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You can't charge if the base can't fit, you are no longer allowed to use wobbly model syndrome to fix the roughness of the ruleset inside the terrain, and the units with the best armor save get the most benefit from the terrain cover. And the deepstrike denial is now measured in the horizontal plane only, so any unit higher than 5" can deny a large area of the table while being impossible to charge from reserves.

Those things make the dense tall and scaleable terrain a chore for many factions.

It's more suited for narrative games where it's easier to put together a custom mission and house rule away some of the flaws in the ruleset.

 jeff white wrote:
Necromunda on an 8x4 table with 1250 points per side would be awesome, and take a month of months to finish. I like the idea of such a setup almost like a stop motion train railway display, though. Leave the drama staged as it was left week to week, a snapshot of the moment.

I can get behind this idea...

1250pts isn't a particularly large Necromunda gang?
Having played a lot of Necromunda, even 1500pt gangs going at it on a 4x4 table probably leaves about a quarter to a half the table totally unused around the edges.

That said, massive gangs, say 3000+ on an 8x4 would be awesome.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Yeah, my plan isn't to reach into the sky with buildings. My tallest building with a flat roof (I have a church with a VERY sloped roof that is LOS blocking for titans) only has two stories and is only 7.5 inches tall. Most only have one floor, and the walkways should be tall enough to let standard vehicles under them, although Knights, Gorkanaughts, Stompas, and tall battlewagons would be blocked. I have a reputation for over-building the sturdiness of my scratch builds, so I'm not worried about it folding under the weight of metal models. I'd just like like to have building tops connected so that troops can move from building to building without having to go up and down all the time.

Sounds good then

For the large models, I have found that setting up tables in a way that either have two wide pathes or three tighter pathes where large models barely fit allow them to cross the board is sufficient to not invalidate them. If you make sure these pathes aren't straight alleys, you can also prevent them from automatically becoming firing lanes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Strg Alt wrote:
I referred to 3rd in my post so he knew where I was coming from.

Besides I don't buy the outrage that "everything is too lethal now". People have whined about such things for decades and the proper solution to the problem was always to have not too many firing lanes on the board. A fact which is ESPECIALLY very easy to accomplish in a city fight because each tall building obstructs LOS. So when you consider it you have actually fewer firing lanes in a city terrain than on a vanilla 40K board.

Either you are moving goalposts or you are posting off topic.

Rules that made fighting your way up building in old editions have disappeared, many models that could previously enter building cannot do that anymore and size and base increases across all models cause various problems.

In other words, you are completely wrong if you say "Your army just isn't good enough." in regards to the actual topic of this thread. No one cares about whatever worked well for you two decades ago.

Currently in 9th there are not really good rules for verticality of terrain.

All measurements except for vertical coherency and engagement range do not take height into consideration.

Because of the way obscuring works, height only gives you advantage to shoot over obstacles like crates and a slight advantage in that most vehicles cant charge you if your 6" off the ground.


Rule of cool though, go for it. Vertical terrain adds alot of real estate for infantry and looks awsome if done right.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Strg Alt wrote:
Vertical terrain had already been implemented in 3rd with the City fight supplement. I mainly played city fights during that edition because a friend of mine had built a terrific city with lots of buildings. The matches were Dark Angels or Imperial Guard vs. my Night Lords force.

If people start to complain about units being invulnerable to attack upon roofs then I have the following response to them:

"Your army just isn't good enough."

Apart from close combat troops you also need ranged firepower and jet pack troops in order to remove units with heavy weapons on the top of buildings. It's not an alien concept but common sense.

Another feature could be implemented to allow swifter movement up/down buildings or the restriction of placing tall buildings outside of the deployment zone. So a havoc squad would need a rhino and maybe a turn on foot to reach a very good firing position. If that is feasible depends on game length.

What units should my Nurgle Daemons take to counter this?

A pure Daemon force did not exist in 3rd. CSM units would summon them DURING the game and they arrived as reserves.

The first Daemon codex arrived in 5th. It required the whole army to arrive on the battlefield via reserves special rule. This means you can summon your units near to the enemy lines right away.
Two facts should play in your favour:

1. City terrain obstructs really well firing lanes. So the opponent can't target your units with all of his squads.

2.Nurgle daemons are resilient.


