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A standard game table is 72 inches by 48 inches.

Most of my terrain is built on CDs, which are 4.75 inches diameter.

How many CD terrain pieces do you think I should use on a standard table?

I want to find out what people feel is right. So, if you calculate an answer, please do not give your reasoning as it will ruin the poll.

25% of the table is 'recommended', I prefer something like about 40%. That is, with the recommended amount, fill 1/4 of the table packed with terrain, then scatter it around. I prefer more, simply because not enough terrain now blocks LOS.

It's hard putting a hard number on how many peices, because they'll always differ in size.

I agree, however I want to get an idea of how many pieces people feel is about right to fill 25%.

24 sound like a good number, or maybe that because I play tau

I think it depends on the height of them also, does it block LOS, or just block 50% of the model. The must be a magic ratio?

The rulebook just says 25% of the table. It doesn't talk about height and other factors.

Kilkrazy wrote:I want to find out what people feel is right. So, if you calculate an answer, please do not give your reasoning as it will ruin the poll.

My gaming group has between 12 - 24 pieces ( ish ) i cant give reasons why its that way o__o?

The more terrain, the better the game. 36-42.

I'd say just calculate the 25%. What feels right to me instead is 1-2 large centerpiece terrain items usually 12-18" square, and then usually around 6-8 small terrain pieces around 6" square. Sometimes these aren't square but are something like a 8" long wall.

I take your point about terrain of different sizes and heights.

I used the CD as a standard measure because everyone knows the size of it.

If there are enough terrain pieces, there will be a reasonable variation in their height.

By the math, 24-25 CD bases of terrain comes to your 25% table coverage. For my own part, I like the CD terrain bases, but like to have some larger pieces as well. Having area terrain that I can fit a whole squad onto is important to me!

36+.

We use around 8-9 pieces of terrain on our tables, but our terrain pieces are generally 8"x12" or so (and no smaller than 6"x4")

Cities of Death is my kind of thing, I like urban nightmares. I think it also depends on what kind of game of 40k you're playing.

Personally I like a table to be pretty rammed with terrain to the tune of about 50%+ coverage.

The more the better really.

Circa 24 seems about right to me.

That and lower is the popular choice so far.

With the sizes you say ill side with about 30. Plenty of open spaces but lets you create lanes, obstructions and the like to add some flavour to your blank space. Which is always a good thing.

It's also important to have various types of terrain, big chunky LOS blocking biuldings down to scree which is dificult terrain with no cover save

Ppl tend to choose lower due to the amount of transport most armies play with. Most IG armies with chimera and valkyries have almost no room to even deploy in unless they come on table later.

LunaHound wrote:Ppl tend to choose lower due to the amount of transport most armies play with. Most IG armies with chimera and valkyries have almost no room to even deploy in unless they come on table later.

Which is why I like high density terrain - makes people play away from the "everything in mech" frame of mind

We are starting to get some higher density votes in the poll. The balance is still well towards the sparse terrain end, though.

72! 1 For every inch! The board is your area terrain!

On a more serious note, my GW uses 2 48" x 48" boards (my Khorne army loves it) and we have around 6-7 pieces of varying sizes, so with your larger board i'd say ~24 of varying sizes is fine, give or take a few.

This really is dependent upon the size & type of each terrain piece, and that includes height into the calculation as well as density of terrain and how much "cover" might be provided within each individual piece itself. So if you had a single piece, say a building with that was maybe 18" square but went up several levels and had numerous interior walls and other cover, you could probably use much less in the way of other bits of terrain.

If you are just sticking a few trees, barrels or rocks or some other type terrain on individual CDs, then you could use as few as two or three on each quarter of the table but more likely between 4 and 6 on each quarter to get an adequate amount of terrain, again depending on how dense the cover and height is on each piece of terrain.

Well 48 would be the closest to the recommended, but thats allot of CDs!

I have a definite preference for more than 25% say upto 40%.

Absolutely right! You need nearly 49 CD sized terrain pieces to cover 25% of the area of a standard table.

It is a lot of CDs.

At this stage of the poll, about 60% of respondents have voted for 24 or fewer CDs per table.

This may help explain why there are lots of battle reports and complaints about tables being too bare.

I personally voted for 54, just to be safe, and allow for some overlap! ^_^

I don't usually bother counting how much scenery I use. All that matters to me is that it's mostly symmetrical and even.

I prefer cover to be as fair for both sides as possible.

I suppose I should qualify the 18-24 bracket I selected was based on GW "out of the box" terrain, things such as their 3 tree forests, temple of skulls, bunkers, crater sets, imperium buildings etc.

In my opinon a lot of these have fairly large footprints/heights and as such 18-24 seems about right on a standard table.

In other words, I most certainly prefer dense terrain but as someone else says size is an obvious determinant.

I stand corrected on my math, 48-50 would be a good amount of CDs on the table.

Kilkrazy wrote:I want to get an idea of how many pieces people feel is about right to fill 25%.

A few CoD buildings and a hill or two is plenty to fulfill the 25% guideline - well under a dozen pieces, total, if they're large enough. I would guess that much of the reason the results are stacked towards the lower end is that people used to buildings and the like as terrain have difficulty visualizing just how many CD sized terrain pucks it would take to cover the same area. I think if you had asked "What percentage of the table do you like to be covered in terrain?" the distribution would have a bit more of a bell curve to it (provided you didn't run it from 0-100%, of course. I imagine 25% is far closer to the average than 50% is).