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I am soon to be building a gaming board and a collection of terrain to go on it. I intend to play most of my games on this board and so I'm keen to build a collection of terrain that is adaptable, varied, and balanced for all armies. The rulebook suggests 25% of the table should be terrain, do you think this is correct? I am tempted to build about 33% of the board as terrain.

What I really want to hear opinions on is the mix of terrain types, how much of each. I think terrain can broadly be divided into these categories:

Low lying area (rubble, doesn't hide tanks at all)

LOS obscuring area (forest, provides cover to tanks)

low LOS blocking obstacles (solid walls and barricades)

low LOS blocking impassable (large rocks and other things that half hide tanks and hide infantry)

high LOS blocking impassable (completely hide tanks)

very high LOS blocking (provide cover to flyers could be ruins or buildings)

fences (difficult terrain, maybe a 5+, 6+ cover save)

hills

ruins (1, 2, 3 levels)

intact buildings (with or without roof space)

My guess at a good mix of terrain would be:
1-2 intact buildings, 1 tall ruin, 2 medium height ruins, 1-2 low lying area, 3-4 forests, about 2 foot of fencing, 3 medium hills and 2-3 pieces of impassible (1 or 2 along the board edge like cliffs) and maybe 2-3 large rocks.

Please give me your thoughts on this.

Lunarman

25%-35% of total table covered in terrain with each terrain getting 3 heights.

Low, Medium and High..... Averages about 2 pieces each....

Makes for a good game.... Obviously Dense jungle worlds and hive worlds, cities of death etc... would need more along the lines of 50-70%.... but that needs to be agreed upon by both sides..... as some armies simply cannot do a thing in heavy terrain etc...

I have found that the 25% rule is minimum and that more terrain generally makes for a more interesting game. 33% does not sound bad at all.

I also found that you need some terrain that completely blocks line of sight. The GW buildings and ruins are very nice, BUT you end up being able to see all the way across the board most of the time. I think that having something large, impassible, and has solid walls makes for more interesting games. Do i try to sneak up the board? or do I go out into the open? It lets the two armies get close and duke it out in the middle, Rather than lining up in your deployment zone for a gun line shoot out.


I would also recommend a "Starcraft Map". IE the map is symmetrical regardless of the players starting positions. This way you do not end up with one side of the table being "the crappy side" and the game is more about fighting over who gets the "good side". This does not mean that both sides need to be exactly identical in appearance, but just mostly the same in what kind ans size of terrain goes where.


Here is a really good article from BOLS where one of the NOVA open people explain how they set up terrain for their tournament in order to have consistent tables, and interesting and balanced gameplay. They do a better job than I explaining everything.
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2011/06/40k-editorial-proper-terrain-setup.html



Just remember, no matter how you set it up, someone will not be happy with it because it is different than what they normally play on.

I'd stick to 25%. Above that and it looks like you've built your table for an advantage, which would make you look bad.
Depends what you have though. Obviously one huge innaccessable building isn't going to do much.
3 ruins + 3-4 forests is a LOT of area terrain for a 6 by 4 board. Obviously it depends how big they all are though.
I don't think you should have a terrain peice that specifically is designed to give cover to fliers. It's a deliberate disadvantage that they'll struggle to find cover.

This is my RoB board:



I have on it 9 buildings in total, two large ones in the middle for LOS blocking along with a slim tower to create firing lanes. Two decent size buildings either side for camping units i.e Devastators. Two long medium size buildings either size for deployment and two medium size square size buildings in the corners for spearhead.

The board is setup mirror across the diagnonal and I always set it up about the same.

I don't include the hills for terrain, they don't block LOS (not on RoB board and in the config I use) and really don't provide much use.

Heop that helps.

Looks like that board is alright. But I would say it needs some more low-level area terrain some impassible terrain to dictate movement and fences/barricades too

If there was impassable terrain along with fences and barricades then tanks would find movement almost impossible as will be constantly taking terrain tests, lol. The gaps between the centre buildings is only about 12".