Furthermore 3rd city fight rules granted units a cover save of 4+ for ruins and buildings. So even if you have to move through buildings to get to the opposing lines the chances were pretty good to survive a round of fire.

This cover save was the reason why hordes of Orks and Tyranids were so good in a city fight.
In addition to that templates were removed from the rules and granted only random hits on a successful hit roll:
Flamer and big template: D6 hits.
Small template: D3 hits.

Thanks for this post OP- it reminded me I have terrain to build. I've lit a hobby fire recently, and I've assembled 40+ models in the past 2.5 weeks, but I've ignored my terrain.

I loved City Fight; I prefer the look of intact buildings to the look of L shaped ruins, and I want terrain that can work in 40k games of all sizes as well as Kill Team/ Inquisitor 28.

So my plan is stackable buildings that allow me to fight in detailed interiors. Switching out floor plates and wall deco for the interiors will allow me to note control of a given building by various factions within the campaign as maps are persistent. Circular cut outs in floors and walls that allow you to insert the faction's collector coin are good for this.

It would also be great for "Find the hidden objective" scenarios.

As noted, I haven't built it yet, so I can't tell you how well it works, but your post has reminded me to get on this so that I can put together some video to demonstrate advantages and disadvantages.

One that I can foresee is that games with such terrain would require side tables to hold on layers that needed to be temporarily removed in order to expose interiors. The game would also be slower for all the stacking and unstacking.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
Plague drones? I don't agree with them, but the models should work.

If you mean their melee, I find it unlikely they'd fit on most roofs that contain enemy models. They have trouble fitting on some walkways at my local GW (or did before Covid, at least) WITHOUT enemy models. And they might be fast for Nurgle (10" and FLY) but if the roof is large enough to fit my models in there, somehow, they'd be a prime target.

If you mean their shooting, they have 2 shots each at S4 AP0 D1, hitting on a 4+, RR1s to-wound. I'll slap a Daemon Prince nearby for RR1s to-hit.
It would take an entire squad of 9 to kill one Marine. Double that if they have cover.

i'd honestly let you smack me in melee if your dudes got to the edge of the building considering they have fly.

Also, you can hit people that are pretty high up anyway with the core rules. Engagement range is 5" vertically and your drones are pretty tall themselves.

Range is measured from the base if you have one.

It's ridiculous to the point where Imperial Knights have a strategem that lets them measure from any part of their model (so they can actually engage people in a building).
The whole thing is a mess of game design.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Range is measured from the base if you have one.

It's ridiculous to the point where Imperial Knights have a strategem that lets them measure from any part of their model (so they can actually engage people in a building).
The whole thing is a mess of game design.

oh, right. Yeah, 40k desperately needs the concept of a Silhouette like Infinity/Malifaux/probably other games have

TBH I can understand not using a silhouette.
But if they're using anywhere on the model to be part of LoS, which not use anywhere on the model to be part of measurement? Especially because that's mostly how it works for baseless models as well.
Why can a Defiler punch someone above toe height, but a Knight needs magic points to do so? All because a Knight carries a magic circle around it's feet.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
TBH I can understand not using a silhouette.
But if they're using anywhere on the model to be part of LoS, which not use anywhere on the model to be part of measurement? Especially because that's mostly how it works for baseless models as well.
Why can a Defiler punch someone above toe height, but a Knight needs magic points to do so? All because a Knight carries a magic circle around it's feet.

I think silhouettes are just the superior way of treating models tbh, it gives more freedom for modelers and cool conversions (having a jump captain leaping from the ground with smoke holding him up won't suddenly make him easier to see anymore for example). You could legit just give models a Height stat and treat them as being a cylinder with that height and their base's size as the diameter. For vehicles that don't have bases, just keep the shape of the hull and extend it to their height.

Strg Alt wrote:Besides I don't buy the outrage that "everything is too lethal now". People have whined about such things for decades and the proper solution to the problem was always to have not too many firing lanes on the board. A fact which is ESPECIALLY very easy to accomplish in a city fight because each tall building obstructs LOS. So when you consider it you have actually fewer firing lanes in a city terrain than on a vanilla 40K board.

Strg Alt wrote:Furthermore 3rd city fight rules granted units a cover save of 4+ for ruins and buildings. So even if you have to move through buildings to get to the opposing lines the chances were pretty good to survive a round of fire.

