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Yup, i'm newish to the hobby and i play in a newish group. we are just getting into making /buying some nice terrain and were having some issues on what we all think in terms of how it should be played. I'm talking about the modular, stackable 1" high jagged edged foam hills/mountains/ruble.... when infantry are walking "into" or ' onto" this terrain how are people calling this? is the vertical height played as physical space ? I.E. (assume a difficult terrain roll was taken and a 6 was rolled) 6" move: 4" forward 1" up and 1" in ? or is it played as flat ground no vertical movement penalty just measure over the terrain and place the model in it? i hope what I'm getting at is clear... I'm not asking about moving/assaulting/ running into cover here but if the VERTICAL height of the typical 3/4"-1' terrain is taken into consideration when moving.

Decide amongst yourselves.

We play that it's flat ground that requires a Difficult Terrain roll. I've seen others play hills as requiring movement to climb up. It's 100% up to your group - the key is to agree before dice start hitting the table.

Generally, we define terrain in two ways:

-Area terrain, which includes hills, forests, rocky steppes, ruined vehicles, etc: Don't measure vertical movement.

-Building ruins, or other terrain that has 'levels' where one model can be placed under another: Cost in movement to go up or down a level, generally 3" per level.

smooth = open no penalty
steep = difficult terrain
more then 3" = impossible terrain.

We normally don't further penalise movement, as you don't when moving round wrecked buildings.
Edit but as above it between you and your opponent ... TO will generally set out their rule in advance and i recommend checking them for what they say.

I totally disagree with mikhaila here. Even in totally open terrain, you need to measure movement/shooting/etc distances in all dimensions.

(Although, I do play where things like short walls are totally ignored. You don't have to climb up one side and down the other.)

Grakmar wrote:I totally disagree with mikhaila here. Even in totally open terrain, you need to measure movement/shooting/etc distances in all dimensions.

(Although, I do play where things like short walls are totally ignored. You don't have to climb up one side and down the other.)

I missed the part where I said anything about shooting, etc. And if the terrain is open, what's the difficulty of measuring?)

If you want to disagree with how we play terrain, that's fine, everyone should play how they like. I've got over 1000 pieces of terrain we've made for 40k tournaments. We define how they are played to all the players, and no one's had a problem. That includes several GT's, and 'ardboyz regionals and finals. As others have said, the key is in defining how the terrain works before the game or tournament, and having all the players on the same page.

Not measuring height differences for area terrain in 5th edition can let you construct playable scenery that also blocks LOS and keeps tables from being open shooting galleries. We use some that is a series of flat rocky cliffs. Flat so miniatures don't roll off. Tall to give some LOS blocking scenery. It's defined as difficult terrain for the entire area, and a 4+ save, with the usual restrictions on MC and vehicles needing 50% actual cover. If we measured vertical movement, a lot of it would be unusable, and units could never reach models in the middle of it.
Works for my tournaments, YMMV

cool Mikhaila, that's how we're playing, and it seems to work pretty well. Ty to all who posted helpful info. now i just need to get some cool terrain and then i can get back to missile spamming peoples face.