Try to limit the LOS blocking stuff to the 1 per 2x2 square / 6 on a 6x4 norm but you can play with the more abstract stuff all over the board without breaking balance. It's all ruins and forests on most boards, try roads and tank traps and dangerous thin ice and mud and shallow to deep water and light cover like chain-link fences or tall grass or crops for 5+ or 6+ so the game doesn't revolve around ubiquitous 4+ cover, all that good stuff.

It's always fun to play in a scene with some sort of narrative too. Alot of tables have no story or any sort of focal point.

Things that add flavor to a game I think are: wrecked tanks and burnt out husks of monstorous creatures/buildings.

Think of your battleground as a character itself. ... a clock tower, the royal palace courtyard, a robot factory, and orky bunker, munitions dump, a waterfall, a burnt ouf grove of trees, trenches full of disgarded equipment, a slime ridden sewage ditch, a tank graveyard, a fallen mega dreadnought, a mountain of bones, an ancient shirine with booby traps are kinda neat and can add some storyline to a battleground. Otherwise it's just blocks of stuff that impede movement or grant cover saves- ie boring.

If you watch good war/adventure movies almost every scene has some narrative of what the area was before war came and ravished it.

@table

this is what I would call a semi-open table. It consists of basically 2 types: High terrain pieces that dont block LOS and open ground.
so finding cover will be easy. Hiding will be next to impossible.

I would suggest some LOS blocking terrain where it matters: in the middle. + some area terrain that slows you down and a little less open ground.

BTW: I am guard player...

Yeah. I think it's important to not only have cover, but also to provide full LoS blocking.

And provide difficult terrain to limit movement and immobilise tanks

lunarman wrote:Yeah. I think it's important to not only have cover, but also to provide full LoS blocking.

And provide difficult terrain to limit movement and immobilise tanks

Uhmmm. Why? Many mech armies will refuse to play on a board if they have to take a dangerous terrain test every turn. Moving through dangerous terrain should be a gamble that's only done when you really, really need to get somewhere. It shouldn't be a nessesity of all movement.
Not so sure about LOS blocking either. Most terrain will provide LOS-blocking to infantry-sized models anyway.

Joey wrote:

lunarman wrote:Yeah. I think it's important to not only have cover, but also to provide full LoS blocking.

And provide difficult terrain to limit movement and immobilise tanks

Uhmmm. Why? Many mech armies will refuse to play on a board if they have to take a dangerous terrain test every turn. Moving through dangerous terrain should be a gamble that's only done when you really, really need to get somewhere. It shouldn't be a nessesity of all movement.
Not so sure about LOS blocking either. Most terrain will provide LOS-blocking to infantry-sized models anyway.

I'd always thought it was a tradeoff between how you want to move your force and what risks you're willing to take. I don't think you should be able to move two tanks up side by side across the whole board. So either you split your tanks up and go around terrain, or you risk going straight though terrain...

Also, I meant LOS blocking to tanks.

lunarman wrote:

Joey wrote:

lunarman wrote:Yeah. I think it's important to not only have cover, but also to provide full LoS blocking.

And provide difficult terrain to limit movement and immobilise tanks

Uhmmm. Why? Many mech armies will refuse to play on a board if they have to take a dangerous terrain test every turn. Moving through dangerous terrain should be a gamble that's only done when you really, really need to get somewhere. It shouldn't be a nessesity of all movement.
Not so sure about LOS blocking either. Most terrain will provide LOS-blocking to infantry-sized models anyway.

I'd always thought it was a tradeoff between how you want to move your force and what risks you're willing to take. I don't think you should be able to move two tanks up side by side across the whole board. So either you split your tanks up and go around terrain, or you risk going straight though terrain...

Also, I meant LOS blocking to tanks.

So you want to park your artillery where they can't be seen or shot at, and you don't want your enemy to be able to move his mech infantry up the board.
That's fine but don't expect people to be queueing up to play you.

You misunderstand me! I play mech infantry!

Then making a game board to specifically nerf mech infantry is even stranger.

No it isn't.