This cover save was the reason why hordes of Orks and Tyranids were so good in a city fight.
In addition to that templates were removed from the rules and granted only random hits on a successful hit roll:
Flamer and big template: D6 hits.
Small template: D3 hits.

Rather illustrating why 9th might be more lethal to armies that have to footslog it through dense terrain, don't you think? Gaunts with 4+ invulns were pretty resilient, Gaunts with 5+ armor saves not to much.

 cuda1179 wrote:
I am looking at making some new terrain. I have a bunch of gothic buildings with flat tops, and I was thinking of making overhead walkways to make pedestrian bridges from rooftop to rooftop. I was also going to make an Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom inspired wood/rope suspension bridge to connect some of my cliffy hills. I was also thinking about making a large hill with a tunnel about 6 inches long, and just wide/tall enough for a dreadnought to slip through.


Is vertical terrain like this fun? Does add or take anything away from the game? I can see it being abused by camping Devastator squads to keep out of assault range, and would make jump pack troops worth their weight in gold.


How much of this kind of terrain would you put on your board?

This is my favorite type of terrain layout, especially for infantry heavy games. If you end up making any be sure to post pictures!

Jump melee units don't benefit that much, FLY doesn't work on terrain in the Charge phase.

 cuda1179 wrote:
How much of this kind of terrain would you put on your board?

None. But you should warn your opponent about terrain anyway so it's no more unfair than heavy or light terrain, it can hardly be worse than GW's "feth everything with tracks or long-ranged weapons" tournament terrain.

I think light terrain with not too much LOS blocking is most balanced at this moment, unfortunately I also play the faction with perhaps the best long-ranged static shooting units, missile and lascannon Devastators and HWTs are bad enough without heavy terrain and tiny tables, but most people build armies geared for playing cityfight.

Just be aware any game involving multi level scenery is going to add time.

Not just longer to move models and plan moves, but trying to work out LoS (at least TLoS is a boon in that specific arena).

It also favours certain army builds over others, so best to let folk know ahead of time.

Other than that it’s great fun.

 catbarf wrote:

Strg Alt wrote:Besides I don't buy the outrage that "everything is too lethal now". People have whined about such things for decades and the proper solution to the problem was always to have not too many firing lanes on the board. A fact which is ESPECIALLY very easy to accomplish in a city fight because each tall building obstructs LOS. So when you consider it you have actually fewer firing lanes in a city terrain than on a vanilla 40K board.

Strg Alt wrote:Furthermore 3rd city fight rules granted units a cover save of 4+ for ruins and buildings. So even if you have to move through buildings to get to the opposing lines the chances were pretty good to survive a round of fire.

This cover save was the reason why hordes of Orks and Tyranids were so good in a city fight.
In addition to that templates were removed from the rules and granted only random hits on a successful hit roll:
Flamer and big template: D6 hits.
Small template: D3 hits.

Rather illustrating why 9th might be more lethal to armies that have to footslog it through dense terrain, don't you think? Gaunts with 4+ invulns were pretty resilient, Gaunts with 5+ armor saves not to much.

Picking one aspect out of all variables won't give you a clear picture to judge whether this is the case or not.

 Strg Alt wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

Strg Alt wrote:Besides I don't buy the outrage that "everything is too lethal now". People have whined about such things for decades and the proper solution to the problem was always to have not too many firing lanes on the board. A fact which is ESPECIALLY very easy to accomplish in a city fight because each tall building obstructs LOS. So when you consider it you have actually fewer firing lanes in a city terrain than on a vanilla 40K board.

Strg Alt wrote:Furthermore 3rd city fight rules granted units a cover save of 4+ for ruins and buildings. So even if you have to move through buildings to get to the opposing lines the chances were pretty good to survive a round of fire.

This cover save was the reason why hordes of Orks and Tyranids were so good in a city fight.
In addition to that templates were removed from the rules and granted only random hits on a successful hit roll:
Flamer and big template: D6 hits.
Small template: D3 hits.

Rather illustrating why 9th might be more lethal to armies that have to footslog it through dense terrain, don't you think? Gaunts with 4+ invulns were pretty resilient, Gaunts with 5+ armor saves not to much.

Picking one aspect out of all variables won't give you a clear picture to judge whether this is the case or not.

