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Tell me what is your opinion of how much of the playing field should be fielded with terrain?

Me and my friends usually use the GW craters and just pile some books there to act as mountains and stuff. Some times it f´gets a little bit hard to move aroud with my vehicles (really hard) and it seems there is too much terrain. Should we just use more walls and stuff like that or what?

It really depends on you, your opponent and the game type. I've played games where there was almost no terrain (which makes it slightly harder for certain armies as they cannot sneak up in cover), and I've played games of CoD where at best tanks have maybe an inch or two to spare on either side. Both extremes have challenges that you need to take into consideration. One thing my friends and I do do, however, is take turns placing terrain so no one army has an unfair advantage.

We really just go with what is suggested in the book. 25% of the table covered with a mixture of LOS blocking and cover providing terrain.


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We regularly use even more than that, because playing cat and mouse is fun

I have recently played a CoD game. The Predator for a BA had 2 ammo boxes on each sponson. Now, the spot the Pred was deployed in was a small square between buildings. Normally the Pred would be able to move through them, but the ammo boxes on the sides made it an inch too big. Even removing on ammo box would have sufficed.

Things like that are rare. In my usual gaming area, which is a GW, we use 4ftX4ft Realm of Battle boards, which are easily divided up. We just fill a 2ftX2ft piece of the board with terrain, then have someone ste it up before we pick table sides and deploy.

Lightcavalier wrote:We really just go with what is suggested in the book. 25% of the table covered with a mixture of LOS blocking and cover providing terrain.

This. Go with the rulebook recommendation of mixed terrain, 25% of the board. Make it easy to figure out, just put all the terrain in one table quarter. Keep adding various terrain until its full. When it's full, place it around the table, take turns.

The key to making the terrain have an effect is make sure you put differing terrain types in there. Put 2-3 large area terrain peices for squad cover, 3-4 large peices that will block line of sight to avoid fire lanes right down the table, put 4-5 ruins which will hinder large model movement and give cover to small units, and put some scatter terrain in there (like barricades, hedges, etc).

When placing the terrain, don't place the big peices on the table edges or in deployment zones - you might as well not have them on there. Put them in the middle, spaced out. Try to get it so theres a few fire lanes between the deployment zones, but not enough that one army can alphastrike the other into oblivion. Place the smaller ruins and area terrain around and amongst the big peices. You want troops and tanks to need to move, and you want areas where infantry can get the jump on tanks and vice versa through good movement.

I prefer a nice cluttered board, so 50% plus. A nice mix of area and LOS blocking terrain.

I find the best games are when a total of 25% terrain is used.

So 24 inches by 36 inches on a normal 4 foot by 6 foot table.

We fill up a quarter of the table with LOS and area terrain and then scatter it around the table. 25% terrain.

For other games (cityfighting), 50-60% is used, and for some other games, 75-80% table coverage is desirable (infinity).

I like games with lots of terrain, I'm in the process of making a city-fight table at the moment where very little of the board is actually normal open ground. There's a river crossing the whole board, a big building, 6 ruins, 2 bridges and a load of road. There's probably only about 2 square feet of completely blank floor on the whole 6x4 set up.

But as others have said, 25% is probably a good rule of thumb.

I find that sparse terrain makes it hard for low armour armies (Orks, Tyranid, Especially both Eldar) High terrain means nothing really happens. So 25% to 50% would be good.

I also usually stick around 25% terrain.

I think the more important factor is having a good mix of terrain. Not all LoS blocking or all open, but a good mix of all the different types of terrain. dangerous, difficult, impassable, LoS blocking etc.