A balanced gaming board should nerf every kind of army. BTW: He isnt talking of a table full of difficult terrain. He is talking of some pieces of difficult terrain.
There is still some other open ground where vehicles can move with no difficulties. Of course it can happen that they cant move exactly the way they wanted without a DT-Test. But then the mech player must think a bit and this is only positiv.

Concerning hiding artillery: Actually that is its purpose... Why taking artillery if you cannot hide it?

I think there is a reason why everyone plays Mech-MSU: Because everyone can see everyone, there is no real problem with movement and cover is easy to find.

So nerfing Mech-MSU is in favour of more variants of lists.

You can't design terain around flaws in game design.
I get frustrated by ubiquitous 4+ cover saves but I'm not going t make an all grassland board to even things up a bit.

For me, A good game is one where you have a lot of decisions to make and risks to manage.

The fun in the game [for me] is the decision making and then watching the dice to see if your decision panned out.


The terrain can go a long way toward making those fun moments happen.


Do you go out in the open area of the board where you can move freely and keep your units close to each other for support
BUT
You have limited cover and may take more damage.


Do you split your forces up, hiding behind LOS blocking terrain trying to get close to make your of your short ranged shooting or close combat ability
BUT
You loose out on the ability to deal damage at long range and limit the enemy mobility. Also, difficult and dangerous terrain becomes an issue.


Picking which fire lanes you want to focus on, trying to lure the enemy into open ground with objective placement,



A True Line of Sight game system needs some terrain the Truly Blocks Line of Sight in order to work properly. The game was not designed or balanced to play on an empty board, or one where you can see everything but everything gets 4+ cover saves.

A good board should do most of these things (and maybe a few more)

1) Ensure that either player has a chance to win after their table side has been chosen (ie. don't put all the terrain on one side of the board, and leave the other side empty)

2) Provide challenges for any type of list (LOS blocking terrain for gunlines, movement blocking terrain for close range lists, ect.)

3) Provide tactical choices for the player to make (take 2 turns to reach the enemy lines, BUT you have to some DT tests, or go around and hit in 3 turns)

4) Look Cool

You can't design terain around flaws in game design.
I get frustrated by ubiquitous 4+ cover saves but I'm not going t make an all grassland board to even things up a bit.

Why not? The rules encourage you to have a balanced amount of terrain on the board. They also state, that some LOS-blocking terrain should be part of it.

The flaw is not in game design, the flaw is in the mind of unflexible players.

@svendrex:

Sign. Absolutely.

For my group of friends, we like to avoid a template design for boards. Sometimes the boards are symmetrical, sometimes they are not. A few weeks ago we had a terrain settup with one side being slightly more in favor of a shooting army and the other side a bit better for an assaulting army. the table was fairly symmetrical on 2/3rds but the right third of the board has a cliff formation blocking LOS from most of the middle, some slight bushes/trees, and on the opposite side a fortified hill. The hill was a solid spot to deploy in, but it's LOS really only covers that secluded flank and a small section of the middle/left side of the board. Given its mediocre line of sight, you sort of don't want to deploy there- but if you don't deploy there, that side flank is wide open for a fast unit like a trukk full of boyz to have a clear run to flank your force which will be more concentrated in the other 2/3rds of the map. Or we got sick of fighting over villages/towns in forests, so we got some river pieces and hills and made some boards that were power generators, especially the cool hydro electric one made from an old pipe and a dead water pump from my car. Manufactorum/industrial buildings set in rolling hills and valleys crossed with rivers. Awhile before that it was heavily urban that was favored. It makes for more interesting games, tactics and strategies and if you don't use a wide variety of terrain types and styles you don't get to enjoy all of the character of the game. Like the surprising value of a amphibious chimera on a map with rivers or bodies of water

Not that I usually go around name dropping, but this http://yesthetruthhurts.com/2012/02/steleks-handy-guide-to-tournament-terrain/ is easily the most well thought out guide to tournament terrain I have come across.