No, of course not. There's also fire output inflation (orders, bolter discipline, rapid fire allowing two shots even if you move, etc), AP out the wazoo to render a 4+ or 5+ save in cover largely irrelevant, re-rolls, and attack-boosting stratagems.

Monstrous Creatures have more wounds now, but also multi-damage weapons are a thing, so that's a wash. A Carnifex dies to an average of 3.43 lascannon hits now versus 4.8 in 3rd.

The biggest thing that stands out to me as generally less lethal now than in 3rd is template weapons- except Cityfight as you already noted nerfed their effectiveness, and now there's Blast, so those are more effective in 9th Ed too. Flat 6 hits hurts.

What changes would you say counteract these trends?

You should open a new thread to discuss this in detail. And I am not convinced. Mentioning only a few aspects of SM and Tyranids is a bit lacklustre.

 cuda1179 wrote:
I am looking at making some new terrain. I have a bunch of gothic buildings with flat tops, and I was thinking of making overhead walkways to make pedestrian bridges from rooftop to rooftop. I was also going to make an Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom inspired wood/rope suspension bridge to connect some of my cliffy hills. I was also thinking about making a large hill with a tunnel about 6 inches long, and just wide/tall enough for a dreadnought to slip through.


Is vertical terrain like this fun? Does add or take anything away from the game? I can see it being abused by camping Devastator squads to keep out of assault range, and would make jump pack troops worth their weight in gold.


How much of this kind of terrain would you put on your board?

My terrain at home has both bridges and stuff that can be configured into bridges.

Its not really as usefully playable as it sounds, very few units can actually make relevant use for maneuver in 5 turns [it'll take a turn to ascend to its level, a turn or more to cross, and another turn to descend, when you could have shaved 1-2 turns off of that by just walking at ground level], and those with enough movement to climb up and move across tend to be able to fly anyway thus ignoring it.


Vehicle bridges on the other hand can be quite interesting, because vehicles are fast enough to use them, but also grounded which makes them actually inclined to use them and tend to lose less movement from climbing a ramp than moving over and up 5" or so for infantry.

City fight 3rd let units use their movement for horizontal and vertical moves AT THE SAME TIME. So if a unit rolled a five for the difficult terrain test it could move five inches horizontally and five inches up or down in a ruin/building. For each three inches of movement the squad could climb/descend a floor of the terrain piece.

This meant less time wasted moving around buildings. Otherwise those terrain pieces would quickly become "quagmires" which could hinder a unit's mobility.

Why exactly do we keep looping back to rules that are not used anymore? What help is it to anyone to build their terrain according to third edition's city fight? I'm sure those rules were great, and I enjoyed city fight a lot in older editions, but that's not how the game works anymore, and for 9th edition it's immensely important to pay attention to 9th edition's terrain rules in order to create enjoyable and interesting games. In fact, some of our older city-fight terrain has become pretty unusable in 9th.

Currently units use their full movement to move up building. Anything but infantry, swarms or cavalry cannot move through any kind of terrain eve if it is breachable. The walker type is gone and neither VEHICLE nor MONSTER nor BIKER units ever be on higher floors unless they have FLY. Even if models have fly, if the do not fit in between floors, they cannot be there, and many new models are taller than in the past.
Not all units move 6" anymore, both engagement range and coherency are 5" vertically and most models measure from base to base.

Any terrain you build needs to keep those rules in mind in order to not accidentally create broken situation where one army cannot fight another one or units become invincible.

 Strg Alt wrote:
City fight 3rd let units use their movement for horizontal and vertical moves AT THE SAME TIME.

One wonders why they just didn't keep that. It's simple and makes sense.

This has been an interesting read.

