrain favors gunline armies, remember that models in an assault army can advance around and through cover to make killing them before they get close a bitch. I made the mistake of putting a manufactorum right on the deployment line and my chaos marine opponent shoved the barrel of a vindicator through a hole in the wall. That compounded with night fighting to make a well concealed thorn in my side. I've also suffered the effects of a chaos army advancing through some ruins. Sure I could see and shoot the enemy, but only half of that got to do anything if it had the AP to hurt the marines. And let us not forget the rage inducing tactic of jump shoot jump, which works best when the terrain fully conceals the model.

Ventiscogreen wrote:
And let us not forget the rage inducing tactic of jump shoot jump, which works best when the terrain fully conceals the model.

This is a good point. I wonder how Ailaros thinks this desire for more LOS blocking is consistent with his previous claims that Tau players who use JSJ tactics are sociopaths and TFGs because they don't care about letting other people have fun.

I don't feel that Tlos is a bad mechanic. I think its rather interesting, and adds a depth to the game. But what I hate more is when people don't even TRY to use it. One of my last games, my opponent just kept pointing at one of his units, then at one of mine, declaring shots and began to roll. And several times, the guys shooting were not even in line of sight. Specifically, several tanks were firing shots from behind rock outcrops, with the cannon literally AGAINST one of the rocks and the rock being big enough to prevent my own shots at the tank anyway. When I told him the tank's cannon wasn't able to shoot at my guys, he gave me a 'You're so silly' smile before continuing to roll, at which point I refused to move my models, asserting he was not making the shot.

As an Ork player, I like terrain for cover, but I also hate it for punishing my movement all the time as well. It's a bitter sweet mechanic over all. I think I would prefer it to simply move to a 'Tlos game' where terrain either does, or does not stop someone from being able to shoot at you. And yet, even then, it seems reasonable that someone could still be shot at while in terrain/cover, since the weapons of the future should, theoretically, be powerful enough to penetrate concrete walls, let alone trees...but still have the chance to fail, hence cover save.

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:

bullyboy wrote:
What's silly about the chaos marine example

Is that he doesn't even know the rules and yet still tries and to argue, that picture being proof

So substitute the Chaos Marine with an Ork Boy where you can just exactly see a sliver of the top of his shoulder, jesus christ. Ailaros' point stands. An abstraction of LOS rules allows your models to duck out of line of sight behind suitably large cover, which is more realistic than being sniped to death in the elbow.

Let me put things this way. Would you be ok with my riptide, whom is taller than most trees, jump shoot jumping with woods and you not even being able to shoot back? I can already pull this off with a tall enough building if I am lucky enough to have a piece of terrain that flipping huge, but putting him in some trees and saying "You can't see my gundam!" is silly. I do think that models should need to be at least slightly obscured to get the ruin cover save, because TLoS has its uses and area terrain its own. River of lava? Area Terrain. Large rocks large enough to hide behind? TLoS salvation of my Pathfinders. Furthermore, I don't mind the new ruins with special rules GW has, but I'd prefer to make my own ruins for size/shape/rulecraft reasons. So far the only problem I have genuinely had with TLoS is Chaos Marine Spikes, and I solved that with a ToolazytobendoverPointer.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh, and GW ruins are expensive.

I dislike TLOS because it has brought about "modelling for advantage".

 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?

The problem with TLOS for me is that the game is played with models. Imagine there's a doorway, to see out of it straight ahead you need to stand in it, otherwise you can only see the wall. So a model is forced to stand in the doorway, without any cover save, if he wants to shoot. Really, he'd just stand to one side and look through, but as the model is static he can't do that.

TLOS also leads to sillyness with the models. A Space Marine kneeling down is harder to see than the one standing up. If the rules accept that as the case, then he should also move slower. Because he's doing some ridiculous knee walk.

To shoot out of a doorway in real life your head would have to be exposed, or your weapon if you had a camera on it. If either of those get pwned, you are pretty screwed. Blind firing out of a doorway isn't really going to hit much of anything. You also don't have to stand in the doorway without cover. Stand off to the side with part of the model exposed, probably around half of the model for a good sight arc. You are 50% obscured.

I hate TLoS as it leads to so many "spirited discussions". Also, I hate seeing some overweight neckbeard bend over... just say no to crack, umm kay?

In a game with so many other abstractions, why do we need TLoS? Because GW is a modeling company first, and it's more important that the game looks good, then plays well.

Considering the amount of time, money, and resources I devote to playing a game, I should not have to have a discussion with my opponent before a game about "basic" rules like terrain. Terrain should be one of those well defined, intrinsic game mechanics that brooks no argument or discussion. I should be able to point to a piece of terrain on the table and say "that's ruins", and both myself and my opponent realize it's difficult terrain, that it's a 5+ cover save, etc. etc. There shouldn't be any of this other nonsense. A forest is a forest is a forest, not a "Citadel Forest" with three "magic trees that give a 5+ cover save" but this homemade twisted, gnarly copse of woods with stunted trees is, for all intents an purposes, ignored for TLoS because I can clearly draw LoS to anything standing within it, but it's difficult terrain for anything moving into or through it.

Last thing I hate about TLoS- if my guys are standing in a ruin, I have to use TLoS for shooting. But for moving? I can pass through walls like a ghost...

Gotta remember the mantra of 7th- "Forge the narrative HARDER!"

As to the kneeling rule, I am up front that I ignore model to advantage/disadvantage shenanigans and do allow Guardsman Weapon Teams to actually be able to aim at something from cover. Just because my pathfinder is crouched doesn't mean it gets a worse sight arc or better cover save. This goes in to Forging the Narrative, which too many people seam to not take part in. Of, course, I am the guy who gave a CSM Terminator squad Hammer of Wrath for assaulting off an elevation into a Fire Warrior team. In terms of competitive play, TOs should agree and make it clear that modeling to advantage does not help, and modeling to disadvantage does not harm when it comes to models.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You can't phase through walls anymore. Climbing should be done where models could actually jump or climb to the next floor. My last game had a squad of infantry in a ruin in which models had to make a mad dash to the edge of their floor due to a sabotaged objective. I got saved by a 6 on the difficult terrain, due to the floors being shorter.

The game just has it's scale off, that's all. They keep using a rules style that fits for, at most, 50 some models in a skirmish level game. Now that we have armies with up to 200 models, you have to make the rules with this in mind. Things like TLOS just break down. More so when you start going for "50%" or "25%" obscured and you get arguments of soul grinders standing behind Aegies defense lines... ("Does 25% of the models mass have to be obscured, 25% of its visible profile... etc. mind numbing etc.).

The game has an identity crisis something fierce.