@Jihallah

Of course if a board is always looking the same way, you tend to develop "Scheme-F"-strategies (do you English have this word? ) It basically means routine in a negative way (edit: I found the translation: "according to the book"). so having things like water or some dangerous terrain (not used very often...) comes in handy. At the "Stadtmeisterschaften"-tournament in germany (which is basically a national ETC) the boards are different on purpose, because it is a team tournament where the choice of the board is also a factor. So there are very open boards with no LOS blocking terrain very good for IG leafblower alikes or Razorback MSU and there are densely packed cityfight tables - a paradise for jump pack armies or elite mech.

@Powerguy

This guide is quite well thought. Although for german boards this would be still considered pretty open. Here we propose at least a LOS-Blocker in front of each deployment zone and one in the centre, the rest can be varied with hills, woods, ruins, barricades, water, craters and so on.
But what I like about the guide is, that he leaves enough room to manoeuvre around each terrain piece. Here we dont value this idea very high. There are short table edges half covered in area terrain or some areas on the board can only be reached going through a terrain piece and we do have impassable terrain (which I think is the only flaw in Steleks system as impassable terrain goes around the problem he and Dash had during their game (battlewagon inside a LOS-blocking terrain piece ).).

It's definitely cool to be able to mix it up frequently, and set up fluffy boards. It's all about mix. A mix of area, linear, and impassable, with various LoS interference. I like trying to get some of the 5+/6+ cover from the rulebook into the game. I haven't played much with fortifications, nor have I used the ruins or building rules much (although I have tried them all). Anyone use those alot?

In our gaming group we use the method of filling up a quarter of the the board with terrain and then alternating turns to put the pieces out. I like that, it's a bit of a game with your opponent and the result is usually a balanced board. Alternately, one person (the one who's ready to play lol) sets up the board and the other has the option to quibble with the result.

The LoS issue is perhaps the most important - there has to be a couplefew pieces that can hide vehicles imo.

Nazdreg: we say 'by the book'. Why is it Scheme-F?

Here are some of the boards we play at my club:

http://www.bristolvanguard.co.uk/Site/Terrain/Terrain.html

http://www.bristolvanguard.co.uk/Site/Terrain/Entries/2010/10/1_Imperial_Guard_Base_files/shapeimage_1.png
This one feels ok, good LOS but I'd personally rather some area terrain too. Replacing one or two of those bunkers with ruined ones or added a few craters would be good.

http://www.bristolvanguard.co.uk/Site/Terrain/Entries/2010/10/1_Arctic_Base_files/shapeimage_1.png
This one might not have any area either, but it's got plenty of LOS blocking. I wouldn't want it to be my only gameboard for balance reasons. But I say it's close to perfect.

http://www.bristolvanguard.co.uk/Site/Terrain/Entries/2010/10/1_Red_Planet_files/shapeimage_1.png
Pretty good mix of all things? Balanced but lacking in a strong sense of place, unlike the other two, which both have a great story. I'd personally add a few bits of chain fence to this map to close some of it off more.

The artic base is really cool. It does need some area terrain, maybe an ice-maze (like a forest, but with ice) an outdoor warehouse (hide among crates) etc.

It does illustrate one aspect of the perfect board though, it has a cool theme.

The perfect board needs:
1: Enough terrain
2: Different types of terrain
3: A cool theme
4: Be playable (possibility to move terrain around, possible to place models etc)

In addition at a tourney:
5: Needs to provide a fair playing field when viewed as a whole.

Many boards fail the first three, good tourney boards generally manage at least #1, possibly also #2, while many really cool-looking boards fail #4. I havn't seen many boards that manage to pull it all of at once.

@murdog

Schema F was a prussian paper form where you fill in your army strength when reporting. So when the troops are controlled later their strength has to match Schema F.
So if you act according to Schema F, you act like a buerocrat with no own thought behind it just doing your duty.

@Battle grounds

I like the temple. It has some pieces of area, Assuming that the middle block is hihg enough to block LOS we have a good amount of LOS blockers in the right places and it looks nicely, is balanced and not as open as it looks, although you can find good viewpoints.

on the red planet board the amount of terrain is perfect but the LOS blockers are placed a bit awkwardly imho.

beach assault and imperial outpost are also cool and balanced tables.