I've been building terrain myself since some tine before 3rd edition but got into it a lot more during 3rd and onward.
There's several good points in the other comments I would agree with. Firstly would be playability. I'm building tall terrain features now, ruins of different sized from 3 to 14 inches tall depending I discovered I've actually made more than I can use with 9th. The table size and some other issues.
I've tried to take a few ques from from what GW is now doing with terrain as they have changed the heights of their ruined building. I like that they are putting more height between floor now, it helps to let you get your hands in there and set up or move models. My ground floor is usually 4 to 4.5 inches from floor to ceiling but the higher up we go the heights can reduce a bit as long as it's more walls and ledges than anything else. a slight reduction won't hurt very much.
Another thing to keep in mind is uniform heights. building should be build/ruins in similar increments. this will help with any ideas of walkways between them.
9th is a bit funny when it comes to setting up terrain, unlike the many editions before. Previously I would have recommended as far as set up with linked vertical buildings to just put them in clusters leaving open space large enough around them for other things like big tanks or large walkers. I've played terrain for years that if a model can't fit it can't go. that will not make many Imperial knights happy but I think 9th has tried to make that something that won't happen due to objective placement and terrain.
Lastly if your making terrain maybe create some data cards with the relevant 9th edition terrain rules for each or color code the terrain to be used with a reference sheet.
This is the one thing I feel was well thought out for the grand tournament thing for this year. I find it's easy to just slip back into old terrain habits and remembered or misremembered rules.
If your games are more relaxed, dig up ever old terrain rule you can find and see what you all like and hash it out.
I still remember City Fight from 3rd. It was so much a good time at the time.
And I guess lastly figure out ahead of time just how many terrain features you actually need, some minimum number, so you don't end up with more than you can use but this will also help you decide how much of each kind you want to make.
Hope this was helpful.

It's really interesting to read the posts from those more familiar with 9th editions rules. It just shows the impact game rules can have on your designs and the visual look and feel of a table. I definitely build my stuff for gameability over looks when I need to choose between the two (so I tend to prefer flat surfaces over slopes or uneven ground for example) but for me the gameable elements mostly come down to model placement and access issues. If the game rules limited the kind of terrain I could use too much beyond that, I'd be pretty likely to switch to another game.

@jidmah:

OP is building terrain for home use which means he is NOT SHACKLED BY CURRENT RULES. So any input he receives may enhance his gaming experience.

Besides if you don't like my posts just mute me.

Vertical terrain is awesome and I always want more of it!

I say this as a competitive/tournament player.

Strg Alt wrote:@jidmah:

OP is building terrain for home use which means he is NOT SHACKLED BY CURRENT RULES. So any input he receives may enhance his gaming experience.

Besides if you don't like my posts just mute me.

I don't see what difference playing at home. If I make terrain at home for use in 40k, I would intend that it be useable to play 40k.

Strg Alt wrote:City fight 3rd let units use their movement for horizontal and vertical moves AT THE SAME TIME. So if a unit rolled a five for the difficult terrain test it could move five inches horizontally and five inches up or down in a ruin/building. For each three inches of movement the squad could climb/descend a floor of the terrain piece.

This meant less time wasted moving around buildings. Otherwise those terrain pieces would quickly become "quagmires" which could hinder a unit's mobility.

Yeah, I can use my terrain set to build large complexes of arches and bridges, but nothing can meaningfully get on top of it in play because it takes too many turns to get up and over it when they could just dash across the ground floor. It does look cool when a tanks drive fight under rock arches and bridges though.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Strg Alt wrote:@jidmah:

OP is building terrain for home use which means he is NOT SHACKLED BY CURRENT RULES. So any input he receives may enhance his gaming experience.

Besides if you don't like my posts just mute me.

I don't see what difference playing at home. If I make terrain at home for use in 40k, I would intend that it be useable to play 40k.

.

There was a tlme when creativity was thing in 40k. Then the tournament curse spread and there's supposedly only one way to play while players chase netlists like lemmings.

What he suggests is actually playing 40k. If you have inch of creativityx

tneva82 wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Strg Alt wrote:@jidmah:

OP is building terrain for home use which means he is NOT SHACKLED BY CURRENT RULES. So any input he receives may enhance his gaming experience.

Besides if you don't like my posts just mute me.

I don't see what difference playing at home. If I make terrain at home for use in 40k, I would intend that it be useable to play 40k.

.

There was a tlme when creativity was thing in 40k. Then the tournament curse spread and there's supposedly only one way to play while players chase netlists like lemmings.

What he suggests is actually playing 40k. If you have inch of creativityx

When the rules cost hundreds of dollars, I want them to be usable as-is.

This isn't like D&D where there's a GM to adjudicate outside actions-this is a competitive wargame. There's absolutely nothing wrong with adding content or tweaking if you like, but you shouldn't HAVE to to make basic things like buildings work.